Music Chat: Furtwängler's BEST--A Healthy Taste 

Dude, don’t pay any attention to the haters! What’s you do here for FREE is absolutely invaluable. You have reignited my love of classical music with your straight forward, honest and impassioned reviews. Grown ups don’t need to have unrealistic hero’s so it should not hurt them to hear about some flaws in these recordings. People need to chill, it’s not like you’re insulting their mothers. I appreciate your efforts.

The isolated moments bit is so accurate. I've ignored every other conductor for almost two decades because I thought F was the one. It was those isolated moments (fleeting dopamine rushes) that made me cling to his recordings as my "go to", especially for the Beethoven, Brahms, and Bruckner cycles (all mostly mono and old sounding). I'm very thankful for finding this channel, the top recordings you recommend have blown my mind.

I knew Furtwängler through Juan Rulfo, the great mexican writer, who show me some of his Beethoven's war recordings in LP when I was a teenager. I found now that his performances were very subjective, as if he wanted to convey his own philosofical vision servicing with the composer's music only as a vehicle for him. For example, I recall a Corolianus overture recorded live in 1944, in which I felt a profound expression of the horrors of the war, that berliners were experiencing with the bombings over the city in those days. I love that Corolianus, even it has not very much to see which Beethoven's... I agree that the poor sound makes difficult to appreciate most of his performings, but when he connected the outcome could be astonishing, even though his subjectivity also had mislead him often, like in his hystericall Beethoven's ninth of 1942. I'm not in any performer's fan club: all of them have their good and not so good moments. I cherish performances capable to make me feel excited, inspired, moved... and that is subjective too. Regards from Mexico, from where I'm keep listening.

I love this video for Dave dealing with European dates orders… ‘let’s see, 24,8… right …” 🤣

How long have I been begging you to this? Thanks for finally giving in.

This is such a terrific video, not only for itself but for the very practical reason of getting terrific advice on 4-5 Furtwangler recordings in decent sound, especially the Beethoven 9th! Finally, a Furtwangler recording of it that you can actually stand to hear - actually, in remarkably good mono sound with an orchestra that plays well! Bravo!

As a "moderate" Furtwänglerite, I am inclined to agree with you. At his best he was amazing. The rest could be pretty ordinary, or just plain bad.

Wow, that was quick! Thanks so much!

Dave, you delivered this analysis with great charm and wit. And you know what? I agree with a great deal of what you had to say. Your point about "cults" in classical music was especially compelling, because the "cults" you describe sound like super fans of any particular conductor who believe that conductor's work is the best, always the best. In that sense, I went through my Bernstein worship, and the same with Klemperer, Walter, Szell, Solti, karajan, Jochum, Ormandy (yes Ormandy!) and others, including Furtwangler. Your channel is fantastic at focusing on performance, period. Good job. We'll keep listening, and you keep talking!

Great stuff David, all of that needed to be said.

Lovely comments, spot on.

I was a "Furtwangler Person" in my 20s (1970s), but grew up to be a "Klemperer Person", though I still retain a fondness for the follies of my lost youth.

I used to be a Furtwangler cult follower and the Tahra set is about the best I owned among many cds.

A fair assessment. I like Furtwangler rather more than you do, but I can't argue with your judgements about the best recordings.

Re the December EIGHTH 1952 Berlin Eroica in that now high-priced Tahra box: That same Eroica is included in the 12 CD Audite BPO box, which is available at a reasonable price. FYI, FWIW. And I couldn't agree more about the Hamburg Brahms 1, it's a killer performance.

I always enjoy your clear-eyed perspective on "polarizing" issues, today's being Furtwängler's musical godliness and his moral shortcomings. But your semi-rant about the double standard applied when Stokowski is in the mix was pure fun. For you, too, it appears! I'm not well versed in WF's recordings other than the famous Tristan, but I have to say that his truly peerless "moment" there is the "Sink hernieder" love music in Act 2, especially including Brangaene's passage. No one else quite achieves that seeming suspension of time and meter. But the first act was always a slog for me. (Kleiber rescued me from that!)

Can second that the "Légendaires concerts d'après-guerre" Tahra box is absolutely great. Excellent sound (for Furtwängler recordings anyway) and the performances are great.

OMG! I want that Tahra box set! What a cover!

Dave I really appreciated your discussion on Furtwangler. I've been a Furtwangler collector for years, yet really needed to hear yours thoughts on his recordings. I would like to know about a Brahms set of his symphonies on the Virtuoso label released years ago?

