On today’s date in 1910, Gustav Mahler conducted the “First Historical Concert” of the New York Philharmonic, an event billed as “the first of a series arranged in chronological sequence, comprising the most famous composers from the period of Bach to the present day.”

Mahler’s program included works of Handel, Rameau, Gretry and Haydn, and opened with his own arrangement of music from Bach’s Orchestral Suites.

Now, Bach’s music had been appearing on Philharmonic programs for decades, but some in the audience were shocked to see how Mahler presented it. Rather than conduct in the usual fashion, standing in front of the orchestra with his baton, Mahler led the orchestra from the keyboard of a “Bach-Klavier” (a Steinway piano whose action had been tinkered with to make it sound a little like a harpsichord). That bit of “historically informed performance” style was something brand new and even a little shocking to some back in 1910, although these days it’s common to see someone conduct from the keyboard at concerts of Baroque music.

In a letter to a friend back in Europe, Mahler wrote: “I had great fun recently with a Bach concert, for which I worked out the basso continuo conducting and improvising quite in the style of the old masters, playing on a rich-toned spinet specially adopted by Steinway for the purpose. This produced a number of surprises for me – and also for the audience. It was as though a floodlight had been turned on to this long-buried literature.”