8.111348 bk Furtwangler_Wagner_EU 14-12-2009 10:25 Pagina 4 Great Conductors: Wilhelm Furtwängler WAGNER Richard WAGNER (1813-1883) Tannhäuser Tannhäuser • Lohengrin 1 Overture 14:02 Recorded at the Musikvereinssaal, Vienna, 2-3 December, 1952 Götterdämmerung First issued on Electrola WALP 534 UR M F TWÄ Lohengrin EL NG 2 Prelude (Act 1) 9:59 H L IL E Recorded at the Musikvereinssaal, Vienna, 4 March, 1954 R W First issued on HMV ALP 1220 Götterdammerung 3 Dawn and Siegfried’s Rhine Journey (Prologue) 12:04 Recorded at the Musikvereinssaal, Vienna, 8 March, 1954 First issued on HMV ALP 1016 4 Siegfried’s Funeral Music (Act 3) 9:17 Recorded at the Musikvereinssaal, Vienna, 2 March, 1954 First issued on HMV ALP 1016 Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra 19 gs 52 din - 1954 Recor 5 Starke Scheite schichtet mir dort (Brünnhilde’s Immolation, Act 3) 19:37 Kirsten Flagstad, Soprano Philharmonia Orchestra Kirsten Flagstad Recorded in Kingsway Hall, London, 23 June, 1952 Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra First issued on HMV ALP 1016 Philharmonia Orchestra Wilhelm Furtwängler Wilhelm Furtwängler Reissue Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer: Mark Obert-Thorn 8.111348 4 8.111348 bk Furtwangler_Wagner_EU 14-12-2009 10:25 Pagina 2 the music to move forward in an organic way. though, continue to give concerts and make recordings, Great Conductors: Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954) The two orchestral excerpts from and between 1958 and 1960 she was director of WAGNER: Tannhäuser: Overture • Lohengrin: Prelude to Act 1 Götterdammerung, the final part of the tetralogy Der Norwegian National Opera. Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring), first heard complete Quite obviously, Flagstad and Furtwängler were Götterdämmerung: Dawn and Siegfried’s Rhine Journey, Siegfried’s Funeral in Wagner’s custom-built Bayreuth Festspielhaus in close as musicians over an extended period of time; and Music and Brünnhilde’s Immolation 1876, include Dawn and Siegfried’s Rhine Journey they also shared unfortunate experiences during or (from Act I), which opens in exploratory fashion and related to World War II. In Flagstad’s case, she Gustav Heinrich Ernst Martin Wilhelm Furtwängler Philharmonic and Philharmonia Orchestra (London) climaxes with the gung-ho Siegfried exultant in his returned in 1941 to Nazi-occupied Norway to join her was born in Berlin on 25th January 1886 and died in and it is with these two orchestras that Furtwängler is adventuring. But, in Act III, while hunting, Siegfried second husband; during this period he collaborated Baden-Baden on 30th November 1954. His father was heard in a collection of pieces by Richard Wagner meets the sword of Hagen and is murdered; the Funeral with the Nazis and was arrested at the end of hostilities. an archaeologist and his mother a painter; such (1813-1883), maybe the epitome of a composer March, beginning with ominous strokes on the timpani, (It must be said that Flagstad’s own wartime record exploratory and creative qualities might be perceived enshrining Germany and its real and folkloric history in rises to an intense lament, heroic yet despairing. was blemish free.) in Furtwängler’s distinctive and personal brand of music. Brünnhilde, having believed that Siegfried had Furtwängler’s situation was real and immediate. musicianship. Wilhelm Furtwängler’s musical Not that Furtwängler’s repertoire was limited to the betrayed her, now realises that he had not; she takes the Although Wagner’s music is (for us) from more than a education began at an early age (with his instrument Austro-German classics, for he conducted the ring from Siegfried’s corpse and immolates herself on century ago, its timeless quality and universal meaning being the piano) and was fuelled in particular by a love premières of, for example, Hindemith’s Symphony his funeral pyre; the Rhine now floods and the stolen are typical of great music that musicians and listeners of Beethoven’s music, which would develop into a Mathis der Maler, in 1934, and Schoenberg’s (masterly gold ring is reclaimed by the Rhinemaidens and spend their lives investigating. One senses with lifetime’s engrossment for him. Although his if then ‘newly complex’) Variations for Orchestra, Op. Valhalla combusts to signal the end of the reign of the Furtwängler that music was indivisible with life. posthumous reputation is as a conductor of the Austro- 31, in 1928. Nor was Furtwängler a stranger to gods, the music itself telling of destruction as well as Leading up to the years of World War II, and during German classics, kept alive through a relatively small Bartók’s music – in 1927 he had conducted the first redemption through love. that conflict, Furtwängler, because he remained in official discography now swelled by many releases of performance of Piano Concerto No. 1 with the In Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene, the soloist is Germany (other prominent musicians went into exile), exhumed