Spend a truly uplifting hour with Carlo Maria Giulini as he rehearses the Stuttgart Radio Symphony in Anton Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, and another hour as he performs the work, on an ArtHaus DVD. The year is 1997; Giulini is 83, 13 years departed from Los Angeles. There are deeper lines in that handsome, Italian face and a little more around the middle, but the eloquence, the graceful movement in the arms, the pleading in the eyes: They are still there. “Please,” he tells the winds, “I can’t say it too often. We must sing.” And another time, again to the winds: “You give too much ‘puh.’ I like more ‘aaah.’ ” At the very end of the first movement, there’s a fascinating exchange, as Giulini adjusts Bruckner’s marking between trumpet and trombone, the smallest dynamic detail. It’s what a conductor defines as a minor detail, and you and I hear as a great performance.
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