Mozart: Symphony No.36 "Linz" / Brahms: Symphony No.1

Gramophone Classical Music Guide 2010 “Giulini appears to have taken Mozart's festive and eloquent Linz Symphony into his repertory when he was in his mid-50s, though as we know from his unsurpassed recording of Don Giovanni, his interpretations which arrived, as it were, out of the blue, always came fully formed.This live 1982 Proms performance (Giulini made no commercial recording of the Linz) is a joy to hear: vital, companionable, generous-spirited. The celebrated recording which Bruno Walter made, with attendant rehearsal sequences, with the Columbia SO in 1955 for CBS was very similar. Indeed, that may well have been Giulini's model (he had greatly admired Walter's conducting when he played under him in Rome's Augusteo Orchestra in the 1930s). 'Authenticists' will no doubt sniff at the full-bodied sonorities here (did Mozart dream of anything less?) and the non-antiphonal disposition of the violins, though they would be ill-advised to do so. Rarely has the symphony's important second violin part been as carefully, or as eloquently, attended to as here. And, of course, Giulini knows the symphony's anatomical make-up as well as anyone. At the technical level, this is a wonderfully articulated performance, with clean yet pliant rhythms (the work's trade-mark trills tautly but expressively attended to), and well terraced wind and string sonorities. The only thing to be regretted is an exposition repeat in the finale. The Brahms could not be more different. Recorded at the 1962 Edinburgh Festival in dry, immediate, somewhat acidulous mono sound, it bears about as much relation to the Mozart as a Fragonard landscape does to a grainy black-andwhite photograph of Berlin after the blitz. This is a quite literally terrific performance. The physiognomy is recognisably that of Giulini's three studio recordings: powerful, imposing, superbly sculpted. What those recordings don't have is the sense of a performance taking shape in the shadow of an apocalypse. So great is the tension, Giulini even moves the finale's big tune on at a half-decent pace, something he was generally loath to do.” Gramophone Magazine May 2006 “This live 1982 Proms performance (Giulini made no commercial recording of the Linz) is a joy to hear: vital, companionable, generous-spirited. The Brahms… is a quite literally terrific performance. The physiognomy is recognisably that of Giulini's three studio recordings: powerful, imposing, superbly sculpted. What those recordings... don't have is the sense of a performance taking shape in the shadow of an apocalypse. So great is the tension, Giulini even moves the finale's big C major tune on at a half-decent pace, something he was generally loath to do.”