Review: Furtwängler's Tainted Decca Legacy

This three-disc set contains five works: Beethoven's Coriolan Overture, Brahms' Second Symphony, Schumann's "'Spring" Symphony, Franck's Symphony in D minor, and Bruckner's "Romantic" Symphony. The performances range from mediocre to dreadful, and the sonics are lousy too. Had the name Furtwängler not been attached to them, no one would give them a second glance. Period.

[grantparsons]

I think of Furtwangler as a polar extreme with Szell at his opposite. There are long periods when I cannot listen with pleasure to either: Furt's dragging tempos, sloppyness & congealed textures; Szell's aggressive empiricism & lack of charm. But what a revelation it is to evesdrop on a world where these extremes existed! One of the joys of record collecting is what it reveals about a world where, compared to our own, diversity reined.

[felixdelbruck]

I went through a Furtwängler phase as a teenager but have found him less interesting and more unsavoury - as a person more so than as a musician - as I have grown older. Now I just read your review of Wilhelm Furtwängler: Art and the Politics of the Unpolitical, and want to thank you for articulating why! (And for your hugely entertaining talks!)

The fact remains that musicians who I respect deeply (like Claudio Arrau, or even Karajan) heard Furtwängler live in his best years and thought of him as a musical god. Why is that? Combination of recording vs live, good vs bad days, possible technical decline after the 1930s, and - maybe - differences in priorities? We can only speculate, but Arrau, as technically polished and detail-focused as he was, was himself very “German” in his musical ideology, and valued holistic musical “vision” above all else.

[geoffreybellah]

To add a bit more information about the dim recording of the Brahms Second: According to Decca producer John Culshaw, Furtwangler seemed nervous and edgy during the recording sessions at Kingsway Hall, wringing his hands and pacing about. Furtwangler then claimed that the cause of his anxiety was the multi-miking arrangement, which had so successfully been used in the past for Decca's FFFR recordings. He arbitrarily selected one mike, out of five, from the tree and insisted that it alone be hung over the orchestra before he would continue to record. The result, Culshaw says, was a diffuse and muddy sound, which subsequent remasterings can do little to improve. The mysticism here is why Furtwangler chose this particular mike over the four others and demanded that they be taken down and removed from his sight.

[johnfowler]

All five of these recordings were included in the 34 CD (+ one DVD) box issued in 2019: "Wilhelm Furtwangler: Complete Recordings On Deutsche Grammophon and Decca".
It was a better buy, and the DG recordings were easier to listen to than the Decca.
Later this month, Warner is going to issue a 55 CD box of the complete STUDIO recordings on HMV, Polydor, Telefunken, DG and Decca (Brahms and Franck).
Everything, even the DG and Decca stuff, will be newly remastered by Studio Art & Son Annecy.
Maybe they will sound better (maybe not).

[langsamwozzeck]

For a moment, I wonder if Rob's mystery critic colleague was Dave himself, but then he said to "listen to Karajan" and that ended that speculation real quick.

[mozpiano]

Hi Dave, I am wondering if you would be able to review some recordings of the Japanese conductor Koho Uno, many thanks!

[edwinbaumgartner]

I appreciate your opinion concerning Furtwängler. In my opnion, also, many of the recorded performances aren't worth the listening. But I have two further remarks.
1) My mother hated him, but she often told me that in his live-concerts people, especially women, have been nearly in ecstasy. Perhaps, we have the wrong sex and, moreover, cannot feel his magic, because we haven't experienced him in natura. Don't get me wrong: That's no excuse for bad recordings.
2) I ask myself, if he really was a great conductor. Yes, he had a vision. Yes, sometimes he got his vision realized by the orchestra, and then it could be great. But now imagine a conductor, let's call him Kurt Wanderer: He has great ideas about Bruckner's 4th and 8th, Beethoven's 5th and 7th, and no one ever conducted a better Strauss' "Don Juan". But the other Bruckner and Beethoven is rather dull, also the other Strauss, his Wagner is even more boring than his Verdi, and his technique of conducting is so bad that even the best orchestras often are uncertain, what he means and don't know how to follow his gestures. Would one call Wanderer "a great conductor" because of his intentions and a handful exceptional fine performances?

[patrickhows]

Another thoroughly enjoyable video. I can't resist from quoting from the original Gramophone reviews, courtesy of Amazon.
Brahms 2: A stately meditation, philosophical, the interior life, a quieter tonal fire, and a milder smaller flame than we sometimes feel.(1/1952)
Franck: Furtwängler lives, obviously in a different time scale from the rest of us. Technically faultless, this disc has depth, clarity and brilliance over and above that of the competing versions.(4/1954)
Lol!

