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Although the appearance of Furtwängler reissues
invariably generates encomiastic orgies in the musical press, there
is no danger of that happening in these pages. Furtwängler being
Furtwängler, there isn’t much one can say about these performances
in a spirit of approbation—but, strangely enough, there isn’t much
one feels like saying in a spirit of praise, either. This, I
suspect, is less Furtwängler’s fault than it is of his repackagers.
There is no demographic recording companies dote on quite so much as
those fanatics whose blind adulation of their chosen artist leads
them to snap up everything that artist has ever done, usually
against their better aesthetic judgment. The celebrity mania of pop
culture is at once the most hideous and the most obvious
manifestation of such idolatrous tendencies; I’m sad to say that the
classical music world isn’t immune from it either—as the spate of
Celibidache box sets that flooded the market after that charlatan’s
death made amply clear. Our generation of listeners seems to have
settled on Furtwängler as its sacred cow, and Deutsche Grammophon is
happily capitalizing on this.
At the very least one is able to derive from this release
a clear picture of Furtwängler’s incontestable performing abilities:
of the extraordinarily high level of inspiration he maintained from
performance to performance, and of the consistency with which he
managed to elicit overwhelming responses from his orchestras. That
said, none of these performances would be a first recommendation for
buyers new either to the work or to Furtwängler. The sound quality
is uniformly terrible, and most of the performances have been
bettered by Furtwängler himself on other occasions.
 The
Brahms 2 with the Vienna Philharmonic is a case in point. It is
clearly of the same mind as Furtwängler’s (picture) earlier
recording with the Berlin Philharmonic, but the German recording
puts this one completely in the shade. The essentially Apollonian
leanings of the Vienna Philharmonic make a strange bedfellow for the
conductor’s Dionysian approach, and in any case the greater
muscularity and precision of the Berlin orchestra far outweigh any
claims the Austrian band may have to tonal finesse. The Viennese
strings, as sweet-toothed as usual, sound distinctly overmatched by
the brass in the finale’s climactic moments, where the frenzy of
Furtwängler’s interpretation would otherwise be breathtaking.
Furtwängler’s approach is clearly not as immune to orchestral
differences as the liner notes would like us to believe, and all one
needs to do to figure this out is to compare the fortissimo
statements of the finale’s main theme between the two recordings:
the Berlin Philharmonic is overwhelming, while the Vienna
Philharmonic, with its comparatively lackluster articulation and
shallowness of sonority, is merely impressive.
The
Tchaikovsky, more so than the Brahms, strikes one as an
utterly unnecessary release. It replicates Furtwängler’s 1938 studio
recording in every key detail, but suffers from poorer orchestral
playing and truly execrable recorded sound—as the liner notes
barefacedly point out. There are some truly awful lapses in
intonation and ensemble, of which the consistently sour brass in the
third movement is the most egregious example. That said,
Furtwängler’s interpretation is itself of stunning originality. It’s
certainly a more humane approach than the violent histrionics to
which we’ve become accustomed under modern interpreters—but one
could say that it is more humane than the work merits. Certainly
Mravinsky’s quicksilver, take-no-prisoners scherzo is closer to
Tchaikovsky’s intent than Furtwängler’s portentous march to the
scaffold, overwhelming as the latter may be. On the other hand,
Furtwängler’s ability to spin long lines of ineffable rapture reaps
rewards in the second and fourth movements, which emerge as
compositions far less bathetic than they are popularly made out to
be.
