On 9 January, the first volume of the complete Polydor recordings made by Furtwängler will be released.

It contains his very first recording of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Along with the Freischütz Overture, these are Furtwängler’s first ‘waxes’. But few people know that they were recorded under rather bizarre conditions, using technology imported from the United States that would prove short-lived… 

These electrical recordings were made using the ‘light-ray’ process, introduced in the spring of 1925 and abandoned in early 1927.

The attached study (pdf in English) will allow everyone to see what our beloved conductor has been through… Unbelievable but true.

Coming soon – in high definition

In 1926, Furtwängler made his first recording. In 2026, spread out over the year, the SWF will release a downloadable collection: the complete Polydor recordings (1926–1937). We have chosen this title for convenience, as Polydor was only an export label for Deutsche Grammophon recordings (distributed under the label “Die Stimme seines Herrn” in Germany, “Decca” in the United Kingdom, “Brunswick” in the United States, etc.).

A complete remastering underlies this one-of-a-kind edition. The files will be available in 2 formats: HD and CD-quality (44-16).

Each volume features a drawing of Furtwängler on the cover.

To find out more about the content and schedule, click on the document below (pdf – 2 pages).

Stay tuned on 26 December for a study about Furtwängler’s first recording, and on 9 January for the very first episode (SWF D22) of this series!

Mark Kluge, who wrote the introductory text in the booklet accompanying Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony, took an interest in the three Telefunken recordings — SWF D21 — that we have just released.

Here is the study he wrote about them.

The “Nicolai Concert” (named after the orchestra’s founder) is the highlight of the Vienna Philharmonic’s symphonic season. And traditionally, Furtwängler would perform Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony there. The concert on 12 February 1950 (preceded the day before by a public dress rehearsal and a concert for the Young Musicians) took a completely different turn. The programme he chose could have been that of any other concert: Beethoven’s Eroica following Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, preceded by the Fantasia and Fugue in G minor (BWV 542), performed on the Musikverein organ by Franz Schütz. The reason for this is clear: the Bach Year was just beginning.

Why did it come to this? A very serious incident occurred between Furtwängler and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, the influential association that also owned the Singverein, Vienna’s finest choral society, which supported major musical events, notably Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. It would take too long to explain here the reasons for the quarrel between the conductor and the Gesellschaft, in which Karajan’s name is involved.

Nevertheless, from that day onwards, concerts featuring a choir will be performed by the conductor with the services of the rival ensemble, the Singakademie. This choir can be heard in several of Beethoven’s Ninth (1951, 1952, 1953), in Brahms’ Deutsches Requiem (1951) and in Saint Matthew Passion (1952 and 1954).

Here is a PDF facsimilé of the programme, one of the 75 programmes now available.