The record industry is, no doubt, gearing itself up for Schubert year (1997 is the bicentenary of Schubert’s birth). But octogenarian maestros are probably best advised to revisit favourite symphonies when it suits them. As it happens, Giulini’s last recording of these two symphonies, on DG with the Chicago Symphony, came out in another Schubert year (the 150th anniversary of his death). At the time (11/78), RO found Giulini’s Eighth “noble and beautiful”, and the Fourth, “glorious”. These comments can equally well apply to the new Eighth, but Giulini’s way with the Fourth now needs a warning.
On the face of it, the Fourth’s first movement Vivace marking and the leisurely chugging motion on offer here don’t have much to do with each other. One could argue that by beating in four (the Allegro is in common time), Giulini is actually giving us a vivace. Yet one could just as easily retort that such an approach may occasion a lively conductor’s baton, but not much else. Still, if the stormy vehemence and athletics (incisive accentuation and drive) of many a recent recording are not your cup of tea, you may respond to Giulini’s patient, mannerly and beautifully turned approach. I did to the Fourth’s finale: hardly ‘in-a-spin’ in the modern manner, but decently propelled and opening out finally into a moment of genuine splendour. Such things as the decresc/crescs in the brass parts, and a suddenly reflective moment in the development are no more radical (and no less relevant) than some of Harnoncourt’s ‘adjustments’. And there is gentle humour here too: I don’t recall ever hearing the horns with the ‘pah’ of the ‘oompah’ in the second subject’s recapitulation (all horn parts are clear in this typically open, naturally informative Herkukssaal recording).
As ever, Giulini knows how to make Schubert sing, and if, in the Unfinished, he lingers in the first movement second subject’s only brief moment of relative radiance (bars 94-103, 3'07'' - 3'31'', and in the repeat), he does so without inflating it. My reservation concerning this Unfinished has nothing to do with the music-making, but with the experience of a recent Prom performance of Ives’s Fourth Symphony still fresh in the mind. In particular the stunned and protracted silence of the huge audience as the final music of the spheres faded into infinity. What a pity it was that the Munich audience only allowed one second before bursting in on Schubert’s ‘music of the spheres’.'