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The facsimile programme that we present here is for no ordinary concert; it included the first performance of Furtwängler’s imposing Second Symphony under the composer’s baton.

It is beyond the scope of this brief presentation to analyze such a complex work. Its romantic, even tragic character, the borrowing of its language from Brahms, Bruckner and even Wagner, its dense orchestration, all combine to put us at a distance from a piece that was already very “dated” at the time.

Let us however highlight a few points of detail

We don’t know why this première took place at the Admiralspalast, in the Soviet sector, rather than the Berlin Philharmonic’s usual hall, the Titania-Palast, in the American sector.

At the last moment, at least on the 23^rd — as shown in the loose sheet that we have included at the start of the facsimile — Mozart’s Symphony No 39 was replaced by Handel’s Concerto Grosso in D major, undoubtedly a less emotionally charged piece.

For two seasons the Berlin Philharmonic entrusted the covers of its programmes to the painter Ferry Ahrlé (1924-2018). This has given us a particularly successful stylized portrait of Furtwängler.

France — in this case Paris — was the first country that had suffered from the German occupation to welcome Furtwängler after the war. In January 1948, the conductor appeared with the prestigious and long-established Conservatoire orchestra, l’Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire de Paris.

For two years the chief conductor had been André Cluytens, who succeeded Charles Munch in 1946; the presidency belonged by right to the director of the Conservatoire Supérieur, the composer Claude Delvincourt.

In November of the same year, Furtwängler returned for another series of three concerts, again at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées, which had replaced the old and historic hall of the Conservatoire on rue Bergère, long regarded as too cramped and unworthy of a metropolis like Paris. Note that these concerts were given just a few days after the German Requiem in Stockholm.

The programme could hardly be more classic, so there is nothing to add, except the name of the orchestra’s leader, who no doubt took the great violin solo in Schumann’s Fourth: Roland Charmy.

Our sincere thanks to the SWF member who provided us with this programme.

A few words about this programme, not on its content — pure Beethoven, not surprisingly — but on its context.

The booklet is accompanied by two loose sheets. The green one announces two forthcoming concerts in Berlin, but with the Vienna Philharmonic. This was due to a decisive event that had just taken place: the Reich had annexed Austria, which thus entered the fold of “greater Germany”.  These concerts were part of the integration process, but masked another reality: at the orchestra’s request, Furtwängler intervened at high level to ensure that the Philharmonic was given “favourable treatment”.

The pink sheet slightly muddles the order of the pieces: Leonore II was to be played after the 4th Symphony, not before. Furtwängler often did this at the time, particularly with Coriolan, which was felt to form the peak of tension in a concert. This may seem strange to us, accustomed to hearing an overture at the start of a concert, and overlooking the fact that an opera overture, once removed from its context, becomes a symphonic work like any other, to be programmed at the most appropriate time according to its musical qualities.

Finally, note the inclusion of three portraits of the conductor: an official photo and the images from the record labels Electrola, then still a subsidiary of EMI, and Deutsche Grammophon, distributed by HMV in Germany and better known under the name Polydor abroad.

Furtwängler with his 3 Berlin Konzertmeister, Erich Röhn, Hugo Kolberg and Siegfried Borries (ca. 1938).

We cannot count the numerous Beethoven Ninths that Furtwängler conducted in Berlin between 1920 and 1942, particularly with the Bruno Kittel Choir.

After his return, Ninths increased in frequency in Vienna (four series of performances), Bayreuth (two), Salzburg, Lucerne (two), and Italy, but they became decidedly rare in Berlin. Was there a problem with the hall? The platform of the Titania-Palast was certainly cramped. Or a problem with the choir? That of St Hedwig’s Cathedral gave many concerts and sang in beautiful recordings. But in any case there was no problem with soloists. Those gathered for this series of concerts in December 1950 were of the first rank, even if they might initially seem a little heterogeneous.

The booklet itself is interesting. Alongside the long analysis of the work from the pen of “P.W.” (i.e. Peter Wackernagel), we find advertisements for three big commercial recording companies:

– on page 2: Decca, which had signed a number of major conducting names including Furtwängler — who however made only one record for this label, Brahms’s Second Symphony with the London Philharmonic.
– on page 8: Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, with a general advert announcing its forthcoming catalogue of long-playing records; Furtwängler would make some records for them a year later.
– on page 11: Electrola (part of the EMI group), making no mention of its Furtwängler releases (of which there had been many since 1947), but highlighting a Ninth on Columbia 78s without identifying the conductor and orchestra — none other than Herbert von Karajan and the Vienna Philharmonic.

Finally, gourmands among our readers may like to note that Sarotti’s “Little Moor” chocolates and pralines, featured on the back cover, can still be enjoyed today.

The booklet runs to a very dense 40 pages. True, after an analysis of each of the three works, particularly Walton’s Scapino Overture which was receiving its Viennese première, we are offered “Musik-Blätter” with the Vienna Philharmonic’s news and a series of articles on various musical topics. But reading through these pages nonetheless gives rise to some astonishment.

