On the online shop is now available a new SWF product, D13, featuring the concert given by the Lucerne Festival Orchestra on 27 August 1947:
– Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 1 with Adrian Aeschbacher,
– Beethoven: Leonore III Overture,
– Brahms: Symphony No. 1

The Concerto is played by a young man and… an older man. But who is the younger of the two? As for the Symphony, performed by a white-hot orchestra, there’s nothing mellow about it, like the various Viennese versions. It is rather similar to the one performed three years later in Amsterdam.

The product is available as a download (HD and CD format) from the shop, priced at €14, and as a streaming album for those who have subscribed to the service. Please note that the digital package comes with a detailed booklet featuring a host of rare photos.

This edition differs from its predecessors (we published it as an LP many years ago…) by using the original source digitised in high definition.

Christophe Hénault — to whom we owe most of our reissues over the last few years — has kept the processing to a minimum so as not to ‘dumb down’ the musical message. Read the article “Some technical background”.

For those interested in restoration techniques, here is an overview of the work carried out by Christophe Hénault, the sound engineer who has been preparing our products for some years now. Read further.

On Saturday 23 December, the SWF will be releasing an exceptional concert (for both download and streaming), the one given by Furtwängler conducting the Lucerne Festival Orchestra on 27 August 1947.

Broadcast by a Swiss radio station, fortunately relayed by Swedish Radio which had the bright idea of recording it, it features in this order:
– Beethoven : Piano Concerto No. 1 with Adrian Aeschbacher
– Beethoven : Leonore III Overture
– Brahms : Symphony No. 1

For this edition, we took the material directly from the source, the Swedish Radio, which supplied the digitised files in high definition. The restoration and mastering was handled by Christophe Hénault. The result is superior to anything previously available.

There is no need to underline the importance of this publication. If the Brahms Symphony matches the greatness of the Amsterdam (1950) and Hamburg (1951) recordings, we have here the only testimony of Furtwängler conducting the Beethoven Concerto, where his performance is astonishingly youthful, unexpectedly fresh and attentive to Adrian Aeschbacher.

As always, the release will be available in both high definition and CD quality, and as well as the booklet (in French and English), you’ll also be able to download pdf files for printing a cover and the inlay card for a jewel box. It will be available at a price of €14.

Watch the presentation on our Youtube channel.

It’s also our first new product to be available directly via streaming.

Here’s a preview of the Concerto (mp3).

The streaming from the SWF website starts today.

Remember that subscription to this service — €10.00 per year — is only available to SWF members.

As it is indivisible from the membership, it was impossible to handle it separately. So, if you are already a member of the SWF, the streaming subscription will restart a membership on this date, but — don’t worry — it will be deducted on a pro rata basis.
So if your membership is valid until 15 April, and you subscribe to streaming on 10 December, a new annual membership will start on 10 December, but the pro rata amount from 10 December to 15 April will be deducted from the membership fee.

To subscribe: please go to
– My profile (top right),
– then click on My subscription,
– and finally click on Update or change your subscription: and then choose your option. The site will do the rest to calculate your new membership fee.

Or more directly go to the page: My membership

The catalogue now available is only part of the SWF catalogue, but
– it also contains items from our German sister company,
– iIt will be expanded over the coming weeks, and this site will announce new additions as they are made.

By consulting the playlist, you will discover that you can access the audio files either via Composer/work, or by Album, when an entire old album has been made available.

Please note that the sources we have in high definition are available in this format and in CD format: if the file exists in high definition, you will see the small HD icon nest to SD.

This new feature, a real step forward in the history of the SWF, is combined with a redesign of our website, and in particular its home page. The current and future content is aimed at providing ever more information, but the website is now adapted to suit new viewing preferences, particularly those of smartphone users.