Archives: Programmes

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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We know the significance of these concerts for Furtwängler’s admirers — they were the last that he conducted in the old Philharmonie, at 22 Bernburger-Strasse in the Steglitz district, three weeks before it was destroyed by an incendiary bomb. It was more than 60 years since the orchestra had set up home there, when the hall was a huge edifice housing a roller-skating rink. After the destruction of the building during the night of 30-31 January 1944, it would be almost twenty years before a new one bore the name of the Philharmonie.

There is nothing remarkable about the programme, except that the Beethoven Violin Concerto is placed in the hands of one of the Konzertmeister, Erich Röhn, who plays it with rare sensitivity. Furtwängler certainly featured soloists from the orchestra in concertos on occasion, but this also shows the need to compensate for the withdrawal of some of the outstanding soloists in Germany or its allies, who, though still active, were concerned about the increasingly frequent bombing raids on the capital

The recording of this concert also provides our only opportunity to hear one of the great Strauss extravaganzas under Furtwängler’s baton. He did not perform them very often and was undoubtedly less attracted than other conductors to these scores, whose luxuriance sometimes masks a relative poverty of invention, particularly in matters of harmony. Visiting the conductor’s dressing room after a performance of Ein Heldenleben, his mentor Walter Riezler found a grinning Furtwängler expostulating “What kitsch!”

The effects of the probable wartime restrictions are evident — the programme no longer has a stiff cover. But we should also note that simply multiplying the four dates of the concerts by the number of seats in the Philharmonie gives a total of over eight thousand listeners! The other concerts in the subscription series, given by Karl Böhm, Oswald Kabasta or Volkmar Andreae (some of which were in any case cancelled), were scheduled to be given only twice…

We need not dwell on Schumann’s Manfred Overture and Beethoven’s Seventh, except to mention that the Beethoven symphony was one of the works that Furtwängler would record in the lengthy series that Walter Legge organised for him from 20 January to the beginning of February — the picture below was taken during these sessions.

Of greater interest is the world première of Erich Korngold‘s Symphonic Serenade, op. 39, for string orchestra. This thirty-minute work, published by Schott, is one of those with which Korngold tried to re-establish himself in Europe as a “serious” musician. And let’s not take that word itself too — well, seriously. There was nothing easy about the film scores to which the composer devoted himself in Hollywood in the thirties and forties (and which earned him several awards); they demanded just as much skill as writing a symphony or an opera. And after all, when Beethoven wrote the incidental music for Egmont he was simply engaged in the delicate art of underlining — and no more than underlining — what another artist had created in another genre, whether it be drama or film.

Furtwängler never neglected Korngold; he gave the first Mannheim performances of his operas Violanta and Das Ring des Polycrates, which had their premières a year earlier under Bruno Walter in Munich, and later included his symphonic overture Sursum Corda and the suite from his incidental music for Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing in his concerts. While there is nothing innovative or even original in the Serenade, the piece is very well written to showcase the strings — and here they were the strings of the Vienna Philharmonic! — with a touch of the “Hollywood sound”; but the conductor showed once again that he knew how to look beyond his home territory.

Our thanks to Philippe Jacquard for the scan.

Furtwängler was now beginning his last season in Leipzig. He engaged that vocal glory, the soprano Elisabeth Rethberg, whom he had accompanied for the first time a few months earlier in the Brahms German Requiem in New York.

Beethoven’s Ah! Perfido was heard several times under Furtwängler’s baton during this period, as were Richard Strauss’s Lieder with orchestra. On the other hand, this was the second (and last) time that he programmed anything by Ewald Straesser (1867-1933), in this case the Sixth (and last) Symphony by this now rather forgotten composer, whose Second he had conducted three years earlier.

The programme of this concert was, shall we say, somewhat heterogeneous. Two works by Beethoven, Leonore II and the Eroica, framed a Gluck aria with orchestra, Reznicek’s Tragische Geschichte, and Lieder by Wolf and Pfitzner with Furtwängler at the piano.