An article on Mahler was certainly welcome after all the years during which he was sidelined, but it seems odd that not a single Viennese writer could be found to celebrate him, and that they had to unearth the old, though excellent, article by Richard Specht from 1913.

Was it really necessary to devote four pages to “introducing” Furtwängler to the Viennese public?

The essay on César Franck is typically Germanic and minimizes the French side of his influence. Or — worse — it refers to Bruneau and Charpentier but obscures Franck’s real lineage through Duparc and Chausson.

Kurt Blaukopf (who could have been entrusted to write the article on Mahler!) treats us to a course in philosophy and general aesthetics, not excluding hermeneutics …

Finally, a modest breath of fresh air is provided by the notes on the Philharmonic’s instrumental sections; this is the fourth and last installment, focusing on the less often exposed instruments, harp and percussion.

Whoever owned this programme, one of a series acquired by the SWF, was in the habit of annotating his valuable booklets. What strikes us most is the definitive verdict on the front page: “sehr schön! “

This programme is for one of the Berlin Philharmonic’s twenty-five appearances with its chief in the course of a tour lasting nearly a month in the spring of 1951.

The journey began with a week spent in the shadow of the Egyptian pyramids, continued up the boot of Italy, and after a visit to Paris ended in north-western Germany.

Furtwängler had not appeared in Essen since 1939, when he gave his Symphonic Concerto with Edwin Fischer. Since then the great hall of the Saalbau had been destroyed by bombs, then rebuilt in 1950.

When an orchestra goes on tour, it takes a number of scores and the heavy orchestral parts that go with them. That year, Haydn’s Symphony No 101 appeared a number of times, but for some unknown reason Essen — and Viersen a few days before — were instead treated to No 88. On the other hand, Bruckner’s Seventh was played; we owe two recordings to this tour, from Cairo and Rome.

We may also wonder why the writer has, with the addition of an acute accent, renamed our “Claude de France” Débussy…

In 1949 the 84-year-old Richard Strauss asked Kirsten Flagstad to give the first performance of four new songs; they proved to be his last. Flagstad insisted that Furtwängler accompany her, and the result was his first public appearance with the Philharmonia. The songs were performed from manuscript, before their publication (in a different order) by Boosey and Hawkes.

The programme summary does not make clear that Flagstad would also sing the Liebestod and Brunnhilde’s Immolation, the latter indicated only by the muddled reference to “Siegfried’s Rhine Journey (Closing Scene, Götterdämmerung)”. But the notes by the distinguished critic Mosco Carner give details of all the pieces to be performed and the texts in full. Note the handwritten music examples – no computers in those days! The programme also includes the illustrious personnel of the Philharmonia, five years after its formation.

The whole event might never have happened without Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar Bahadur (1919–1974), the twenty-fifth Maharaja of Mysore from 1940 and the last to hold the traditional powers of that title before its formal abolition by the government of the newly independent India. A man of two worlds par excellence, he was among other things a writer on politics and religion, promoter of education and sport in India, performer and expert in both European and Indian classical music (with early ambitions to be a concert pianist), and an advocate of modern music with a particular admiration for Nicolai Medtner. And he had ample wealth to put his passions into effect, offering Walter Legge £10,000 a year (around £350,000 today) for three years to support recordings and concerts, including this one.

The sheer scale of Legge’s ambition is shown by the surreal competition, which also appeared in the Gramophone, to select music to be recorded with the Maharaja’s support. Readers were invited to choose from works by an astonishing variety of composers, from Bach to Egon Wellesz by way of Busoni, Lyapunov, Schönberg and Vittoria, and even to make separate recommendations based on personal preference and objective criteria!  Few of these composers were familiar to British audiences in 1950, and some remain obscure even today. Did Legge seriously expect many informed responses? Or was this merely a cover for projects he intended to pursue anyway?  Little came of it in any case; the Indian Government soon stopped the Maharaja’s subsidies, no doubt considering that the money would be better spent at home.

Finally, mystery still surrounds the recordings from the concert. It was broadcast live on the BBC Third Programme, but not recorded by either them or EMI. Yet an article in Time magazine noted that the Songs had been recorded, a tantalising detail almost certainly provided by Legge. Why did he plant this story? Who made the recording, and in what medium? And what happened to it? For years we had only pirate issues, in poor sound and with Im Abendrot incomplete, which were implausibly said to be derived from an original in the Maharaja’s vast collection in India. Then in 2007 Testament unexpectedly issued the Songs, complete and sonically improved, together with the previously unknown excerpts from Tristan and Götterdämmerung from a different source which has never been positively identified. And no-one knows what further musical treasures may lie behind the ornate doors of the Palace of Mysore…

Roger Smithson

This programme is one of a set of eight acquired by the SWF from the Berlin Philharmonic concert seasons of 1940/41 to 1943/44. A few general observations before we open them. This was wartime, and thus a period of restrictions, but the quality of the documents is surprising: cardboard covers with two-colour printing, at least one photograph, analyses of the works — and no reference to the government of the day; it is as though we were in a world without the swastika. Finally, some programmes include a section on “Philharmonic News”, or announcements of forthcoming concerts, which enable us to follow the orchestra’s activities. And we might note that this concert was given three times, and hence to a total of more than five thousand listeners!!

