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 1942/43. 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!

Open this programme. Turning our backs on the competing adverts by Electrola and Telefunken (for Beethoven’s Fifth and Tchaikovsky’s Sixth, by Furtwängler and Mengelberg respectively), leaving the Tannhäuser overture unopened, executing a glissando past the Schumann Concerto (which will save us having to discuss Mainardi …), and forgetting even the Pastoral (but can we really forget the Pastoral…?), let us focus our curiosity on the work that begins the second half of the concert: Theme and Variations for large orchestra, after Adalbert von Chamisso’s poem “Tragische Geschichte”.

Its composer, Emil Nikolaus (Freiherr) von Reznicek, was a contemporary of Richard Strauss. Born in 1860, and thus celebrating his eightieth year in 1940, he died in 1945, having shone essentially in the firmaments of the symphony (of which he wrote five) and the opera, including one made popular by its overture: Donna Diana.

With a genuine gift for melodic invention, and much lighter in touch than many of his Germanic contemporaries (notably Pfitzner), his orchestration is marked by a sumptuous palette, comparable with that of Busoni as much as Strauss, but also by the dance accents of his Bohemian homeland. And a hallmark of his work is the humour which lies just below the surface of many of his scores, including his elaboration of the Tragische Geschichte.

The composer entrusts Chamisso’s poem (one wonders who he was mocking) to a baritone who appears only at the very end of the work and sings for just a minute and a half! But the composer was perceptive enough to see that the singer could be dispensed with, and it is this “absentee” version that Furtwängler presented in a number of concerts, in Rome, Vienna, Leipzig, Hamburg and Berlin, and conducted for the last time on these evenings. In the absence of the singer, the Berliners did well to reproduce the poem itself (on page 13 of the programme), and we have taken the trouble to present it in English (in a separate pdf), just to make sure that no-one mistakes the truly tragic nature of this tale…..

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In January 1940 the Berliners and their conductor undertook a short winter tour, hardly comparable with those which before the war had taken them as far afield as Britain. Their only venture abroad now would be to The Hague, in the great hall of the Building of Arts and Sciences which Furtwängler knew well.

This concert was included in René Trémine’s list of Furtwängler’s appearances, but without details of the programme. That gap can now be filled, especially as the poster advertised a work which Furtwängler held dear and in which he presented his orchestra’s soloists: Handel’s Concerto Grosso op 6 no 10.

We might mention in this connection that the three first desk players at the front of the stage here were to make successful careers in major orchestras. Erich Röhn became the concertmaster of the postwar Orchestra of North German Radio. After leaving the Berlin Philharmonic for a time, Siegfried Borries returned to them at the beginning of the 1950s. As for Tibor de Machula, he left the Berliners in 1947 to become the long-serving principal cellist of the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, first under the baton of van Beinum and then that of Haitink.

It is surprising to find that the promoters of such an exceptional event — the poster proclaimed a “Gala Concert” — did not see fit to include even the briefest note on the works, the orchestra or its conductor in the printed programme.

Less than four months later Hitler’s troops invaded the Netherlands and Belgium without warning, to the horror of their peoples who had believed that their neutrality would protect them from his lupine hunger for conquest.

First let’s set the scene: Furtwängler conducts Lohengrin in Berlin’s “second” opera house, the Municipal Opera, rather than at the Staatsoper, the National Opera. This house was first called the “Charlottenburg Opera”, after the area of Berlin where it opened in 1911. Renamed the Städtische Oper in 1925, it was subsequently the Deutsches Opernhaus, under the thumb of Goebbels and a rival of Göring’s stronghold, the Staatsoper, and after the war would become the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

Curiously enough, it was quite late — in 1929 — that Furtwängler first tackled Lohengrin, although he had conducted all the great Wagner music dramas since his years in Mannheim (and Meistersinger even earlier, in Lübeck). Was it in order to be forgiven that his first Lohengrin was given precisely in Mannheim, at a gala evening, shortly before the Berlin performances? Nonetheless, after the legendary Bayreuth performances of 1936 he never returned to this work — and as we know, Rudolf Bing’s proposed production at the New York Metropolitan Opera came to nothing.

The performance was that of 21 November, which was not one of his known appearances, but this is not a printing error, as a different singer is listed for Ortrud. The roles here are taken by the house company, excellent singers even if less well-known than those of the competing house. Furtwängler would later be reunited with two of his colleagues, the director Heinz Tietjen and stage designer Emil Preetorius, at the Staatsoper and Bayreuth.

The printed programme in fact comprises the “Municipal Opera Bulletin”, the house’s monthly publication, which thus sometimes covered matters remote from the work being staged. Only the middle pages, in colour, form the programme proper.

An amusing detail can be seen in this facsimile: the programme was sealed by a tab of paper bearing the emblem of Grotrian-Steinweg pianos, which held together the front and back covers.

