AVAILABILITY
www.tahra.com
Tahra continues its
increasingly comprehensive Furtwängler
series with this 4 CD set of well-known
performances, from diverse sources,
given with his "other" orchestra,
the Vienna Philharmonic. He had conducted
the orchestra since 1922 but it was
only with Weingartner’s resignation
five years later that he had the chance
to succeed to the position of Principal
Conductor - a by no means easy step
given some players’ opposition. The
recordings come from a seven-year period
between 1944 and 1951 and divide fairly
evenly between commercial HMV discs
and radio broadcast survivals. All have
been issued before over the years and
a number in multiple editions but Tahra’s
remastering is of a high standard and
this makes for a convenient Vienna box
for the conductor’s many admirers.
The Bruckner Eight
of 1944 is one of at least four performances
to have survived and is generally reckoned
to be his most powerfully engaged and
rugged. He did return to it in Vienna,
commercially, a decade later (in the
last year of his life) and dispensed
with the modified Haas version he had
habitually used and substituted the
Schalk edition instead. But this off-air
wartime recording, in memorably immediate
sound, has a blazing authority, command
and control of line that certainly stands
comparison (and more) with the conductor’s
older, slightly mellower (if still spiritually
energised) self. The Adagio is the coagulatory
heartbeat of the reading, immense and
tragic, unerringly and comprehensively
well directed. The second disc is a
mixed bag of commercial recordings.
The Mendelssohn lacks the spring and
drama of, say, Beecham, and if Eine
Kleine Nachtmusik is hardly essential
Furtwängler fare it’s still notable
for the romanticised gestures in the
Romanze second movement, a locus classicus
of the conductor’s visionary style in
compressed classical form. There’s a
really splendid Emperor Waltz – to rival
Clemens Krauss, this; why didn’t Furtwängler
conduct more Johann Strauss? – and the
second disc ends with the HMV Beethoven’s
Fourth Symphony from January 1950. More
performances of this symphony have survived
from the Vienna Philharmonic than Berlin
(three to one, if you’re counting).
As with a number of the 1950 commercial
discs the recorded sound is a bit on
the ascetic side with a corresponding
lack of bloom – not clinical exactly,
certainly not Studio 8H, but just too
cold for ideal listening. Still, this
is a fine reading, quite classical,
not overtly interventionist, with a
superbly sculpted slow movement as its
high point, along with one or two peculiarities
of phrasing in the finale.
His two commercial
recordings of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony
were made a few years apart - this Vienna
one from 1950 and the Berlin recording
of 1953. A wartime performance from
1943 (Berlin) has survived as has the
1948 Stockholm and a 1954 Vienna Philharmonic
(live, taped in Salzburg). Tahra has
retained shellac surface noise but there
is real immediacy and presence of sound
in their transfer. There is exceptional
delicacy and finesse in the Allegretto,
which inclines rather more to an Andante
in his hands, but its sense of sculptural
significance is palpable and intensely
moving. And the finale is dramatic and
powerfully cast, a crusading drive animating
its proportions. Hysterical applause
(lengthy; I rather wish Tahra had cut
it) greets the performance of Leonore
III (Salzburg, August 1950). The off-air
tape preserves the performance in rather
brash sound – nothing subtle about it
at all. The commercial Vltava (or Die
Moldau) is too concerned with airy legato
to make much impression; from the very
slow flutes in the opening paragraphs
to the stentorian Wagnerianisms later
on and the flippant triangle at the
conclusion, and despite some glorious
aquatic colouration, this is strictly
for admirers only.
His Haydn Symphony
No.88 is one of a very few performances
of this composer’s works to have survived
in Furtwängler’s discography (I
believe, in addition to this, only Symphonies
94 and 104 are extant). I have to say
this Stuttgart performance is less impressive
than the Berlin studio recording for
Deutsche Grammophon and it doesn’t reveal
Furtwängler as an especially communicative
or openhearted classicist (the Minuet
is heavy, listless and devoid of humour).
There’s a good Coriolan from 1951 and
to end this fourth disc, and the set,
Schumann’s First from the same concert,
given in Munich in October 1951. This
receives a weighty, explicitly romanticised
performance, with a huge sense of power
and a blazing statement of the brass
chorale in the first movement. He slows
down the Scherzo appreciably – probably
in the interests of binding the rhetoric
tighter - though not all will appreciate
his highly personalised limiting of
Schumann’s emotive extremes. Still,
parts of the performance are simply
breathtaking even if the totality of
it will leave others more cautious in
appraisal.
Notes are in French
and English and trace the conductor’s
long relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic
in some detail. As a conspectus it achieves
its objectives with conspicuous success.
Jonathan Woolf
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/Wilhelm Furtwängler