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Here we have a somewhat untypical programme.

The first things we see on opening it are the tributes to Mozart from famous names, and on the reverse is a portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus — according to the back cover, a pastel by Tilgner from around 1786.(1)  Why? It was November 1941, and this was the beginning of the “advent calendar” of tributes to Mozart for the 150th anniversary of his death.

It was perhaps for this reason that Furtwängler programmed a work related to the Salzburg master by Max Reger, a composer whom he respected and whom he had served well with the baton. Of all Reger’s works in his repertoire, including the Beethoven Variations and the Boecklin Suite, the Mozart Variations appeared the most frequently in his programmes. Curiously, however, he would not conduct a note of Reger after his return in 1947. (For more information, we refer the reader to the study Furtwängler and Reger, available on the SWF website.)

The same is true of Dvorak’s New World Symphony, which he conducted less often than might have been expected given the work’s popularity. This was also the only one of the Czech composer’s symphonies that he performed, alongside rare performances of the cello and violin concertos. And here again, this great romantic disappeared from his programmes after 1944.

Between these two works, Furtwängler offered a very young musician a prized opportunity to present himself alone: Gerhard Taschner, whom he had just engaged in the post of Konzertmeister at the Philharmonie. Such noble gestures are not characteristic of all great conductors!  In paying him the tribute he deserves, we can only regret that this violin prodigy’s difficult character and psychological instability deprived him of the post-war career which he should have enjoyed. The necessarily short biography of the newcomer is sketched on the penultimate page. Among the masters mentioned as the apprentice’s trainers, the self-censoring editor omitted a name that would then have been unwelcome, that of Bronislaw Huberman… And what the programme does not say is that this brilliant 20-year-old was the subject of a competing and more remunerative offer of the same position at the Staatskapelle Berlin, from its conductor Herbert von Karajan.

On the back of the booklet are details of forthcoming programmes. On 16 December Furtwängler had planned to play Mozart’s Concerto no 27, conducting from the keyboard. In the end, however, he opted to give the “Gran Partita” Serenade, with thirteen members of his Philharmoniker.

 

(1). The attribution to Tilgner is strange! Viktor Tilgner (1844-1896) did indeed pay homage to Mozart, but with the famous sculpture of the Mozart monument in Vienna.

Some see Pfitzner as the last link in a musical chain dating back to Bach. Holding the whole evolution of music in the twentieth century in contempt, he saw himself as the last line of defence against a barbarism advancing both from abroad — he was an absolute xenophobe — and from within his own “camp”. History has shown him uncompromising and all of a piece: inflexible, cantankerous, bilious, the enemy of everything and everyone, even managing to put the Nazis’ backs up. Some of his works have survived, but not this “Rose from the Garden of Love”, his second opera, with its impossible libretto and incongruous musical style, which never travelled beyond the borders of his country and is now largely forgotten even there. In conducting an excerpt from this work, one wonders whether Furtwängler was acting out of artistic conviction or merely a kind of filial piety.

On the other hand, he certainly conducted Bruckner’s Fifth with passion, particularly since the Haas edition had revealed the true stature of this work — above all the Finale. In this connection, the commentary in the programme includes a myth of sorts which was still current at the time. In the instrumentation of the orchestra, the writer lists doubled brass for the Finale, reinforcements which were not originally planned but which most conductors have adopted. In those days these extra instruments were often placed above the rest of the orchestra in the organ gallery, leading to allusions to the twelve Apostles. Furtwängler might perhaps have followed this fashion; in a letter to the Vienna Philharmonic itself, he asks that these additional brass forces be placed “within” the orchestra. In reality we should disregard this romantic perspective: the brass is doubled simply because the players face such demands that their lips are too tired for the Finale, and especially for its colossal closing chorale.

CONCERTS IN BERLIN, 17-19 MAY 1953

 

These concerts are familiar to us; that of 18 May was broadcast and recorded, and has appeared on disc, though scattered over separate issues.

The printed programme is in marked contrast to the normal practice of the time, and presents a quite modern appearance. Was the square format then little used? Is it the presence of the soloist, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, that brings it all closer to our time? Is it the advertisement on the second page, featuring records that are still familiar to us? Isn’t it just as much the inside back cover, devoted to an announcement by the association for the construction of a new Philharmonic Hall in Berlin. We find ourselves caught in the spiral of time. Ten years later, the new Philharmonie would be inaugurated, architecturally far removed from its predecessor and well ahead of its time.

The programme is along classic lines, even as regards Stravinsky’s divertimento The Fairy’s Kiss, which Furtwängler had previously given some fifteen years earlier.

The musical analyses are signed P.W, for Peter Wackernagel, whose essays are found on many of the Berliners’ programmes. He was attached to the National Library of Berlin, where he was director of the music department between 1945 and 1950.