Two evening concerts in the middle of January 1977 featured the symphonic legacy of Franz Schubert: the two movement Unfinished in B minor, and the later four-movement Great C major. The rage of critical reactions to Giulini’s interpretations can be seen clearly from the headlines in three Berlin daily papers: “Schubert – a Traditional View” (Tagesspiegel ), “Schubert – Poetry without Harshness” (Spandauer Volksblatt) and “On the Brink of Silence” (Die Welt).

In the Tagesspiegel Wolfgang Burde noted Giulini’s achievements, through “plaintive, tender, entreating gestures”, in these two very different works. “The orchestral players reciprocated all of this invested passion and devotion of musical expression with an instrumental performance that both represented the overarching lines and showed a constant corresponding investment of themselves.” Giulini’s music is not so much “communicated”, not so much progressively experienced as from thought to thought, but rather an expressive outpouring of the inner self.

Hans-Jörg von Jena described Giulini in the Spandauer Volksblatt as “the antithesis of the stereotypical Italian conductor. He is worlds apart from the empty outbursts of temperament or vacuous operatic pathos. He has an integrity that will not be satisfied with the mere craft of conducting; it is focused on the very heart and spiritual core of the music.” The great symphonic works of Schubert were offered here in deeply felt, sometimes overwhelming interpretations marked by  self determining independence from norm and tradition. “The B minor Symphony was presented in surprisingly unified emotional tone. The defiance and rebelliousness of the first movement gave way to a more gentle resignation; no painful consolation emerging from the Ländler theme of the cellos, only bitter grief. In both movements the message was one of plaintive beauty, hopelessness embodied in melody, lyrical without harshness and with not a trace of sentimentality.” In the C major Symphony, played with all the repeats, the conductor’s pleading gestures conjured up a flowing stream of music. The architecture of the piece seemed in this case to interest him less.

For Klaus Geitel (Die Welt) this was a concert of contrasts, “revealed in the oeuvre of one and the same master.” Giulini, he wrote, authentically liberated the B minor Symphony from the spurious layers of tradition that have encumbered it with sentimentality. This was like an endgame to the symphonic form, a fragile image of extreme sensibility, hovering on the brink of silence. The C major Symphony followed “with masterful force, in powerfully projected and broadly conceived forms.”

Excerpt from the note: Helge Grünewald, 2011 (translation: Jonathan Katz)