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.

The SWF D21 downloadable product (see details in the 14 October news item) is now available in the shop.

In a single product — at the exceptional price of €6 — we have brought together the three recordings made by Furtwängler for Telefunken in 1941 and 1942. We would like to point out that we were able to extract the high-definition files from copies of very high quality. It was, of course, the Adagio from Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony that required the most work in order to accurately reflect the dynamic levels intended by the composer.

The cover reproduces an engraved woodcut by Peter Trumm. Finally, let us remember that we stuck to the BPO ‘s tuning pitch at the time, which was A at 440 Hz.

There are only two possibilities for the date of the recording of Bruckner’s Adagio from Symphony No. 7 in Berlin in April 1942:

– Henning Smidth, in his well-known discography (‘Olsen’ 1970), indicates Tuesday, 7 April.
– René Trémine gave the date of Wednesday, 1 April.
– Wilhelm Furtwängler site by shin-p indicates 7 April, but mentions: « Teldec states that this recording was made on 1 April. »

So what? If we stick to the data we can extract from the Berliners’ activity at that time:

– 1 April was a day off between rehearsals (31 March) and the concert (2 April) of the St John Passion conducted by Georg Schumann, with the BPO and its Sing-Akademie choir.

– 7 April. An unpublished document does mention something, but it is difficult to decipher, and in any case it is certainly not ‘Aufnahme’ [recording], as appears to be the case for other confirmed dates. Actually, we can read ‘Doppelprobe – Krauss f. Reise’ [two rehearsals – Krauss for the tour]: Clemens Krauss spent several days rehearsing — from 7 to 10 April — preparing for the BPO concert in Vienna on the 11th, and above all for the long tour from 22 April to 23 May in Spain, Portugal and France.

Conclusion: we can go with April 1st. That is the date we will indicate on the upcoming SWF D21. After conducting similar research, it appears that the Overture to Alceste was engraved on 28 October 1942 and not on the 29th, as is usually stated.

On 28 November: SWF D21

We have compiled the three recordings made by Furtwängler for Telefunken, conducting the Berlin Philharmonic.

– Beethoven: Cavatina, from Quartet Op. 130 [15 October 1940]
– Bruckner: the Adagio from Symphony No. 7 [1 April 1942, not 7 April]
– Gluck: Overture to Alceste [28 October 1942, not 29 October]

The high-definition files were created from copies of 78 rpm records in exceptional condition belonging to Jean Testas, one of the founders of the SWF and owner of one of the most fabulous collections of old wax recordings.

Without overlooking the string orchestra version of the slow movement of Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 130, a monument of interiority, or the grandiloquent reading of Gluck’s Overture, this edition finds its highlight in the sumptuous interpretation of the Adagio from Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony.

High definition means you can hear the full range of the melodic curves, without losing any of the dynamic layers that are so important in Bruckner’s music.

The new product will be sold at the exceptional price of €6.

Here is an excerpt (mp3) from the Adagio.

Where is the safest place to study a score in depth? Especially if that score is Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony. The photo below gives you the answer: comfortably seated on a public bench on a Berlin street.

Furtwängler was about to conduct the piece on 13, 14 and 15 March 1949. He recorded it twice, at the Gemeindehaus — the BPO’s rehearsal hall — on the 14th, then on the 15th, during a concert at the Titania Palast.

Here is the facsimilé of the programme.

The new CDs featured by our friends at the Wilhelm Furtwängler Centre of Japan include the Finale of Brahms’s First Symphony, with the date of 15 December 1940, rather than January 1945, which has always been indicated on various releases since the 1980s. By the way, the SWF, like the Berliner for their complete recording series, had gone along with what was advertised at the time: this Finale was supposed to be from the 23 January 1945 concert at the Admiralspalast.

Was this date so certain? In fact, as there was no documentation, it was deduced logically:
– it is a tape;
– the tape was introduced at the very beginning of 1942;
– the only concert featuring Brahms’s First Symphony from that point onwards is the one in January 1945. ;
In conclusion, the tape is from that concert!

Except that… German radio had begun testing the tape recorder much earlier. In particular, it recorded this Finale during the concert on 15 December 1940. AEG, the promoter of the tape recorder, used it for a demonstration at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo cinema, which had the best sound equipment in Berlin, on 10 June 1941. This is evidenced by the beginning of an article published by Radio-Amateur magazine shortly afterwards.

Our Japanese friends are therefore simply confirming what is now accepted fact, and what was highlighted by Philippe Jacquard six years ago: this is the very first tape recording of Furtwängler, and the oldest recording of his interpretation of Brahms’s First Symphony!

Instead of an article, just a simple photo.

But so evocative.

Furtwängler and the Berliners, Essen, Saalbau, 22 April 1933

Once and for all: Furtwängler showed an interest in the music of his time, particularly that of young composers. He recognised the talent of Austrian composer Theodor Berger (born in 1905) at a very early stage.

This is how he came to premiere and perform one of his most frequently played pieces, Rondino giocoso. Here is the PDF file of the Berlin Philharmonic concert programme for 15–17 December 1940, which features the Berlin premiere of this work.

The Wilhelm Furtwängler Centre of Japan is releasing a 3-CD set based on Brahms’s Symphony No. 1.

– from the Salzburg and Lucerne concerts of 1947,
– the Finale, recorded in 1940 (and not in January 1945 as is often stated)
– To this must be added an excerpt from the Violin Concerto (Salzburg, 1947) and, by Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 1 (Aeshbacher) and Leonore III (Lucerne, 1947).

The boxed set is priced at €37, excluding shipping costs (included for shipping within Japan). For high-definition files, an additional €11.40 will be charged.

What makes Furtwängler’s vision and understanding of Beethoven’s symphonies so unified? The conductor presented brilliant but also problematic interpretations, in a vision that continues to challenge us today.

After an earlier podcast about Brahms (available here), Guilhem Chameyrat addresses some of these questions… in a completely subjective manner, of course, based on selected excerpts.

Watch it here.

We have recently expanded our catalogue of streaming files, notably by adding the 33 rpm records of our friends at the Wilhelm Furtwängler Gesellschaft in Berlin.

– Beethoven : Concerto for violin (Menuhin/BPO/30 Sept. 1947)
– Mendelssohn : Ein Sommernachtstraum Overture (BPO/30 Sept. 1947
– Beethoven : Coriolan Overture (BPO/1943)
– Schubert : Symphony No. 9 (BPO 1942)
– Ravel : Daphnis et Chloé (2nd suite/BPO/1944)