Wolf’s Zu neuen Jahr is at least associated with the date of the concert. The Danish soprano Birgit Engell (1882-1973) had a relatively low-profile career; she often appeared with the Copenhagen Opera, but after the war generally performed in concert. This was the fourth time in four years that Furtwängler had engaged her — she could not have lacked talent!

As for the piece by Reznicek, we refer the curious to the Berlin programme of 3 November 1940.

Furtwängler had been at the head of the Leipzig Gewandhaus for a few months — an ensemble even more prestigious than the Berlin Philharmonic, and boasting an illustrious past a hundred years longer than that of its Prussian rival.

The most interesting aspect of this programme is of course the participation of Alexander Kipnis, one of the most illustrious basses of his time and – in this sense a forerunner of Fischer-Dieskau – probably also the most eclectic in terms of repertoire, equally at home in Parsifal (Gurnemanz) and Boris Godunov, the Magic Flute (Zarastro) and Pelleas and Melisande (Golaud).

He appears here as a Lieder interpreter, accompanied by Furtwängler at the piano. It seems astonishing that, coming straight after Haydn’s Symphony no 101, the same composer’s concert aria Die Teilung der Erde was not given in its orchestral version.

It was the first of January, and the year did not start well. In the top right-had corner we see that the price of this unimpressive little four-page effort is 50 Marks! And this was just the start of the dreadful era of inflation, which would soon see bread advertised at 3 billion DM…

This single sheet announces a ‘special concert’. It was probably not planned as part of the season, but it is special for an even more important historical reason; this was Furtwängler’s first appearance as conductor of the Berlin State Opera Orchestra’s concerts, the start of a series that lasted for two years until he took up his post with the Berlin Philharmonic.

[This programme lacks a cover, which was probably similar to that already reproduced with the concert of 10 December 1923; there are some shreds of paper around the staple]

This was the opening concert of the series of ‘Zehn Philhamonische Konzerte’ of the 1923-1924 season. But as such, it presents a puzzle. The list of concerts compiled by Peter Muck in his voluminous work on the BPO, and incorporated by René Trémine in his list of Furtwängler’s concerts, gives the same programme but with the baritone Wilhelm Guttmann in the Kindertotenlieder. So who took the place of whom? A press article from the time gives the answer: it was Guttmann who sang, probably as a last minute replacement.

    Wilhelm Guttmann (1886-1941) had studied singing, but also composition, notably in Berlin with Max Bruch and Paul Juon. He appeared at the Volksoper and the Städtische Oper in Berlin, but was driven from the stage in 1934 for racial reasons.

It should be noted that Furtwängler was not among the group of conductors whose paths crossed that of Mahler — from Mengelberg to Walter, Fried to Klemperer, and, albeit negatively, Toscanini in New York. The only time he seems to have seen Mahler conducting was in 1906 in Salzburg, where he went with his then fiancée, the young Berthel Hildebrand, to see The Marriage of Figaro. He was never a champion of Mahler, as he was for Bruckner, and his repertoire in this area remained limited in terms of both works and performances. These took in Symphonies 1 to 4, some songs with piano, The Song of the Earth (a single performance in Lübeck), Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and Kindertotenlieder, the latter two works appearing several times in his post-war programmes.

In a lecture at the Musikhochschule in Berlin, Furtwängler referred to Mahler as a ‘Praktiker’. Was he perhaps conscious that this epithet could also be applied to his own creative activity?…

In December 1938 Furtwängler was the guest of the Société Philharmonique de Paris, an orchestra directed by Charles Munch (1) for whom it had been created in 1935. This ensemble was disbanded soon afterwards (2), when Munch succeeded Philippe Gaubert at the head of the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra.

This was a special evening, to judge by the luxurious programme produced for the occasion, with its embossed and coloured lettering on the cover and pages of advertisements for a variety of prestigious brands, most of which are still famous names today.

The notes are the work of Fred Goldbeck, who was at that time one of the best commentators on Furtwängler on the Parisian scene; we are indebted to him for some remarkably intelligent observations on the great conductor’s work. He attended the concert with his future wife, the pianist Yvonne Léfébure, and the Goldbeck-Léfébure Collection in the Médiathèque Musicale Mahler in Paris now houses this magnificent document. The MMM scanned it for us, and we are very grateful for their kind permission to reproduce it.

