There are two very well known and widely acclaimed “live” performances
of Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting Brahms’s Second Symphony.
The
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra’s Austrian Radio broadcast of
28 January 1945 has, in particular, often been perceived as
especially significant because of its historical context. My
own version on the Archipel label (ARPCD 0106) drives
home the point by emblazoning “His last war-time concert!” on
its front cover and many analysts have been tempted to read
a wealth of subjective extra-musical influences into this performance.
There is also a weightier, more imposing and equally striking
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra live account from Munich on 7
May 1952.
Between
those two, however, the London recording of March 1948 has,
over time, become rather overlooked, or even despised. Naxos
booklet writer Ian Julier suggests that it was the performance
itself - which he characterises as possessed of “added wilfulness,
even wildness” - that failed to gel and he hints at several
possible explanations. Furtwängler’s focus had understandably
switched away from conducting and towards composition during
his enforced de-Nazification ban from the podium. Maybe, too,
the unfamiliar environment of post-war austerity London was
uncongenial? Or perhaps the London Philharmonic, less than
three years after the cessation of hostilities, was hostile
to a German conductor? As late as the late 1950s, I recall
a woman who was completely ostracised by the local community
because she had married a German.
There
is, however, another possible explanation. It was, moreover,
put forward by Decca record producer John Culshaw, who was present
in Kingsway Hall in March 1948 and so ought to have known the
truth. Writing in his posthumously published memoirs, he rated
the performance of the symphony as “remarkable... full of Furtwängler’s
quirks, but… intense and exciting” (* John Culshaw Putting
the Record Straight, London, 1981 - quoted in John
Ardoin The Furtwängler Record, Portland, Oregon,
1994, page 251). The recording failed, he went on to suggest
, largely because Furtwängler insisted on overruling Decca’s
engineers about the number and positioning of the microphones.
“It was not surprising”, he concluded, “that when the records
were released all the critics were bewildered by the change
in the famous Decca sound: instead of the usual combination
of warmth and clarity the Brahms recording was diffuse and muddy…
Not much… of what I heard in the hall itself found its way on
to the record, and it was the conductor’s fault.” (ibid).
Personally,
however, I find Culshaw’s description “diffuse and muddy” somewhat
exaggerated. Perhaps Ward Marston has performed even greater
miracles than usual in his Naxos remastering, but I find this
Brahms second a generally acceptable recording for its age and
certainly no worse than many others that are still listened
to with considerable pleasure.
As
for the performance itself, it is true that the London Philharmonic
was, at the time, going through a rather troubled patch but
it nonetheless copes well with Furtwängler’s sometimes surprising
choices of tempo. And, while the strings do sound, in places,
a little lacking in body, personally speaking I don’t mind that
too much: it can, in fact, often reveal felicitous detail elsewhere
in Brahms’s orchestration that, to take just one example, the
lushly-upholstered Karajan-era Berlin Philharmonic strings invariably
cover up.
While
we may not have here a performance of the very first rank, it
is nonetheless a genuinely interesting one, notable for its
unpredictability and volatility and of real significance.
The
Bruckner adagio is also a studio recording. So used
are we to hearing Furtwängler’s incandescent and often revelatory
accounts of Bruckner’s symphonies, that it is something of a
surprise to learn that this single movement of the seventh was
his only commercial recording. It has been suggested
(Ardoin, op. cit., page 233) that Furtwängler saw Bruckner’s
music as a sort of shared musical holy communion that was only
validated by the presence of an concert hall audience – and
that hypothesis appears to be supported by the fact that this
1942 studio recording is rather more dour and colourless than,
say, the well-known 1951 Radio Cairo broadcast - most recently
and conveniently to be found in a Music & Arts box of symphonies
4-9 with stunningly restored sound, CD-1209.
Incidentally,
the booklet notes’ implication that Furtwängler adopted a grey,
low-key interpretation because he somehow anticipated that the
recording would be used by German radio (as, indeed, it eventually
was) to announce Hitler’s death in the event of a German defeat,
does not hold water. After all, on 1 April 1942, a full ten
months before the end of the Battle of Stalingrad marked the
war’s turning point, any rational observer would have still
given Germany a better than even chance of ultimate victory.
In
their two concurrent Furtwängler series – one of his early recordings
and the other focusing on his 1940s commercial recordings - Naxos
continue to do a truly commendable job of placing some of his
most significant recordings before the public in very well remastered
sound and at bargain prices.
Rob Maynard