In the Audite box there is a Funeral March of Siegfried, shocking both for the visceral vision of the conductor and for its sound quality, of an unbelievable presence. I think it is the best recorded in terms of sound that Furtwängler left.

When I was an embarrassingly young classical music aficionado (in the years before social media or the internet, when being one was suspect), I gravitated into Furtwängler cultism for no good reason except that what I had on hand--1950s Tristan and the Ring--WERE good. (There was also a great radio clip of the man explaining, in English, his disdain of "routine.") Then I acquired the Beethoven 9 (the '42 I'm pretty sure) and didn't know what to make of it, but felt I should like it because, well, Furtwängler. The proof was in the pudding: as years went on, I would sample WF this and WF that, in search of what had really moved me in those Wagner recordings, but never found it. So yes, WF falls within the normal curve of a great conductor, with a goodly amount of masterworks but an equally amazing amount of store-bought quality.

You are so right about “Original Tapes” meaning nothing. I cannot tell you how many recordings based on Original Tapes sound far worse than those remastered from LPs of the same recordings. EMI ( Every Mistake Imaginable) has a particularly lousy track record with their remasters

When I was stationed at the American Forces Network, Europe, in Frankfurt in the early 1970s, I handled and copied (for AFN's use, not mine, he said legalistically) 1940s-vintage tapes from our next-door neighbor, Hessischer Rundfunk. These were paper-backed tapes, which felt like tracing paper. They were very fragile, inflexible and prone to creasing and shedding of tiny particles (as if they had dandruff). These tapes often had distortions beyond the common sound limitations of that period's recordings and lots of tiny outages. Wear was a significant problem, possibly because the Germans at that time employed what we would now consider inside-out and upside-down configurations: Tapes were "oxide-out" (wound with the signal side exposed), and tape players - I used an early AEG/Telefunken Magnetophon - had their heads facing upward. So, when record labels make transfers of "original radio" paper-backed tapes from the '40s and early '50s (not just from Germany), they're quite likely working with damaged goods. Performing restorative hoodoo on a competently engineered '50s or '60s LP transfer from these tapes, presumably less worn at the time, may sound better than going back to the source material now.

Agh! The celi-kna-wangler cults! There are the wonderful highlights you mention, including the Scala Ring, but much dross too (& some very dull studio contributions). I suspend judgement on Furt. as a conductor because we only have 70 year old plus recordings, most of them poor radio broadcasts or worse. None of us heard him in the flesh. My mother was a Royal College of Music trained empirical musician, for whom the printed page was sacrosanct. Yet of all the conductors she heard in her prime two stood out: Furt. in Salzburg, Vienna & elsewhere & Kna in Bayreuth. She spoke of the recognisable quality of the Furt sound & of a "made in the moment" mesmerising element to performances she never forgot. In the moment, inaccuracies, liberties & what have you were irrelevant; unnoticed, even. I take her at her word but we only have the tapes &, as you carefully argue, they're variable. And the microphone seems to home in on the "errors" in performances that were crafted in the moment & not for repeat listening. As for the even more inconsistent Kna. (around whom too there is also a large cult), she was in awe of his masterful play with the Bayreuth acoustic. You get some hint of this in the Philips Parsifal, I think. Her point was that a subsequent performance of the same Opera with the same cast & orchestra sounded quite different & less magical. Elusive qualities in each case, probably incapable of being captured by microphones & only perhaps hinted at in the legacy we inherit. Primary listening choices for us today: never.

Thanks for putting this out. I have never listened to a Furtwangler recording so I am keen to learn what all the fuss is about. You have given some ideas of where to start. I agree with John about Klemperer. Musical taste is a persoanl thing, but it is difficult to evaluate artists from a previous recording era, but a bit easier thanks to remastering. It is said that Harnoncourt hated the Karajan sound when he was a cellist with the Vienna Symphony and Karajan was conducting. So many musical movements begin as a reaction against an established convention. So, late German romanticism gave birth to 12-tone serialism and period instruments. There was obviously a lot of tension in the womb at the time.

