Beethoven by W.Furtwängler - Symphonies n°1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 + Presentation (Century’s recording)

Wilhelm FURTWÄNGLER (1886-1954) topped the Classica readers' vote (April 2017). This is both a little surprising and not surprising at all. A little surprising because he has been missing for more than sixty-two years, very few of us have had the chance to hear him in concert, and all that we can know about him comes from monophonic recordings that are not of a technical quality by today's standards. So "Furt" has remained a myth. For excellent reasons, and this is where popular suffrage is not really surprising. Furtwängler comes to us straight from the 19th century. The son of an archaeologist specializing in ancient Greece, consciously or not, he certainly lived from within this mythical belief that Germany was the successor to Greece, carrying an idealistic message, both Dionysian and Apollonian. What he gives us to hear is not a restored, "historically informed" past, it is the sound product of a sensitivity and a thought deeply rooted in the Romantic era, in the time of Wagner, Brahms, Bruckner. The music would be a living organism, and the performer, acting like an inspired prophet and as if in a trance, would bring out and feel the telluric forces at work in it. Nothing more anti-modern than this idealistic conception. That's why, when we listen to an interpretation of Furtwängler, we feel a different emotion. Furtwängler didn't like to fragment a sound recording, no matter how bad it was. It is in the flow of direct and integral interpretation that he manifests his presence, knowing how to hold the orchestral forces in check until they explode at the work's climax. During the recording session of Schumann's fourth and after a number of interruptions by the sound engineers, Furtwängler became angry and called out to the control room: ''I will not tolerate any more interruptions! I will raise my baton and conduct this symphony from one end to the other, without respite. At the first intervention of your engineers, I will stop everything and give up this recording for good. Please adjust your machines once and for all !'' This recording proved to be one of the greatest recordings ever made. At the pulpit, he was a charismatic leader. When he was driving, something special was happening. We don't know what exactly because his leadership was not specific and was more like the action of a shaman. His repertoire, essentially the German tradition, from Bach to Hindemith, supported his idealistic, profound and highly personal approach. And even when he went out of his sphere and went on excursions with Ravel, Tchaikovsky or Verdi, he loved them, "furtwänglérised" them. An old Russian prince will comment: ''This German-born Berliner understood the Slavic soul better than any Russian I've ever heard.'' To recognize the supremacy of the great Furt is to recognize that after him, something has been lost... END

Channel: Classical Music/ /Reference Recording

Views: 625,641

Keywords: beethoven, furtwangler, complete symphonies, overtures, overture, eroica, pastoral, O Freunde, nicht diese Töne, ode to the joy, hymne à la joie, hymne a la joie, symphony, symphonie 1, symphony 2, symphony 3, Symphony 4, fidelio, leonore, coriolan, symphony 5, symphony 6, symphony 7, symphony 8, symphony 9

Id: KQRBOr4L-yk

Length: 412min 25sec (24745 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 09 2017