GREAT RECORDINGS phase 13

BRAHMS: SYMPHONY No.4
VARIATIONS ON A THEME BY HAYDN & TRAGIC OVERTURE
Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Philharmonia Orchestra
Carlo Maria Giulini

5 62882 2
(Angel: 5 62883 2)

Back >>

'In the Symphony, there is marvellous playing throughout and an affectionate performance of the opening movement is followed by an unreservedly splendid reading of the Andante. In the 'Haydn' Variations, Giulini's handling of subtle effects is masterly.' (Gramophone)

The Italian maestro Carlo Maria Giulini was born in southern Italy in 1914 and spent his childhood in South Tyrol, where he absorbed the very German culture of his surroundings. He studied in Rome and played the viola in the Augusteo Orchestra, with which he made his conducting debut in 1944 in a programme that included the Brahms symphony featured on this CD.

Giulini's repertoire reflected both his Catholicism (sacred works loomed large) and his refined taste in operatic and orchestral music. However, the great Austro-Germanic symphonic tradition (of Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner) underpinned both his concert programming and his recording schedules for the 50 years of his enormously successful professional career.

This reissue concentrates on Giulini's Brahms and, in particular, a fine recording of the Fourth Symphony made in Chicago in 1969. Walter Legge first brought Giulini to London (in 1955) to record with the Philharmonia, the orchestra with which Giulini made his London concert debut in 1958 in an all-Brahms programme. The 'Haydn' Variations and Tragic Overture on this CD were recorded with the Philharmonia in the early 1960s along with the complete Brahms symphonies.