David, I enjoy your reviews: both your delivery style and the contents. There are so many recordings to choose from, and not enough quality advice. I first heard Furtwangler when somebody gave my father a set of Beethoven 9 symphonies by Furtwangler. In that time, I was a teenager and didn’t know anything about Furtwangler’s personality or about his relationship with the nazi government: I just enjoyed the music. I am much older now, have heard lots of music, andI am at a stage when I am revisiting music I heard when I was young. I encountered the problem of the huge number of Furtwangler recordings, and since I don’t have access to my father’s recordings, I have no idea about which records were the ones that my father had. I will not continue trying to find those recordings: I will limit myself to get the recordings you recommend. Thanks a lot for your help, and please keep up with your excellent work. Greetings from Tenochtitlan, capital city of the Aztecs.

It has been very interested for me to know your point about the "really good" Furtwangler's CD. Can you recommend other Furtwangler CD? It would be of interest to know your point of view about the complete RAI recordings: strong and weak points. Thanking you in advance

I bow at the altar of and light a candle every night, to the composer/conductor Johann Weiner Liposhitz. In fact i own all the original tapes of his 1918-1919 Tour. Keep in mind magnetic tape wasn't invented till the late 1930's. But still these reels are pure magic. They spin out gold every time I play them. Of course I'm saying this tongue in cheek, but Dave is so spot on about these music cult types.

What we would give to have Beethoven and Brahms around to give their opinion on Furtwängler's and others' performances.

It's true that a few of the RIAS transfers sound damaged (the October 1948 concert with the Schubert UNFINISHED & Brahms 4th), but fortunately most of what's in the RIAS box does sound better. Even so...Beautiful video : at last, Furtwangler given a badly needed Cult-echtomy. Cheers !

I agree with you about conductor cults, where their object of worship is almost infallible. Many famous maestros seem to sprout them, usually in the years following their passing. Not sure why.

You may releas a video about Knappertsbusch Bayreuth legacy

Thank you Herr Professor Hurwitz. You - almost as an aside - bring up an issue that has long been an important point for me - which is whether to purchase/listen to any recordings of Karajan or Böhm. Furtwängler too, I suppose - but as you note he wasn't a card-carrying Nazi. Whereas Karajan and Böhm clearly were. I have been collecting and listening for a long time - and have amassed thousands of LPs and CDs over the years - and not a single one is a performance by either of these two men. Am I missing something? Perhaps, but as Dave often notes there are - in any given period - many extraordinarily competent and musical conductors. So I'm perfectly happy to go through life without hearing for example any of Karajan's Beethoven - there are so many other, untainted performances to learn from and enjoy. If mine is a minority opinion I'm perfectly happy to accept that. And as always, thank you David for your insightful - and sometimes delightfully infuriating! - notes.

Interesting that Dave should mention Stokey because I was thinking of him during this Furtwangler fracas. Twenty years ago with the Philadelphia Orchestra assisting in the curation, ANdANTE released a historic compilation of remastered Stokowski recordings (mostly from Victor) in a 4 CD set, “Philadelphia Orchestra 1927-1940”. Included were significant excellent listenable performances of pieces by Debussy, Dubensky, Gliere, Hindemith, Mussorgsky, Ravel, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Schoenberg with excellent notes and librettos. Remarkable was that the selections were all contemporary for their time and lacked the usual Germanic suspects. Why mention this as an example? Rather than jumble a large bunch of disks in a box and label it “complete” (when it is not) it would be of greater value to thoughtfully assemble focused sets “worthy of your time and attention”. I was in a bit of a quandary about purchasing the reviewed Warner Furtwangler set. Both Dave and his colleague, Jed Distler, resolved the question for me with clarity, fairness, and a bit of humor.

I enjoy Fu‘s Pastoral rather more than you. This neither makes me a member of a cult nor you a bad critic. The pleasure of following a good critic is not only to learn but also occasionally to argue with him. In Furtwängler’s case, there will always be scope for disagreement. Any serious artist who goes against the grain raises the question whether the resulting insights justify the departures, inaccuracies or, as some see them, distortions. The Warner box poses a simpler question, who it is for. It is a superb achievement that gathers disparate sources in the best available sound. It is of great value for historians of recorded music and specialists concerned to track a great conductor‘s career. That does not make for a general recommendation. For my part, more modestly, I am happy to have cherished opera recordings in fresher sound and to plug gaps in my collection. I never bought the Wagner or Schubert orchestral music, for example, on individual discs. Nor do I dismiss Furtwängler in the studio out of hand. Beyond that, there are curiosities that I am happy to have but would never have bought as expensive individual albums. What of the sound? Sometimes we benefit from studying a painting or sculpture that has only survived in damaged form. Who would be without ancient art? In the same way, I will to a degree put up with some older recordings. Again, that does not make them library recommendations, but my life is the richer for them. Other than for a specialist audience Furtwängler’s discography does not lend itself to box sets. The best box sets are those often devoted to musicians who recorded swathes of repertoire with a leading label over a long period. Szell in Cleveland or Kubelik in Germany are fair examples. Like you, I enjoyed the Decca set of Britten performing other composers‘ work, especially for the Haydn and Mozart. That works because you have a small, high quality discography produced in good sound with a supportive production team. No one who died in 1954 had that opportunity. If Furtwängler was indeed dubious of recording, his doubts may be vindicated by an argument that tries to make his reputation dependent on a box of discs.

