MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             

CD REVIEW



Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


Not available in the USA

Crotchet

 

 

Johannes BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68 (1876) [47.04]
Variations on a Theme of Haydn, Op 56a (1873) [19:43]
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/Wilhelm Furtwängler
rec. Grosser Saal, Musikverein, Vienna November 1947 (Symphony) and March-April 1949  (Variations)
NAXOS HISTORICAL 8.110998 [66:47] 


The Naxos-Furtwängler series dedicated to the conductor’s commercial recordings made between 1940 and 1950 has now reached volume five. It’s an all-Brahms disc and gives us the well-known Vienna traversals of 1947 and 1949. 

He left behind many recordings of the C minor Symphony, both commercial and broadcast, but even the greatest proponent of Furtwängler’s work would hardly dare to claim that this 1947 recording stands at the summit. The most dramatic and coruscating example is unfortunately only a torso – the wartime broadcast of the Adagio, an incandescent example of his art and as with so many wartime survivals an example of just how intense his conducting could become. The North German performance of 1951 is probably the most recommendable; it doesn’t quite capture the blazing power of the wartime Adagio but it is powerful – and in this respect superior to the 1947 Lucerne Festival, the 1950 V.P.O, the 1952 Turin or the 1953 Berlin. There’s a 1954 Venezuela performance that I’ve never managed to hear.

One of the most absorbing elements of this performance is to trace tempo modifications. These are of the usual, idiosyncratic Furtwängler kind though never as abrupt or as extreme as wartime symphonic broadcasts. Phrasing is plastic, the Vienna strings sing richly, the brass is clear but the percussion is recessed. One thing that one notices is the relative want of energy in transitional passages. This happens most obviously in the first movement but even in the finale – which is taken broadly up to tempo – there’s a sense of things held in check. However noble the peroration here may be, it has to be admitted that this studio performance fails to generate requisite voltage.

There are seven surviving Furtwängler Haydn Variations recordings. This one is rather becalmed. Having recently listened to a live Beecham performance given in the studio at around the same time and now issued for the first time on Somm, one notices the differences in matters of vitality. Warmly moulded though this Furtwängler performance is things can drag slightly. The seventh variation is a particular case in point, where the underlying pulse sounds rather turgid and receives insufficient rhythmic lift.

Ward Marston’s transfers sound well. He’s retained some surface hiss and those higher frequencies, thankfully, but whilst other restoration engineers might have reached for their graphs and “restored” that recessive percussion he’s given us a natural sounding pair of transfers. Neither performance shows the conductor quite at his best but they are important examples of his art nonetheless.

Jonathan Woolf

 

 

 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.