concert-performances, Furtwängler was also composer as the soloist, and, over twenty years later, the Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad (1895-1962), was branded a Nazi (or certainly a member of the Nazi a composer (and not the only composer-conductor to recorded Violin Concerto No. 2 with Yehudi Menuhin her singing distinguished by beauty of tone, unforced Party). Although, post-war, he was cleared of such put the act of creation above that of re-creation: Boulez (Naxos 8.111336) – and there are in circulation strength, accurate intonation and the ability to spin a associations, this stigma dogged his career for quite is, and Klemperer was, of a similar mind). concert-recordings of Furtwängler conducting Ravel long and precise vocal line. Flagstad was born into a some time. Yehudi Menuhin, a Jew, worked with Furtwängler’s compositions include several pieces of and Stravinsky, and also pieces by his German musical family, her father being a conductor and her Furtwängler in the conductor’s last years. Before the expansive chamber music, a piano concerto, and three composer contemporaries such as Hans Pfitzner and mother a singing coach and a pianist. Although initially war, though, he had refused to do so. Furtwängler Bruckner-size symphonies. Wolfgang Fortner. This current release though, a appearing exclusively in Scandinavia, Flagstad made it explained his actions thus: ‘I knew Germany was in a Indeed, Bruckner’s music was also a very collection of music by Wagner, was very much a staple to Bayreuth early in the 1930s and to the Metropolitan terrible crisis. I felt responsible for German music, and important part of Furtwängler’s repertoire (recordings, of Furtwängler’s repertoire, heard here in recordings Opera House in 1935, where she established herself as it was my task to survive this crisis, as much as I could. approved or otherwise, exist of Furtwängler conducting that would be amongst the conductor’s last. a leading exponent of the rôles of Isolde and The concern that my art was misused for propaganda several of Bruckner’s symphonies). Indeed it was Tannhäuser, to a libretto by the composer, was first Brünnhilde, also singing them (and Senta, The Flying had to yield to the greater concern that German music Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 that Furtwängler included heard in Dresden in 1845. The Overture begins in Dutchman) at Covent Garden (London) conducted by be preserved, that music be given to the German people in his first concert (in 1907) – which was with the solemn grandeur, but Furtwängler is canny to keep the Thomas Beecham, Fritz Reiner and, indeed, by its own musicians. These people, the compatriots of Munich Philharmonic Orchestra (owing to his father’s music on the move and avoid a sense of stasis, so that Furtwängler. Flagstad also included Alceste (Gluck), Bach and Beethoven, of Mozart and Schubert, still had teaching commitments, Wilhelm had spent his the faster music is allowed to be a natural out-flowing Dido (Purcell) and Leonore (in Beethoven’s Fidelio) in to go on living under the control of a regime obsessed childhood in this city). Furtwängler then received from it; indeed, this is a nicely integrated performance, her repertoire, and she gave the première of Richard with total war. No one who did not live here himself in engagements with various Austrian and German one full of ceremony, energy and beautiful entreaties, Strauss’s Four Last Songs in May 1950 in London those days can possibly judge what it was like.’ Maybe, orchestras and opera houses until, in 1922, he was the return to the opening passages made inevitable and (Royal Albert Hall) – the conductor was Furtwängler with these post-war recordings, these words are etched appointed to the celebrated Leipzig Gewandhaus gloriously noble. The Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin and she is also his Isolde on the famous complete into the performances enshrined therein. Orchestra, in succession to the legendary Arthur (once again to the composer’s own text, and first heard recording of Tristan und Isolde made in London in Nikisch, and also to the Berlin Philharmonic. For all his at Weimar in 1850) here exudes radiant spirituality to a 1952. Her final operatic appearance was in London’s Colin Anderson close association with the Berlin Philharmonic, gleaming and burnished climax, Furtwängler ensuring Mermaid Theatre in 1953 when she sang Dido. She did, Furtwängler also had success with the Vienna maximum expression while keeping a pulse that allows 8.111348 2 3 8.111348 8.111348 bk Furtwangler_Wagner_EU 14-12-2009 10:25 Pagina 2 the music to move forward in an organic way. though, continue to give concerts and make recordings, Great Conductors: Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954) The two orchestral excerpts from and between 1958 and 1960 she was director of WAGNER: Tannhäuser: Overture • Lohengrin: Prelude to Act 1 Götterdammerung, the final part of the tetralogy Der Norwegian National Opera.