The remaining items are far less offensive in sound quality than the
Tchaikovsky and certainly far more desirable as acquisitions. Of the
‘filler’ items the Schumann Manfred Overture is probably the
most impressive: the sheer depth of sonority Furtwängler attains in
the opening bars is wondrous, and the psychological depths of the
piece are probed with unparalleled sensitivity—the loneliness of the
closing section is particularly poignant. The Strauss Don Juan
receives an utterly incendiary reading that easily blows away
Furtwängler’s lackluster postwar remake (on the EMI Great Artists of
the Century label). Along with the combustible Leonore no. 3
overture, this performance best showcases Furtwängler’s ability to
vacillate between wild tempo extremes while retaining an organic
sense of structure. The Brahms Haydn Variations is
comparatively disappointing: despite some lovely woodwind phrasing
in the third and fourth variations the performance is strangely
marmoreal, igniting only at the peroration of the concluding
passacaglia, when the chorale theme returns. Furtwängler seems
uncharacteristically disinterested throughout, and the quality of
ensemble certainly suffers from it—especially in the faster
variations, in which the horns sound flabby.
The Hindemith Symphonic Metamorphosis
receives an endearing though not entirely convincing interpretation.
It shows Furtwängler in a more relaxed light than that to which
we’ve become accustomed—but I am at a loss as to whether that is a
good thing. One could not exactly call this performance goofy, but
one is disinclined to believe that Furtwängler conducted it with a
straight face. The Ravel Rapsodie Espagnole, too, is
unclassifiable: one couldn’t call it bad, but one couldn’t call it
French either. It is somewhat like a mutt whose very grotesquery
compels one’s affection. The Franck Symphony, on the other hand, is
a revelation: Furtwängler emphasizes its Teutonic qualities (that is
to say, those of rigorous architectonic construction) while reveling
in its French ones (that is to say, overt concern with surface
sonority). The performance moves with an inevitability that almost
convinces you that the Franck Symphony is the masterpiece the French
make it out to be. Monteux is preferable for those who want good
sound, but Furtwnagler’s is an indispensable document.
 The
Beethoven Seventh Symphony receives an uneven
performance, but this is admittedly a piece that does not play to
Furtwängler’s virtues. A work such as this wants more rhythmic
precision and clarity of texture than Furtwängler’s monumental,
essentially harmony-centric approach allows. Though the results
might not be as satisfying as we would like, the performance is
nonetheless hewn from inspiring materials. The poco sostenuto
introduction is of a magnificent portentousness and if the
succeeding vivace is less vivacious than, say, Carlos
Kleiber’s, it compensates with a granitic weight of sound that makes
the coda’s final gallop especially exhilarating. The allegretto is
saturated in Furtwänglerian pathos, but here one wants a brisker
view of a movement that has been sentimentalized into oblivion by
thousands of lesser interpreters. The scherzo receives a sturdier
performance than is usual, but the superannuated grandiosity of the
trio does not sound well to modern ears. The orchestral playing in
the finale is tremendous, but this movement in particular fares far
better at the hands of a literalist such as Toscanini or Carlos
Kleiber. In Furtwängler’s hands it sounds furious, even apocalyptic,
but entirely destitute of that litheness which makes for the
extraordinary performance.
Equally controversial, though far more
successful, is the Bruckner Eight Symphony recorded with the Vienna
Philharmonic in 1944. Furtwängler’s supreme status as Brucknerian
has never been questioned, but listeners accustomed to the coolness
of a Karajan may find his incandescent approach unsettling: his
reading of the symphony in the Haas edition clocks in at 77.00, over
five minutes faster than Karajan’s 82.49. This is a thrusting,
Manichean reading of Bruckner’s greatest work, thrillingly
declamatory at climactic points, but capable also of the most
melting melodic effusions—the liquid sonority achieved in the third
movement, in particular, is headily affecting. The reading as a
whole is extraordinarily coherent, the work’s component parts
falling into each other in a manner so organic that all other
performances immediately seem artificial. This, I am convinced, has
much to do with the speed at which the faster movements are taken.
Those used to Karajan’s slow canter in the scherzo will be
overwhelmed by the propulsion of Furtwängler’s reading: here, as
elsewhere, the sheer fervor of the interpretation and of the
orchestral playing beggar belief. There are caveats, however.
