Coming November 8: SWF D16

Lohengrin is not one of Wagner’s operas most conducted by Furtwängler, unlike Tristan or Die Meistersinger. But one legendary production remains: that of Bayreuth 1936. The year of the Olympic Games was also the year of the conductor’s triumphant return to the sacred hill, as he conducted a complete Ring and five performances of Parsifal.

All festival attendees and commentators were unanimous in their praise for the overall production of Lohengrin, and the high standard of the cast.

The July 19 performance was broadcast by many radio stations around the world. The Swedish radio recorded excerpts from Act 3, to our great delight, and the discs have survived. Reissued several times, we now present them restored from the sources provided in high definition by the Swedish radio.

Only thirty minutes or so! But let’s not deny ourselves the pleasure of hearing the fabulous Franz Völker, the greatest Lohengrin before Sandor Konya (in the late ’50s), the charming Maria Müller (Elsa), as well as Margarete Klose’s exceptional and terrifying Ortrud.

What about sound? One can hardly expect miracles. The most important restoration work involved processing the levels, as the sound engineer — when transmitting in Germany? when engraving in Sweden? — had fairly “played with the potentiometer”! At least Christophe Hénault’s work is faithful to the source and makes the most of the document!

Please consider this excerpt from the Prélude of Act 3 (here in mp3).

The full download — with a digital booklet featuring period photos — will be available on November 8, priced at €6. It will be available online for streaming in mid-December.

Furtwängler and two of his assistants for Lohengrin :
conductor Erich Riede (left) and choirmaster Friedrich Jung.

To associate Furtwängler with Shostakovich is not commonplace. But that would be forgetting that once — just once — Furtwängler served the composer, who was described at the time as a “Soviet”.

On January 29, 1950 (from the 28th at the public dress rehearsal), Furtwängler and the Vienna Philharmonic performed the 9th Symphony, premiered five years earlier by Mravinsky in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). This was a major premiere for the Austrian capital’s philharmonic concerts. The performance was broadcast, but no trace of the recording seems to have survived.

Here is the facsimile of the programme, where Max Graf provides a comprehensive commentary.

The French are often accused of having little interest in classical music. However…

The weekly magazine Ici… Radio-Cité, ran a contest in May 1938: Radio-Cité listeners were asked to rank the three best recent broadcasts, and the person (out of 813 responses!) who gave “the trifecta” was given a prize.

The broadcast that comes out on top is that of the concert by the Berlin Philharmonic and Furtwängler at the Paris Opéra on May 8, 1938.

For the record, the concert featured the overture to Cherubini’s Anacreon, Schumann’s 4th Symphony, the overture to Schubert’s Rosamunde, the 2nd suite from Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, and Strauss’ Don Juan.

Radio-Cité, a station closely linked to the Publicis group, broadcast on medium wave — 280.9 m — with a 2kW transmitter located in Argenteuil. It went off the air on June 13, 1940.

(Source: Gallica)

The beautiful violin solo in the Scherzo of Schumann’s Fourth Symphony, just released, is performed by Siegfried Borries, at that time First Konzertmeister of the Berlin Philharmonic.

Born in Münster in 1912, he studied violin with, among others, Bram Eldering at the Cologne School of Music. In 1932, he won both the International Grand Prix awarded in Vienna and the Mendelssohn Prize granted by the Berlin Academy of Music.

At the age of just 21, Furtwängler appointed him Konzertmeister of the Berlin Philharmonic, where he succeeded Henry Holst. He left the orchestra at the end of 1941, and became guest Konzertmeister at the Berlin Staatskapelle conducted by Karajan. He rejoined the Philharmonic in July 1945. Distancing himself from the Orchestra in 1957, he left for good in 1961.

From 1946 onwards, he gave masterclasses at the Berlin International Music Institute, and taught violin at the Berlin Musikhochschule from 1948. He died in 1980.

Siegfried Borries, Munich, May 1953

As previously announced, a new product is now available on the shop:

SWF D15

In addition to the 1953 Deutsche Grammophon recording with the Berliner, now re-mastered in high definition, you will find a facsimile of the original score used by Furtwängler, with its numerous annotations and modifications (lightening of the orchestration). The booklet (25 pages!) includes an analysis by conductor Jan Moritz Onken, translated by Marc Trautmann, so you can follow the score while listening to Furtwängler’s performance.

We therefore invite you to immerse yourself totally in Furtwängler’s grandiose vision and artistic work. We remind you that the license obtained from Universal (DGG registration) has been granted for 3 years, and excludes streaming. So don’t delay, and enjoy the download.

… But not forgetting to watch the podcast.

The development of this product proved costly: license granted by Universal, cost of scanning the score (Zentrabibliothek, Zürich), cost of translating (French + English) the 60 pages of Onken’s work…

So we hope you will understand why the price is €15.00, a higher price than usual, but inferior to the real cost price of the product.