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(1) It is worth recalling that a dozen years earlier Charles Münch had held the post of leader of the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, then conducted by Furtwängler. We might also note that in 1937, 1938 and 1939 the Philharmonic Orchestra of Paris took part in the summer festival at Royaumont Abbey, with its conductor for the first two years and Vladimir Golschmann for the third. In 1938 the programme included Bach’s concerto for two violins, the bows being held by Roland Charmy… and Charles Munch, who evidently had not yet completely given up his first vocation.

(2) This name was however already in use in the late 1920s, particularly for records, and was later used for individual events such as those mentioned above. It would be fair to question whether the orchestra was even still formally in existence at the time of Furtwängler’s concert in December 1938.

Here at last is a reproduction of the programme for one of Furtwängler’s most legendary concerts, the performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Bayreuth in 1951.

If any recording of a concert has become part of history, it is surely this! It might be said that if it had not been recorded and disseminated around the world in the form of a double LP after the conductor’s death, it would have remained just another concert and just another Ninth. Yet this is not quite all, for the performance was a significant event in itself. It marked the reopening of the Bayreuth Festival after seven years of silence — and seven years of profound upheaval: the end of a world war; the reconstruction of a Europe seeking its identity and inching towards a far-distant confederation; the reconstruction of a country, even in the face of partition imposed by a foreign power. And while no-one could know it at the time, 1951 marked not only the reopening of the Festival but also the beginning of the “new Bayreuth”. Winifred Wagner had been obliged to make way for her sons, and Wieland would soon introduce a style that had nothing in common with the Bayreuth of former times.

A certain historical irony emerges when we leaf through the pages of this programme, with its many and varied advertisements. Sixty-five years later, the brands whose praises they sang — Mercedes cars, August Klönne engineering, Deutz engines, Pelican pens, Rosenthal porcelain, Adox and Agfa photos, Pepsodent — all still exist; but the only major company with a direct link to Furtwängler, here given a full page of publicity, is no more: His Master’s Voice…

Finally, there are the amusingly quaint French and English translations of the request for donations at the end of the booklet…

The Philharmonia was founded in 1945 with the main purpose of recording for the gramophone, but it also gave numerous concerts. Its founder Walter Legge always engaged prestigious conductors — Beecham, who directed the very first concert, Richard Strauss in 1947, Klemperer (two concerts in 1948 for the New Era Concert Society), Karajan (one concert in 1948), Cantelli (twenty-eight concerts between 1951 and 1956), and Toscanini, with two Brahms concerts which remain legendary. It was only from 1952 and 1954 respectively that Karajan and Klemperer conducted the orchestra regularly.

Recordings were usually arranged separately from concerts, as was the case with the first one by Furtwängler (the final scene of Götterdämmerung, on 26 March 1948).

Before 1950 Furtwängler had appeared in London with the Philharmonic Orchestras of London, Vienna and Berlin, but from the pivotal year of 1950 almost all of his London concerts were given with the Philharmonia.

The three concerts scheduled in 1950 included the world premiere of Strauss’s Four Last Songs with Kirsten Flagstad in May; on 11 December, following the death of Dinu Lipatti, the planned Schumann Concerto was replaced by two short works. The three concerts in 1951 also featured soloists: Edwin Fischer in February (see the facsimile programme)  — this was the only one of Furtwängler’s concerts to be linked to a recording, Act I of Die Walküre in March, and  Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with Myra Hess in October. In 1952 there was only one concert, in April, with Flagstad in the Wesendonck Lieder and the final scene of Götterdämmerung. In 1953 and 1954 there was just a single concert in London, devoted to Beethoven. Furtwängler’s illness and the late scheduling of recordings in Vienna resulted in the cancellation of a second concert in March 1954 and of the recording of Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

Following internal problems at the Lucerne Festival, the Philharmonia replaced the Festival Orchestra in 1954, with the celebrated Beethoven Ninth (given three times if we count the final rehearsal, which was open to the public) and finally Furtwängler’s last appearance with the orchestra on 25 August, in Haydn’s Symphony no 88 and Bruckner’s Seventh.

PhJ