Bruckner’s heaven-storming last movement coda proves to be something
of a disappointment—it strikes me as too rushed and missing in that
concentrated weight of sonority which defines most of Furtwängler’s
work. For all the excitement that Furtwängler generates, too, the
inner serenity of Karajan’s lauded VPO recording ultimately proves
elusive. Furtwängler’s Bruckner quakes and quivers as one before the
throne of judgment, but it has not the beatific smile of those
already in heaven. And yet who can blame him, considering the
barbarous wartime conditions under which the concert was no doubt
given?
Furtwängler’s greatness is most palpable in the
Schubert ‘Unfinished’ and the Wagner selections. The former receives
a desperately moving performance, by turns poignant and volatile,
the coda of the last movement, to paraphrase Theodor Adorno,
‘opening up into an undefined vastness’. The performance as a whole
is an eloquent encapsulation of those psychic powers that, in the
central Austro-German repertoire, had Furtwängler towering over all
his competitors: nobody, not Karajan, not Carlos Kleiber, certainly
not Toscanini, could have elicited such poignant, terrifying sounds
in the transition between exposition and development in the first
movement.
The visionary intensity of the Schubert is, if
anything, surpassed in the Wagner disc. The sound here is almost as
bad as on the Tchaikovsky disc, but this time the interpretations
are so transcendent as to preclude sonic considerations altogether.
The tortuous melodic convulsions of the Tristan Prelude and
Liebestod soar with unforgettable erotic fervor, and the
Parsifal Karfreitagszaubersmusik has a luminousness about it
that is altogether sublime. In contrast, there is a tantalizing
E-major dirtiness about the Tannhauser overture, especially in the
thrilling shimmers of string tone that decorate the ‘Venusberg’
theme after the slow introduction has passed—this is one of the few
performances of the work that doesn’t leave you feeling that Wagner
should have written it in E flat major. The Meistersinger overture
captures perfectly the bourgeois pomp of the tradesmen’s guilds that
Wagner sought to parody, and its culminating contrapuntal display is
rendered with glorious verve. Most transcendent of all is the
Gotterdammerung funeral march, one of those rare, all-consuming
performances which leave the imagination spent and the mind reeling.
Even the odd lapse in ensemble seems only to heighten the pathos of
the performance. Unlike Solti and his numerous imitators Furtwängler
is properly funereal at the outset; only at the appearance of the
sword motif does he shift into declamatory mode, and the results are
spectacular—certainly more impressive than those borne of the
Solti-esque approach, which is violent from the very outset. I would
not go so far as to agree with the liner notes in reading into
Furtwängler’s performance all the pain and suffering of a ‘bruised
and battered Europe’—but I must agree that the pain and pathos of
Wagner’s conception are made more palpable here than in any other
performance of my knowledge. It is a terrifying, cataclysmic
reading, by any standard one of the great orchestral documents of
the past century.
It remains to be seen, however, whether the
inclusion of the excellent Bruckner and Franck and of the
transcendent Schubert and Wagner justify purchasing what is
undoubtedly a money-grabbing release on Deutsche Grammophon’s part.
None of these performances would be a first recommendation, largely
due to their very rudimentary mono sound; for those for whom clarity
of sound is not a top priority, most of these interpretations have
nonetheless been surpassed by Furtwängler himself on various
occasions. The Berlin Philharmonic account of the Brahms Second
Symphony and Haydn Variations (with the rest of the Brahms
Symphonies, from Music and Arts) is preferable to the present one;
the studio recording of the Tchaikovsky ‘Pathetique’ with the Berlin
Philharmonic is superior to the present performance in all regards.
Furtwängler’s view of the Beethoven Seventh is arguably better
savored on another live recording, with the Berlin Philharmonic,
from 1943 (on the Deutsche Grammophon Dokumente label). It is
difficult to say who will be best served by this release.
Furtwängler may be Furtwängler, and his very name on the cover of
the box may be enough to justify a purchase by some of his more
fervent fans—but for those who don’t allow their musical judgment to
be submerged under effusions of adulation, he is best encountered on
other recordings.
Readers' Comments
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365:
12.12.1998 © Chia Han-Leon
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