Carlo Maria Giulini, a few weeks shy of his 83rd birthday, conducts the La Scala Philharmonic in the finale of the Symphony No. 4 by Brahms.
I hadn’t seen this before (and only 224 others have viewed it on YouTube). There’s not a lot of Giulini this late in his career out there. The performance is certainly very slow … but for me at least, it lacks nothing in intensity for its pace, but rather gains from it. The lyricism is aching.
Giulini was always a great Brahms conductor. You might not want to hear this piece performed this way every time, but whether you like it or not, you have to admit that here he has made this piece his own, and puts his own view of it across. If I’m to hear Brahms’ Fourth again, this is what I want — a performance with something personal to say, and played as if lives are at stake.
UPDATE: YouTube took the video down that I had first displayed here. So, here’s another, also Giulini late in his career conducting the same piece, but this time with the Berlin Staatskapelle.
Classical Life 
I always like Giulini’s performances when he was here in LA. Is he the best conductor the LA Phil has ever had? I would say yes.
But I didn’t hear them all. Anybody else have an opinion?
Sadly, I never got to see the great Maestro conduct in person since I didn’t start attending LA Phil concerts regularly until Previn’s tenure. I always had hoped that he might come back, even perhaps for some anniversary or special occasion concert, but it never happened.
As for whether or not he was “the best conductor the LA Phil has ever had:” I tread upon this topic lightly since “best” is such a loaded word. I assume you’re limiting your assessment to Music Directors since the discussion could get a bit unwieldy if you include guests on the podium.
First, I think that depends on your point of view. By all accounts, Giulini was great in the repertory in which he specialized, but that rep wasn’t necessarily that broad. If you wanted to hear the great 19th Century Romantic composers, then he was almost certainly your man; if you prefer Stravinsky or Shostakovich, perhaps he wasn’t.
Second, it depends on how much you value attention being paid more to technical precision vs. depth of musical interpretation.
Lastly, it’d be tough to compare across eras: was Giulini better than Eduard van Beinum or Otto Klemperer? I don’t think I want to touch that question.
It’s to bad bassist Richard Kelley doesn’t comment here — he was hired by Wallenstein in the 1950’s and has played under all the Music Directors since then up to and including Dudamel, not to mention countless guest conductors; I’m sure he’d have some interesting stories and comparisons between all of them. . . . Hopefully someone who has played under Maestro Giulini and some of the others can share their own thoughts.
Yes! Performers who play in ernest and mean to explore emotions through the composer are very interesting! And certainly 83 years is full of content for that.
I remember Giulini’s performance with the Elvis impersonator like it was yesterday. There are no other music directors who could have done it that well.
Now that is some YouTube footage I’d like to see.
?????? Care to share? My memory must be really failing me big time…
I think you were sick that day.
In those days i was very young and healthy, not to mention unspoiled and enthusiastic, so i was definitely never sick enough to miss any performances with the Maestro.
I think you were out of town …
Actually, i was never out of town when Giulini was in town – that was absolutely out of the question for me in those days. But anyway, forget about me – the important thing is, you still haven’t told the story!
As usual. no matter how slow the performance, this typifies most of Giulini’s performances: rich in detail, sound and musicality. His early CSO recording has more fire to it but this is also a wonderful performance.
As to the question above about the “best music director”, I’ve been through four of them starting with Giulini. Previn was fairly uninspired and uninspiring. However, Giulini, Salonen and Dudamel all were (or are) truly outstanding in their own way. I would not trade one for the other and feel richer from having seen all of them.
La Scala’s acoustics aren’t the greatest, so that offsets the full value and impact of whatever is being performed in that theater, by whomever is conducting.
As one example, I’ve watched Youtube videos of Gustavo Dudamel conducting the La Scala Philharmonic play Mahler No 1 at La Scala, and his conducting the same Mahler piece performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. I found the latter to be more pleasurable and moving because the quality of sound was noticeably better.
Any one care to comment about Rattle? His repertoire was pretty wide but his nasty comment about the orchestra as reported by a no-longer with us music critic still puzzles me. Great Janacek Glagolitic Mass and delightful Haydn Sturm and Drang symphonies among others.
Myung Whun Chung provided a few great moments in the 20 minutes (maybe half an hour) he spent here before leaving for Europe. Nielsen seemed to be a great success.