MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

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

CD REVIEW
HISTORICAL RECORDING OF THE MONTH



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


Buy through MusicWeb for £12.00 postage paid.
You may prefer to pay by Sterling cheque or Euro notes to avoid PayPal. Contact for details

Purchase button

Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Symphony No.3 in E flat major Op.55 Eroica (1804) [52:05]
Alexander GLAZUNOV (1865-1936)

Stenka Razin – symphonic poem in B minor Op.13 (1886) [18:52]
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/Wilhelm Furtwängler – Beethoven
[Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Leo Borchard] – Glazunov; claimed to be Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/Wilhelm Furtwängler
rec.16 December 1944 (Beethoven) and (2 February 1945 - Glazunov)
MELODIYA MEL CD 10 01106 [70:57]


 


This disc rather sums up the virtues and failings of this Melodiya series devoted to Furtwängler’s wartime recordings. The cache taken to Moscow after the war included performances it’s proved impossible to document with any remote degree of certainty. No one has yet shown that Furtwängler conducted Stenka Razin, though it is true that much earlier in his career he did conduct the Glazunov Violin Concerto. As I’ve written before, the generic notes address this issue in a half-baked sort of way and justify the inclusion of this and other material on insufficiently rigorous grounds. The DG sets devoted to the material didn’t include any such unverifiable material.

The list of preserved Furtwängler Eroicas is a long one. There are at least nine of which I’m aware, ranging from this Vienna performance in 1944 to two Berlin performances in 1952. The only other orchestra with which he left behind an Eroica was the RAI. Still, this wartime performance is, in my experience, the most overwhelming and magnificent of them all. It’s a reading of the utmost gravity and eloquence and one of the conductor’s greatest explorations of a symphonic statement. The power here is trenchant but not overbearing. The sense of immediacy is coruscating and the directional pull of the music is pretty well unrivalled. Its logic and force emerge as if anew. And the Funeral March is here a supreme statement – intense but somehow still composed, still eloquently controlled. The marshalling of horns and trumpets brings an intensely nobility of expression. This is a performance that releases the intensity of the work in a way that his post-War performances didn’t quite manage. Later he evoked a more classical nobility which, whilst it proved preferable in Schubert’s Ninth, didn’t perhaps suit the Eroica so well.

As for the Glazunov I’ve always understood this to be a misattributed recording made by Leo Borchard and the Berlin Philharmonic. There are certainly powerful reasons for some to have thought it by Furtwängler – the freedom and power, the flexibility and melodic elasticity, the sense of almost improvisatory drama is reminiscent of the older man and commandingly so. But this is Borchard.

Given the foregoing choice will be determined by your desire, if you don’t already have one, for another Furtwängler Eroica. It is however the most dramatic and, insofar as these things are ever absolute, the most intense. With the Glazunov you get Borchard and a first class performance that’s also on an all-Borchard Tahra disc – but that’s not what it’s claimed to be on this Melodiya disc.

Jonathan Woolf

Melodiya Catalogue

 


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.