The SWF has made an exceptional effort to make this extraordinary project a reality, and now it’s time for you to enjoy it…

We have just been informed of the death of pianist François Kerdoncuff, born in 1954, after a long illness that kept him away from the stage for several years.

A great admirer of Furtwängler’s art, he was also deeply involved in the performance of the musician’s works, playing and recording the two violin sonatas and the Klavierquintett.

He took part in several concerts organized by the SWF, notably with mezzo-soprano Brigitte Balleys in 1999, and cellist Henri Demarquette in 2004. He had performed Brahms’s 4 Ballades op. 10 as part of the tribute to our former president Philippe Leduc, just ten years ago.

The SWF expresses its sympathy to his family, and especially to his children.

François Kerdoncuff rehearsing the Klavierquintett on Furtwängler’s Bechstein. Clarens, May 1993.

Nearly fifteen years ago, a document from the SWF, Furtwängler in Kassel featured the recollections of Hans Joachim Schaeffer, who worked at the city’s Staatstheater, and notably highlighted the importance of the invitation of Furtwängler to conduct the opera orchestra.

On the programme, preceding Beethoven’s 1st Symphony: Furtwängler’s own 2nd Symphony. Paul Schmitz, the opera’s musical director, trained the musicians, with the help of the recording that had just been released by DGG. Furtwängler was very pleased with this preliminary work.

To supplement this concert, here is a pdf version of the facsimile of the programme. This is the only time Furtwängler conducted this orchestra, and we must give him all the recognition he deserves.

Furtwängler and Paul Schmitz, Kassel 1953

We mentioned the concert agent Harold Holt when we published the facsimile of the programme for the concert of 7 December 1935 in Edinburgh.

In charge of the Berlin Philharmonic’s tours with Furtwängler, he produced the flyer below presenting the planned 1934-35 concert series in Birmingham (“International Subscription Celebrity Concerts”). Among a superb array of artists including Menuhin, Piatigorsky, Horowitz, Conchita Supervia and others, the BPO and its conductor are billed to give a concert on 1 February 1935.

But this was to prove impossible when the time came.  Furtwängler had resigned from all his posts in December 1934.  His return to favour in the spring of 1935 allowed the tour to take place, but only during the following winter.

We are going to release — on 20 September — an outstanding item that will be a major first for the SWF!

Furtwängler rarely annotated his scores. Except for one: Schumann’s 4th Symphony, whose orchestration he reworked (and lightened), as many other conductors did. From 20 September you will be able to download an extensive set of material related to this symphony that extends beyond the recording itself.

The pack — SWF D15 — includes:

— The 1953 DG recording, with the approval of Universal Music, but in high definition audio like you’ve never heard before. For many of you, this will be a rediscovery! The dynamics are superlative, and the finesse of the timbres owes much to the high-definition quality. Let us underline the fact that only the SWF is proposing this monument restored to its original splendour!

– the facsimile of the score (Breitkopf & Härtel), with Furtwängler’s annotations, scanned for the SWF in high resolution by the Zentralbibliothek, Zürich, which is its depositary.

– a study about this revision, published in 2016, and signed by the young conductor Jan Moritz Onken, who agreed to let us translate his work into French and English. This study will allow you to trace and understand Furtwängler’s approach to this work.

We would like to thank Andreas Furtwängler, Universal Music, the Zentralbibliothek in Zürich, Jan Moritz Onken and Mark Trautmann, our regular translator, who all responded favourably to our requests, thus contributing invaluably to a greater understanding of Furtwängler.

The bundle will be priced at €15.00, the higher-than-usual price being explained by the cost of the various licences.

Under the terms of our agreement with Universal, this addition to our catalogue will extend over 3 years, and audio files are excluded from streaming. So get the most out of this unique download straight away!

To take inflation into account, the price of digital products will increase – very slightly! — starting September 1.

– Items previously priced at €9 are now €10
– Those at €13 or €14: now €15
– Those at €5: now €6

As usual, we would like to inform you of the latest publication from the Wilhelm Furtwängler Centre of Japan.

This is a boxed set of 4 CDs — ref.: WFHC 059/62 — featuring all the concerts by the Philharmonic in Berlin on 10 February 1952 and 18 May 1953.

These discs are only available to members of the WFCJ. Here is the link to the website: http://furt-centre.com/index.htm.

For the SWF Board, the summer will be a productive one. Let’s take a look at our holiday homework:

– Preparations for the Annual General Meeting in November ;

– Upcoming digital product releases for September, November and December, featuring Schumann, Wagner, Haydn, Sibelius, Strauss… In particular, the product to be released on 20 September will be a real event. We’ll tell you more at the end of August…

– The publication of some fifteen Furtwängler concert programmes, which have just been acquired by the SWF and which will gradually be added to the “Get the programme” page;

– Preparation of our future audiovisual podcasts;

– An update of our streaming platform.

In any case, there’s one less thing to worry about: storing our old physical products. As we’ve already mentioned, this belongs to the past, as our box is now empty and closed…