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8.112025 bk Furtwangler_Beethoven_EU 26-03-2010 9:49 Pagina 4 Great Conductors: Wilhelm Furtwängler Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770-1827) BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 73, ‘Emperor’ 38:44 1 I Allegro 20:34 Piano Concerto No. 5 2 II Adagio un poco mosso 7:55 3 III Rondo: Allegro 10:15 Symphony No. 4 Edwin Fischer, Piano Philharmonia Orchestra FURTW Wilhelm Furtwängler M Ä EL NG Recorded at EMI Abbey Road Studio No. 1, London, 19th and 20th February 1951 H L L E Matrix nos.: 2EA 15407/09, 15412/17 and 15421 I R W First issued on HMV DB 9661 through 9665 Symphony No. 4 in B flat major, Op. 60 36:54 4 I Adagio – Allegro vivace 10:59 5 II Adagio 12:24 6 III Menuetto: Allegro vivace 5:59 7 IV Allegro ma non troppo 7:32 Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra Wilhelm Furtwängler Recorded at the Musikvereinssaal, Vienna, 25th and 30th January 1950 Matrix nos.: 2VH 7207/09, 7204/06 and 7210/13 19 gs 50 din First issued on HMV DV 9524 through 9528 - 1951 Recor Reissue Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer: Mark Obert-Thorn Edwin Fischer, Piano Philharmonia Orchestra • Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra Wilhelm Furtwängler 8.112025 4 8.112025 bk Furtwangler_Beethoven_EU 26-03-2010 9:49 Pagina 2 Great Conductors: Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954) Swiss-born Edwin Fischer (1886-1960) continues to in the first movement – this ‘heavenly length’ tends to be regarded as a distinctive pianist with a particular ‘bulge’ the shape of the symphony as a whole; yet BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 5, ‘Emperor’ • Symphony No. 4 reputation in the Austro-German classics, an unvarnished Furtwängler’s searching and emotionally outreaching Gustav Heinrich Ernst Martin Wilhelm Furtwängler was Austro-German classics, for he conducted the premières but perceptive, spiritual even, interpreter particularly of conducting gives the music a dimension it can certainly born in Berlin on 25th January 1886 and died in Baden- of, for example, Hindemith’s Symphony Mathis der Maler, Bach (there is a time-honoured recording of The Well- take. With a Scherzo that is articulate and a Trio made Baden on 30th November 1954. His father was an in 1934, and Schoenberg’s (masterly if then ‘newly Tempered Clavier from the 1930s that continues to enjoy a communicative, and a finale (with exposition repeat) archaeologist and his mother a painter; such exploratory complex’) Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31, in 1928. Nor considerable reputation), Mozart, Beethoven and given time for its contours to be fully revealed (no and creative qualities might also be perceived in was Furtwängler a stranger to Bartók’s music – in 1927 he Schubert. As a teacher Fischer was very influential, not ‘historically informed’ mad dash here), there remains Furtwängler’s distinctive and personal brand of had conducted the first performance of Piano Concerto least on Daniel Barenboim and Alfred Brendel. Fischer strength and bubbling vitality; less of a ‘cheeky chappy’ musicianship. Wilhelm Furtwängler’s musical education No. 1 with the composer as the soloist, and, over twenty was also a conductor, author (including a book on than can be the case, but with a meaningful sense of began at an early age (with his instrument being the piano) years later, recorded Violin Concerto No. 2 with Yehudi Beethoven’s piano sonatas) and a chamber music purpose. and was fuelled in particular by a love of Beethoven’s Menuhin, and there are in circulation concert-recordings collaborator. And one senses a deeply meaningful These recordings were made just a few years music – which would develop into a lifetime’s of Furtwängler conducting Ravel and Stravinsky, and also collaboration with Furtwängler and the Philharmonia following the cessation of hostilities of World War II engrossment for him, and which is demonstrated here by pieces by his German composer contemporaries such as Orchestra. Although microphones were present and the during which time Furtwängler’s situation had been real two prime recorded examples of Furtwängler’s conducting Hans Pfitzner and Wolfgang Fortner. To this current red light was ‘on’, this was no inhibition to spontaneous and immediate. Although Beethoven’s music is (for us) – Beethoven’s music are heard. One recording is of a world- release, however, and for all his close association with the and revealing music-making. This finds its heart in a and these pieces in particular – more than two centuries famous piano concerto, in a classic version, and the other Berlin Philharmonic, Furtwängler also had success with spacious and rapt account of the slow movement, a ago, its timeless quality and universal meaning are typical is a symphony, no less well-known save it is somewhat the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Philharmonia transporting mediation that is rather denied to those of great music that musicians and listeners spend their dwarfed by the side of other Beethoven symphonies, and Orchestra (London) and it is with these two august preferring an ‘authentic’ view on the music, which is lives investigating. One senses with Furtwängler that which, in this particular account, is a rarity in ensembles that Furtwängler is heard in this collection of followed by an impishly flexible finale. music was indivisible with life. Leading up to the years of Furtwängler’s discography. Although Furtwängler’s two pieces by Beethoven. Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony was completed in World War II, and during that conflict, Furtwängler, posthumous reputation is as a conductor of the Austro- First, and in collaboration with Edwin Fischer, is a 1806. It is, ostensibly, a lighter, more relaxed work than because he remained in Germany (other prominent German classics – kept alive through a relatively small London-made Philharmonia Orchestra recording of the preceding Eroica Symphony and poles apart from the musicians went into exile), was branded a Nazi (or official discography now swelled by many releases of Beethoven’s so-called Emperor Piano Concerto. As so titanic release that is the Fifth Symphony, yet both this certainly a member of the Nazi Party). Although, post-war, exhumed concert-performances – Furtwängler was also a often with epithets, this royal nickname has nothing to do latter work and the Fourth were written concurrently. If he was cleared of such associations, this stigma dogged his composer (and not the only composer-conductor to put the with the composer and, in this case, it grew out of a the Fourth is a more classical piece than the giant career for quite some time. (Yehudi Menuhin, a Jew, act of creation above that of re-creation: Boulez is, and comment by Johann Baptist Cramer, the work’s London symphonic statements that surround it, it is no less worked with Furtwängler in the conductor’s last years. Klemperer was, of a similar mind). Furtwängler’s publisher who remarked that Beethoven’s Piano Concerto searching and moving; atmospheric and witty, too. The Before the war, though, he had refused to do so.) compositions include several pieces of expansive chamber No. 5 in E flat is “the emperor among piano concertos”. recording of it here is Furtwängler’s 1950 Vienna Furtwängler explained his actions thus: ‘I knew Germany music, a piano concerto, and three Bruckner-size However sweeping the statement, and however free the Philharmonic version, which should not be confused with was in a terrible crisis. I felt responsible for German symphonies. advertising, the resulting soubriquet is only really known the conductor’s more widely circulated account of 1952. music, and it was my task to survive this crisis, as much as Indeed, Bruckner’s music was also a very important to English-speaking music-lovers and yet does have a In this earlier traversal Furtwängler takes an expansive I could. The concern that my art was misused for part of Furtwängler’s repertoire (recordings, approved or certain justification in terms of its musical style. view, shadowy in the slow introduction, emphatic in the propaganda had to yield to the greater concern that otherwise, exist of Furtwängler conducting several of Completed in Vienna in 1811, the piano concerto was main Allegro. When we reach the development, German music be preserved, that music be given to the Bruckner’s symphonies). Indeed it was Bruckner’s dedicated to Archduke Rudolf, who was both Beethoven’s Furtwängler characteristically treats the appoggiatura in German people by its own musicians. These people, the Symphony No. 9 that Furtwängler included in his first patron and pupil. There is certainly weight and trenchancy the violins (and then woodwind) as a ‘long’ note, making compatriots of Bach and Beethoven, of Mozart and concert (in 1907), which was with the Munich to this 1951 performance recorded in the famous Studio it part of the expressive design rather than something Schubert, still had to go on living under the control of a Philharmonic Orchestra (owing to his father’s teaching No.1 in Abbey Road, London (an iconic venue ever since ‘crushed’. He is not alone in this (Ernest Ansermet, for regime obsessed with total war. No one who did not live commitments, Wilhelm had spent his childhood in this The Beatles were photographed crossing the nearby zebra example), but most conductors take the ‘short’ option. here himself in those days can possibly judge what it was city). Furtwängler then received engagements with various crossing in the 1960s), Edwin Fischer establishing a Furtwängler’s handling of the passage that leads into the like.’ Maybe, with these post-war recordings, these words Austrian and German orchestras and opera houses until, in commanding rhetoric from the off, the Philharmonia recapitulation may be thought of as too sectioned-off in are etched into the performances enshrined therein. 1922, he was appointed to the celebrated Leipzig Orchestra and Furtwängler ablaze in response.