Carlo Maria Giulini, Chicago Symphony Orchestra - Mahler: Symphony No. 1 (2016) [SACD]

Of course, Carlo Maria Giulini’s Mahler 9th from Chicago has been justly lauded over the years and it has long been among my very favorites, but his earlier Mahler 1st, recorded with the same orchestra for EMI in 1971, is to my ears even better. I can think of no conductor who can take the night music in the middle of the first music and on the one hand find such gentleness, and yet simultaneously be able to create such an atmosphere of foreboding, only to explode out into the joyous release accomplished incomparably by the magnificent Chicago brass! Pure magic!