[katzofe]

Hi Dave, i'm curious about your audio system esp the speakers, tnks

[stuartclarke]

I really like some of Furtwangler's recordings, mostly live and mostly with the BPO. And of course I got castigated for championing the awful 'Nazi' Ninth. But from where can I be getting such pleasure, except from the sound? He doesn't look like Elvis or do sexy dance videos. I'm genuinely interested in why YOU think he was a 'great conductor' by the way. 'Conception'? Not sure what that is. As for mysticism, not sure about that either. If you mean I get goose bumps and go out looking for sunsets after hearing his Adagio from the Ninth, that might have an element of truth to it. He's an odd case I must say. In some ways I don't think he wanted to be a 'recording artist' at all. Which of his recordings do you really like? I think there IS a mystery in our responses to music. It's not in the sound necessarily, or in us necessarily, it's the third element in the structure, ie the relation relating to itself. In that sense Furtwangler has some amazing 'moments', like his transitions from the third to final movements in the Beethoven Fifth and Schumann 4th. I think his Mozart awful, but like his Wagner warts and all. He was probably a much better artist in the 20s or 30s, but the technology then was so poor it's hard to tell. I like his Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Wagner from that period. I suppose I would say that some of his magic moments are worth hours of perfectly executed, splendidly recorded, but essentially boring offerings from others.
Anyway, to hell with it, I'll keep listening to the stuff that inspires me, in the Latin sense - the breath of life.

[fritzpoppenberg]

I think Furtwängler took a somewhat artistic approach to musical interpretation, and there IS something mystical about the artistic process, because it always involves going beyond one’s limited understanding. Or call it something else if you don’t like the term “mystical”, just call it “free” or “personal” or “intuitive” perhaps. I like the Cesar Franck recording, it’s unusual and perhaps not as faithful to score as we are used to, but I can’t think of it is as bad at all. The music is there. That’s all I can say. You’re right though that people would not care about Furtwängler today if not for the legacy of his name, he really does not fulfill contemporary tastes. That may change in the future though.

[kavansl]

David, can you do a talk about great Furtwangler recordings?

[harinagarajan]

Mr Hurwitz: I was recently reading something that Felix Weingartner has written about the Bulow, Liszt and Wagner school. He complains about why they introduce luftpause when there is none or speed up when they look at a forte approching and then introduce a pause just after (you hear this a lot with Furtwangler and to a lesser degree from Jochum, Abendroth and couple of others) followed by a huge Ritard. There is a 1945 version of the Frank Symphony conducted by Furtwangler that is full of such stuff (but exciting as anything). Whenever i have asked "experts" about such stuff they start talking about beating phrases as opposed to bars and Schenkarian versus all others. Could you have a short program please on this please? For listeners like me (and there are millions like me) who are "non professional" (and of the older generation!). I was also recently reading about Furtwangler's reaction Toscanini conducting Brahms 2 symphony in the mid 1920's which Fritz Busch and Serkin seem to have greatly enjoyed but Furtwangler seemed to have hated and Toscanini seems to have responded by saying the Steinbach did not seem to have any problems! (this is not about one conductor versus another (which is doing np one any service) but about a style of conducting). Will be grateful if you could have a program like this. Hari (sorry i went on and on!)

[BVcello]

Vanitas vanitatum... Had Furtwängler only left us his Tristan and Schumann 4, we would never even have this discussion. But the man was prone to vanity and was most probably flattered with every proposal to record his work... Although you make your point in a very direct manner, in essence I believe you're right... for the rest I avoid the discussion as much as I can

[JoseMLopez-fbky]

Hello, David. What do you think of Knappertsbusch? He is another conductor with a "mystic" legend around him, whose secret most of the time was a personal hate for rehearsals.
Congratulations for your youtube chanel.
Greetings from Spain.

[lukewaddell]

Furtwangler's completely non-existent podium technique just boggles the mind. Giving an entrance is more or less the first thing you learn in a conducting class after basic patterns, but Furtwangler couldn't even manage week 2 of Conducting 101. As a young listener discovering classical music I had a Furtwangler phase, but I grew out of it. I still think his best Brahms (the NDR and Berlin 1sts, the 1945 VPO 2nd, the 1949 BPO 4th) is fantastic, but I could just as well forget everything else. His Beethoven is too slow, his Bruckner is too mannered, and everything's just too heavy.

[zagraniczniak]

Did you like it? I'm still not sure.

[veselinboyadzhiev]

It would be interesting if you did a video about the Furtwangler stuff which is actually worth a listen.

[mrmrosullivan]

That review made me laugh more than I have to anything for a while. Concentrated gold. From the vocal versions to the “bullshit, Rob!”, “mysticism!” and “keep on listening… to something else!”, one of your best.

[quietmind]

David, there has to be some Furtwangler recordings that have some redeeming qualities . Can you perhaps devote a video to those?
Where the performances are plausible and the sonics aren't a disaster?
There has to be something.