The fifth of the “Ten Philharmonic Concerts” of Furtwängler’s second season offered subscribers an evening entirely devoted to Beethoven, as our conductor was often to do throughout his career. The interest here lies in the Choral Fantasia, which would reappear several times under his baton during this period, only to vanish completely from his repertoire after a performance at the Görlitz Festival in 1931 under the fingers of Edwin Fischer.

The featured pianist, entirely forgotten today, was Frieda Kwast-Hodapp. Frieda Hodapp (1880-1949) owed her double-barreled name to her marriage to the pianist, composer and teacher James Kwast. She had been a pupil of Max Reger —she gave the first performance of his Piano Concerto under the direction of Nikisch— and appeared for the first time with Furtwängler in 1914, during his tenure as music director in Lübeck.

The other participants in this work were the Bruno Kittel Choir, undoubtedly one of the best ensembles in Berlin alongside the Philharmonic Choir and the Sing-Akademie. Furtwängler regularly engaged them, and the Beethoven Ninth Symphony given in the spring of 1942 is a unique and striking testimony to their collaboration.

The printed programmes for successive concerts are not all alike; some provide little information, while others, including this one, give fuller documentation. While it provides no biography, it does feature the luxury of a Beethoven analysis from the pen of one of the finest music writers and critics of the time, Paul Bekker.

And page 4 will come as a surprise to many: the discs, which we consider today as “Polydors” or “Deutsche Grammophons”, were certainly made by DGG, but bore the famous label showing Nipper listening to his master’s voice.

This programme is interesting for several reasons.

The concert was the fourth in the series of five that the Wolff und Sachs Agency (which also managed the annual “Ten Philharmonic Concerts”, the “real” Berlin Philharmonic season) established for Furtwängler employing the services of the Philharmonic. This explains why the orchestra’s name does not appear in large letters, as would have been the case if the conductor had been invited to appear during its own season. Louise Wolff, the real driving force of musical life in Berlin, did as much for no-one except Bruno Walter.

Arthur Nikisch had died the previous week, and contenders were already jostling to succeed him. It was by chance that Furtwängler found himself in the right place at the right time. On 26 January he had conducted the memorial concert for Nikisch in Leipzig, on 3 February in Berlin that of the Staatskapelle, whose concert season he conducted, and on 6 February the concert by the Philharmonic in honour of the man who had led them for more than twenty-five years. On 13 March he would give Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the same orchestra (the concert referred to at the bottom of the programme).

These fortuitous circumstances worked in Furtwängler’s favour simply by placing him on the spot, and this certainly played a part in his being chosen for the tenure of both the Berlin and Leipzig orchestras.

Furtwängler programmed Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique (“Phantastique”) several times during this period, and it is regrettable that he no longer included it in his concerts in later years. The Second Concerto of Rachmaninov also gradually disappeared from his repertoire.

Eduard Erdmann, a great pianist renowned for his interpretations of Schubert and an original composer, is today rather a forgotten figure, though in recent years at least some of his works have been revived[1]. Furtwängler gave his First Symphony, op 10, during his time as conductor of the Frankfurt Museum concert series.

Finally, one wonders whether it was economic circumstances which limited this programme to one double-sided sheet!

[1] A list of Erdmann’s compositions can be found on the website dedicated to him: http://www.erdmann.jpsa.de/

n 1921 Furtwängler was undoubtedly the rising star among Germany’s orchestral conductors.  Crowned with his achievements in Mannheim, he succeeded Richard Strauss at the head of the Berlin Staatsoper’s orchestral season and Mengelberg in the prestigious “Museumkonzerte” in Frankfurt; he was chief conductor of the Vienna Tonkünstler Orchestra and head of the influential Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in the same city, and since 1917 he had appeared several times with the Berlin Philharmonic.  And he was on good terms with Wolff und Sachs, the most powerful concert agency in the German capital.

It was Louise Wolff who arranged for him to conduct a series of five concerts during the winter of 1921-1922.  We should bear in mind that, contrary to what we might suppose, the Berlin Philharmonic then had only a modest core of orchestral forces, considerably less than those of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Concerts Lamoureux or the New York Philharmonic.  It was with this ensemble of around sixty musicians that the Berliners gave most of their concerts, making a living by providing their services to soloists, choirs or concert organizers; they played some 125 concerts in the 1921-1922 season!  In practice only the Wolff und Sachs agency had the resources to promote major concerts, starting with the “ten Philharmonic concerts” conducted by Bülow, then Strauss, then Nikisch, for which the orchestra was brought up to full symphonic strength and each concert was preceded by a sufficient number of rehearsals rather than the usual single “Generalprobe”.  To appear at one of these rare occasions was thus a mark of distinction.

The programme for the first concert of the series included the Brahms Alto Rhapsody, which the great conductor was to include from time to time in his programmes, and Liszt’s Mazeppa, which by contrast made an appearance as fleeting as that of the hero of Victor Hugo’s poem.

