This “Great
Recordings of the
Century” release is an extremely fitting tribute to conductor
Carlo Maria Giulini, who turned 90 earlier this year, and EMI
appropriately opens this disc with his riveting Tragic
Overture. From the sharp crack and force of the pair of opening
chords, this performance has always announced itself as a sleek,
muscular tiger of music making, moving with plenty of power and
a coiled-spring intensity but also possessing a feline grace and
a deep, smoldering warmth that could – and often does – explode
into white-hot passion. Clearly etched rhythms, pointed accents
and long, seamlessly flowing melodic lines all add to an
unflagging balance of counterpoint, harmonic progression and
melodic thrust, with Giulini pointing up of inner voices in the
overall framework of the music without letting tension flag,
building inexorably to a devastating conclusion.
The
Haydn Variations that follow are equally fine, capturing all the
joy, yearning and
humor of Brahms in his sunnier moods. Even at the beginning of
the work, as the rest of the orchestra plays nobly and
seriously, Giulini does a fine job of balancing the playing so
that the bassoon can comment wittily and satirically at the
proceedings unfolding – perhaps Brahms’ inside joke on how he
could be too serious, even for himself to take. The French
horns in Variation III (a tribute perhaps to Brahms’ father, who
was a professional horn player) add their own wry, sagely but
witheringly funny advice, for which the swollen sound of the
Philharmonia brass is a perfect voice. Winds and strings scurry
in Variation V with the carefree delight and boundless energy of
children caught up in a pell-mell game of tag, followed by the
portly, Falstaffian ease and love of life expressed by the
“hunting horns” in Variation VI. The final fugue here forms not
only a musical interplay of elements but also a melding and
recapitulation of all the dramatic and emotional elements – an
operac overture in reverse, following instead of preceding the
action.
Operatic, in the best
sense of the word, could best describe Giulini’s Brahms Fourth
Symphony, recorded with the Chicago Symphony almost a decade
after the other works on this disc. As Sir Simon Rattle, who
served as an associate conductor under Giulini in Los Angeles,
points out in the liner notes, “It is one of those performances
in which you feel the musicians are playing not the notes but
the stories of their lives.” From the opening notes, it feels
as though conductor and orchestra are doing just that. Each
fleeting mood in the opening allegro – and there is a greater,
far more variable and elusive play of emotions here than in the
other Brahms symphonies – is expressed with a direct boldness
and passion.
Along with passion, the
greatest quality Giulini and the CSO bring to the Fourth is
patience – the willingness to take the time needed to fully
express these emotions and to allow the music to breathe and
sing to the utmost. In his review of the Guilini Chicago box
set (read the review here), Geoff Woods singled out this Brahms
Fourth as “the richest, most spacious reading of this work I’ve
heard,” and it is easy to hear why. There is an unrushed
quality very much like a conversation that goes on and on but is
so compelling that you ignore or forget about the time and hang
onto every word. Everything you hear feels intimate, personal
and so compelling that all you want is more.
More is exactly what
comes in the andante. Here the moods are more stable and
consistent, not the intense but fleeting devotion of a romance
but more stable, profound and lived-in love of a marriage or
lifetime relationship that has grown, bloomed and become so
deeply rooted that it cannot be killed. Here the CSO strings
play at their finest. Giulini encourages and gets a continual
bel canto from the players, and the music moves with a lyric
grace more in line with a cast of singers than a group of
instrumentalists.
After the andante, the
scherzo unfolds more like a procession than a dance, but the
music gains in tension and momentum from that approach. The
unbridled joy that exudes here is definitely of Beethovenian
stride, the strength and power the closest Brahms came in his
later years to that composer’s music, and Giulini lays clearer
than most this kinship of creative spirits. The emotional
directness of the first two movements is still evident,
vibrantly so here, leading us to expect at least an equally
red-blooded summation at least as overwhelming as the climax of
the first movement.
That cataclysm does not
come. Instead, the symphony takes on a more formal and profound
quality – the seeds of the increasingly reserved, reflective and
philosophical but still elegant Giulini of his later years.
Woods commented that he found it “hardly as annihilating as
Furtwangler’s.” I would go so far as to call it anticlimactic.
After the overall building of tension in the first three
movements, Giulini pulls back from the dramatic and emotional
cliff’s edge instead of lunging toward it as we have been led to
expect. Woods mentioned that Giulini made up for the lack of
tension by nobility of line, and that the slow middle section
was especially memorable for this quality. Again, I disagree.
The approach is too noble, the playing too precise and careful,
to really be satisfying. Nevertheless, it is a valiant effort,
and there will be plenty who may hear this performance and
disagree with this opinion.
The remastering for this disc has given the performance a fuller
bodied sound, greater clarity and more air between the notes, as
though you are hearing the music in a concert hall setting
instead of a recording studio. There is still a thinness in the
upper strings that becomes wirier at climaxes – ironic since
Giulini was known for the dark, rich string sound he coaxed from
orchestras and started his musical career as a violist – but
perhaps that could not have been helped. Otherwise, the sonics
overall are extremely good.
The bonus disc, “Giulini
– A Profile,” includes spoken contributions from the maestro as
well several in the world of music who worked with him. Taken
from “Giulini at 90,” a tribute made by the WFMT Radio Network,
this documentary leans heavily on Giulini’s years in the world
of opera that eventually catapulted him into international
stardom. It is nevertheless an extremely informative commentary
on the conductor’s life and career, accompanied by several
musical clips that show Giulini at his finest.
This disc is a fine
introduction to Giulini’s conducting, especially for those who
do not want to invest in the Chicago box set. It does beg the
question, however, of when EMI is finally going to remaster and
re-release Giulini’s performances of the four symphonies and
Academic Festival Overture. A box set of these, the shorter
works on this disc and perhaps the two piano concertos with
Claudio Arrau would not only be a fitting tribute, but is also a
long overdue one. Meanwhile, this release will do nicely, even
as it whets our appetites for more.
