News

If you want to share a piece of news to all WFS members and web surfers (publication of a compact disk, a book, event, concert, etc.) do not hesitate to let us know by email at site@furtwangler.fr
23 December 2023

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”.

18 December 2023

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.

14 December 2023

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).

7 December 2023

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.

29 November 2023

Recently, we highlighted the importance of consulting newspapers to complete or correct concert listings. This work is paying off, as a rigorous examination has led us to a major discovery.

We know Furtwängler’s activities in Lübeck through symphonic concerts, “popular” concerts and even chamber music sessions. In addition to this, “official” documents and known lists show the conductor’s activity as a guest of the municipal opera house. Three events were recorded: Die Meistersinger in 1913, Fidelio and The Merry Wives of Windsor in 1915.

How could a fourth opera be overlooked? No one can explain it, but one fact is certain: Furtwängler conducted Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio on 27 March 1914. Not only was he able to rely on the cast of the Stadttheater, but also on two distinguished guests: the tenor Karl Erb and the comic actor Ludwig Flaschner.

The only review of the evening is nothing but praise.

22 November 2023

This morning we launched a SWF YouTube channel.

It was created by Guilhem Chameyrat, a member of the Board.

The first thing you’ll find on this YouTube channel is, of course, videos. We’ll be providing different formats, for example themed videos on Furtwängler’s art or particular recordings, interviews, or even podcasts.

The channel will also feature playlists. You’ll be able to listen to the best Furtwängler performances, sorted by specific criteria, starting with the magnificent recordings remastered by Studio Art et Son and officially released by Warner on YouTube for streaming.

Here are the links.

– the channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SocieteWilhelmFurtwangler

– introductory video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO8qJNf8eT0&ab_channel=Soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9WilhelmFurtwangler

15 November 2023

We had previously announced that the streaming service would be available in mid-November.

A number of imperatives — notably that of presenting a coherent and more extensive catalogue — and a number of technical restrictions lead us to postpone the launch of this service.

Rest assured: this is only a minor postponement. Everything should be up and running by early December.

11 November 2023

Reading the newspapers of the time is always a good idea. Thus, when considering Furtwängler’s career, one may discover — in the course of a reading — a concert that went unnoticed, absent from the lists; or possibly correct an error that has gone unreported for decades.

The mistake here is the date of the first Fidelio, conducted by Furtwängler at the Theater Lübeck. No one could explain why the lists indicated March 23, 1915. It was actually March 9. Not a big deal, one might say. Except that this musical performance was of great importance in the conductor’s career. At the end of this evening, a delegation from Mannheim led by Bodanzky announced to Furtwängler that he had been chosen as the new musical director of the Mannheim Opera for the coming season.

Addendum: During the Summer of 1917, Furtwängler reunited with his former Lübeck orchestra and Jani Szanto, who had been his Konzertmeister, for a charity concert given at the Kurhaus in Travemünde, Lübeck’s seaside resort. The concert, performed on the evening of July 27, featured :
– Overture from Der Freischütz
– Dvorak’s Violin Concerto, with Szanto ;
– Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.

Related information: St Matthew Passion from April 1915 was listed as “soloists unknown”. This is no longer the case, nor is the identity of the four choral ensembles that took part.

Our lists have now been corrected.

Travemünde : the Kurhaus

4 November 2023

Today, the SWF is not featuring a programme, but a promotional booklet for a festival: the “Festliche Musiktage” in Potsdam in the Summer of 1938. This series of musical events, focusing on Bach and Mozart, was under the artistic direction of Edwin Fischer. The great pianist also gave masterclasses in Potsdam, with Wilhelm Furtwängler, who lived in a beautiful mansion, Die Fasanerie, in the park of Sansouci Castle, as a neighbour. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra performed at the festival, and for several years the conductor was also a pianist, playing Bach concertos with Fischer, Kempff and Erdmann, which he conducted from the piano.

Last summer of peace. It should be noted that the layout does everything to attract foreign tourists: the extensive text is trilingual; apart from the mention of Göring’s patronage, the brochure is free of propaganda but also rich in photos of the emblematic buildings of the city of Frederick the Great.

Let’s travel through time and space.

27 October 2023

A few weeks ago we published the facsimile of a Philharmonia programme, that of the concert of April 24, 1952.

Let’s stay in England for a rarer document: the facsimile of the programme of a concert given by Furtwängler with the London Philharmonic, and not in a prestigious venue like the Royal Albert Hall, but in the suburbs of London, at Watford Town Hall. And there is nothing routine about the poster, which features in particular a work by Mahler that was still little known in Great Britain, and an artist on the verge of making a career there, Eugenia Zareska.

Roger Smithson presents all the details.

Ask for the programme!

20 October 2023

 

The topic has been mentioned on several occasions: the SWF will soon (first weeks of November) be providing its members with a new way of enjoying performances of Furtwängler produced by the association: streaming.

Let’s remember that streaming consists of listening to audio files live and uninterrupted, without having to import them, a bit like on a radio, except that you choose your own programme from the many on offer; and what is in high definition remains so. So this is a world away from listening to mp3 files on YouTube!

Of course, this service will only be available to SWF members, via the SWF website, with an annual subscription fee of €10.

Initially, the digital “warehouse” will include:
– the 12 SWF Dxx albums, i.e. the digital packs currently available for download;
– a number of CDs, including the 1954 Paris concert, the 1943 Meistersinger, Bruckner’s 9th

We will gradually add our own extensive catalogue, as well as a number of releases from the Wilhelm Furtwängler Gesellschaft, i.e. produced by our German counterpart.

It should be noted that:
– We have taken into account those who want to listen to these files on their smartphone;
– No booklet is included with these playlists, as booklets are only available as downloads;
– You will be able to access these audio files either by targeting a specific work or by listening to an entire album. For example, if you ask to listen to Brahms’s Haydn Variations, you will be given access (once everything is online) to all the versions available from the SWF: VPO 1943, Berlin 1943, BPO 1950, Hamburg 1951, Paris 1954… with a link to the complete original album concerned. The choice is yours.

This will in no way stop the SWF from carrying on its work on structured editorial projects, which will be available in the future for both downloading and streaming.

11 October 2023

Rarely do we get the chance to entertain our members with Furtwängler as the subject. Let’s make the most of it.

In 1927, The Paris Times, a Parisian daily, but English-language and American-inspired, published an article entitled “The Man of the Day” featuring Furtwängler. If it weren’t for his photo, you might think it was a case of mistaken identity… But no, it was our conductor. Unfortunately, the article is not signed. What a shame! We’d have liked to know the author of such blunders…

Click here to enjoy.

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