Sigrid Onegin (1889-1943), born in Stockholm to French and German parents, was undoubtedly one of the greatest contraltos of her day. The Barth’schen Madrigalvereinigung was a Berlin choir led by Arthur Barth, apparently a namesake of the great piano teacher Heinrich Barth.

While we are familiar with Furtwängler’s activities at the head of the Berlin Philharmonic, from his first concert in 1917 and especially from his appointment in 1922 until 1954, rather less attention has been paid to his work as director of the concerts of the Berlin State Opera Orchestra, in other words as head of the Staatskapelle. But this was a very prestigious position, and Furtwängler was proud to succeed Richard Strauss, who had been happy there after having had little success in his single year as conductor of the Philharmonic.

It was in Lübeck that Furtwängler first added Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to his repertoire, the starting point of a long association.

The printed programme is very unusual, and makes one wonder about the audience for these concerts. Programmes of this period generally feature a variety of advertisements, invariably including some for pianos but also for perfumes, clothes, even automobiles. Here, besides those for Steinway, Blüthner, Grotrian-Steinweg and others, we find little except ads for purely musical products, including newly released scores by Strauss and Schillings, or for musical tuition.

The very detailed analysis of Beethoven’s Ninth is the work of Max Chop (1862-1929), musicologist, editor, and publisher of the Staatskapelle’s programmes from 1910 onwards.

An amusing detail reveals something of the musical practices of a century ago. Unhelpfully for those wishing to plan ahead, a note at the bottom of the page with the concert programme itself states that “The 10th symphonic concert will probably take place in mid- or late April”. In fact it took place on 4 May!

Is there in the world a more powerful music society than the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde of Vienna? Founded in 1813, its development has been such that it was able to construct a building of the most imposing dimensions to include one of the finest concert halls in the world, the world famous Große Musikvereins-Saal, that today is commonly referred to as the Golden Hall.

Furtwängler became its director in 1920, thus having at his disposition a capacious chorus of the first rank, the Singverein, and an orchestra, the Wiener Concert-Verein, that, later incorporating the Tonkünstler Orchester, became the Symphony Orchestra. Unlike the Philharmonic, an associative grouping of members of the opera orchestra, the Symphony is an independent orchestra of permanent, salaried musicians.

This is the body that invited Furtwängler to conduct Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion in November 1938 with an outstanding distribution that included notably the soprano Jo(hanna) Vincent, a star of the great Concertgebouw soirees with Mengelberg, the mezzo Margarete Klose, one of the greatest singers of the mid twentieth century, the tenor Louis van Tulder, a compatriot of Jo Vincent, who sang the role of the Evangelist more than 200 times… and Hüsch and Alsen, among the finest singers of the day, along with the faithful Franz Schütz at the organ and the Wiener Sängerknaben. Difficult to do better!

 Jo Vincent 

It was the fourth time that the Matthew Passion was performed in this venue since 1920. After the war Furtwängler again proposed Bach’s great work, though this time it would be with the Philharmonic, while for the chorus he had recourse — on account of a quarrel with the Gesellschaft — to the Singakademie.

The interest of the leaflet compensates somewhat for the sorry state of preservation.

It’s always interesting to have the programme for a “première” in one’s hands. The première of Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony? True, Furtwängler didn’t give the first performance of this work, but it was a first for him. And a surprising one, for while he had never conducted the first two symphonies, numbers 3 to 9 had been in his repertoire for many years, with the sole exception of this Sixth. As he confided to the publicist Karla Höcker, with a look of amazement, “Isn’t it wonderful to have such an experience at the age of 57!”.That was in Berlin, where he conducted the symphony a few days after the Vienna concerts. It certainly merited a recording, albeit one which unfortunately lacks the first movement.

The other half of the concert was devoted to Götterdämmerung, with the Funeral Music and the final scene, Brünnhilde’s Immolation, sung here by one of the Konetzni sisters, Anny, who specialised in the role of the Valkyrie warrior while her sister Hilde embodied the gentler Sieglinde.

But an even greater rarity is that one of the pages of the booklet is devoted to the recording of a disc by Furtwängler. The editor takes no little pride in sharing some important news with his readers. After more than twenty years of collaboration, the conductor and his orchestra would finally make their first records together: Brahms’s Variations on a theme of Haydn, which with the Beethoven Pastoral Symphony were in fact the only discs they made during this period —a time so troubled that the records themselves would only be published long afterwards.

The concert programme itself is set out on a single sheet with a list of the musicians on the reverse, which was slipped into the booklet. We have reproduced this at the start of the facsimile.

Finally, alongside this programme, a photo-essay gives us excellent images of the conductor at work, but also some familiar portraits: the rather tired, thin face of Furtwängler which adorned Heliodor’s reissues in the 1960s.

My thanks to Philippe Jacquard for the scan of the programme.