Thank you very much for your suggestions. Thumbs up.

Willi has always been my favourite conductor. For me, nobody could better the two 9ths of Beethoven and Schubert (8th in Austria). Not so much "Don Giovanni" or The Beethoven 4th and 6th. Wagner? Out of this world.

BTW, I just find your book Beethoven or Bust. Very interesting,

Not a cult member here. I've heard and own a lot (too much) Furtwangler and there are performances, as you have stated that are great and those are wonderful and have a special way of drawing me in, technical questions aside. When it comes to WF I don't worry my purdy lil' head about perfect. If I were asked I would also suggest the RIAS box which is easily available and the DG/Decca box from a couple of years ago, which now seems to be unavailable though was recently. The value of the DG/Decca box is: it does have the "wartime" recordings some of which I love and the post war radio broadcast some of which are also also wonderful. That said there's a lot in the box I don't care about particularly the DECCA material. And, for those of you who are thirsting for WF and can't get the DG/Decca box please don't try to find solace with the EMI Great Recording box. I bought it when it first came out for something like $20 and I find it pretty uninteresting with some exceptions. And don't buy the BPO issued FURTWANGLER Radio Recordings 1939-45; it's pretty much all in the DG box in almost as good sound and is now stupid expensive instead of just costly. To say he was the "greatest conductor of the 20th century" makes me cringe and I am a fan. It he's the greatest than how do Jochum, Munch, Monteux, Walter, Toscanini, Kleiber etc. fit in? And let's not forget the great Russian conductors like Mravinsky, Kondrashin etc? I'm only thinking about conductors relative to WF's age. btw... I've recently acquired a cache of Munch live broadcast that include some great and I mean great performances of Beethoven, Brahms and Schubert that are really, as you would say "smoking" Question: Why has Munch not acquired WF like cult status?

Herr Dr. Furtwängler composed more versions of Beethoven's Ninth than any other conductor... 😉

For some reason, I’m not really able to enjoy classical music in mono, so Furtwängler and other great names have never got my interest to spend my money on, with a few exceptions: Some Mozart with Böhm and Walcha’s first complete Bach Organ works. I prefer it to his stereo recordings, must be the performance or the Instrument I guess.

Dave, I note that when you mentioned the claim made in the Audite box that it is from "the best" source material, you immediately chimed in with the caveat, "not necessarily." Was wondering how that applied to the Dec 8, 1952, Eroica. That is, is *that* one in the Audite box noticeably better, noticeably worse, or more or less the same as the Tahra in terms of audio/mastering quality? I ask because the Tahra stuff is, as you mentioned, quite hard to source these days.

Still, the BPO 5th shows some "rubato" in the first movement which is not present in the Vienna version of the same year.

You should make a video where you read out some of the most psychotic, unhinged comments and laugh at them, I think that could be pretty entertaining for all of us!

Has anyone seen the movie Taking Sides? It concerns the denazifacation process involving Furtwangler played by Stellen Skarsgard. Unfortunately Harvey Keitel plays the US officer who is in charge of the interrogation, and his performance is over the top and brutish where you end up sympathizing with Furtwangler….despite this, it is an interesting subject and worth a watch….

For me the essential recording is his 1954 Walküre, recorded in the studio with the Vienna Philharmonic. Still a potential top recommendation for that opera, I think. I actually rate it more highly than the more famous Tristan. Outside of Wagner, I have to say his recordings don't interest me as much. Also, I remember Jed Distler saying once that the studio version of the Eroica is not fundamentally different from the live versions, and the first time I heard the Trauermarsch it did make a big impression on me.

I've got two Copies on His Master's Voice 78rpm off the Tchaikovsky Symphony Number 6 one Pre war which is very Rare because the Recording wasn't in the Catalogue very long and one Post war which is very common and both are in the Pre war Gate fold album's and both of them are in Mint condition and I just wondered if you knew how much they are worth so I can add them to the House Hold insurance

Are you done with Furtwängler now? My ears agree with yours on this - he’s capable of magic on his day, but very limited in terms of repertoire, and has no right to be placed any higher in the…er..pantheon than any of the other Germanocentrics - Walter, Böhm, Klemperer, possibly others, you know far better than I. Apropos of which I am looking forward to your talk on the new Böhm DG box, which I have been sampling this weekend (it has been out in the uk for a couple of weeks) and found to be full of treats!

Hurrah for Toscanini!

It's not always contradictory to praise individual moments while lauding organic, architectural unity. Mind you, I don't necessarily think Furtwangler always lives up to that ideal of architectural unity, so it's probably a bit contradictory or hypocritical in this case. But there are any number of pieces where the big moments don't actually land successfully if the architecture isn't in place. You especially hear this in pieces where the architecture isn't as clearly laid out as it is in Beethoven. Conductors get lost in surface detail in Debussy or Sibelius and the climaxes don't make their full impact, even if they sound sort of impressive on the surface.

Spot on David ! Couldn't agree more. We must end with cultism in music and let music speak for itself, Indeed in the case of Furtwängler less is more ! Give me Schumann 4 Schubert 9 Beethoven 3 wartime recording of 1944 or this one you just recommended and especially the Beethoven 9 from Lucerne 1954 and it'll be just fine. Keep up the good work !

Tell me where one buys single releases (apart from downloads) of historical recordings these days on physical media ? Mainstream issues using official sources are almost non-existent. You have to buy a box these days or resort to buying Bootlegs or out of copyright issues using needle drops.

15:30 In other words, he wasn’t an ideological Nazi or a Nazi sympathizer; but he was complicit with the Nazis. (Or perhaps more than that, given his reactionary ‘philosophical’ views.) I have enjoyed all of these recent Furtwangler videos - a great balance of sarcasm and fair-mindedness! I do have a question for people broadly though: is part of the Furtwangler veneration oddly actually a product of his Nazi affiliation? Leni Riefenstahl was probably more of an ideologue than Furtwangler, but it seems to me that part of her ‘appeal’ among certain groups comes/came not necessarily from her association with the Nazis, but from the ‘mystique’ of that association. Is there something similar going on here?

RIAS Boxset has alot of DIGITAL DISTORTION in the track. Poorly Engineer made it

Nice rebuttal to those insist upon insisting Furtwängler walked on water turned pyrite into gold by laying on hands. People take things rather too personally when they are cultic enthusiasts. Anyone who watches these videos with a fair mind knows you aren’t anti-F, anti-Bruckner, or anti-anyone else. You’re anti-poor recording and anti-poor interpretation and that’s it.

Well, not all Furtwängler-persons are as you describe them ... I think that, apart from the Nazi-question and the problem with historically informed performances (but here WF is not alone) so popular these days, there are two problems with his recorded legacy: 1) his technique was not always at top level (orchestra not playing together, wrong notes, etc. (see the five-to-seven-notes incipit of Beethoven's 5th)), and 2) his poor historical perspective in some quarters (two examples for all: the St. Matthew Passion and Otello, both of which sounding like Wagner - but there are other examples). For 2) there is nothing to say, it would be quite hard to defend his Bach or his Verdi (curiously enough, his Rossini is not as bad). For 1), it would be impossible (for WF or any other performer) to draw a sharp line dividing good and bad performances, there is a continuum from the extraordinary ones to the very poor ones. And how much of technical imperfection (by the way, both in the performance and, to a certain extent, in the sound) one is willing to bear for the sake of the interpretation (or musical conception) is a very subjective matter. One (Dave) could argue: but with other performers it is not so, take Toscanini, he is (almost) always perfect. Yes, but, save for Verdi and ... Mendelssohn, I rarely agree with his conception, especially in Beethoven (exceptions: 6th and 7th Symphony).

Are there that many Furtwanglerites left? Most of them must be dead or in the home by now. Japanese collectors seem to be as enthusiastic about WF ...and good old Kna...but in the U.S and Europe? The only Furtwangler news that I'd welcome is the discovery of the entire Covent Garden Ring from 1937. As likely to be found as the Yeti ....

Hope the FartWrangling has ended@