Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Symphony No.9 in D minor, ‘Choral’ Op. 125
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (soprano), Elisabeth Höngen (alto), Hans Hopf (tenor), Otto Edelmann (bass)
Choir and Orchestra of the Bayreuth Festival/Wilhelm Furtwängler
rec. live, 29 July 1951, Bayreuth Festival
BIS BIS-9060 SACD [82:45]
Wilhelm Furtwängler’s first Bayreuth performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony has acquired something approaching mythical status. It is unquestionably a very fine – possibly even great – Beethoven Ninth but its reputation has tended to cement over its flaws and undermined its true place beside Furtwängler’s other recordings of this symphony. It is, of course, not a work he ever attempted in the studio – unlike, for example, the ‘Eroica’ the other indisputably great Beethoven symphony we have by Furtwängler. Like the Missa Solemnis, which he would cease performing after 1930, the Ninth Symphony held a deeply spiritual, as well as sense of universal humanity, that could only be achieved by playing in front of an audience.
All ten of his performances of this symphony are unique documents, and very
different from each other even if they bear Furtwängler’s distinctive hallmarks. You could argue that the 1937 London Ninth (first issued by EMI in Japan in 1984) is the most torrid and searing of all; it is a furious performance but it gives us the first impression of what a Furtwängler Ninth would be like in almost all his subsequent performances: wilful, intense, fiery they would characterise all of them to a certain extent, even if the rawness of the playing shifted from severe jaggedness to something a bit smoother the later we get. For some, the March 1942 Ninth – not to be confused with the April one – is like a colossus that looms above all of them. Its anger and savagery extends beyond the pre-war Ninth. And then we have the Philharmonia Ninth from 1954, the most luminous of all his performances of the work, the one that perhaps comes closest to very heart of Beethoven – and perhaps of Furtwängler, too.
The Bayreuth Ninth, as I wrote in my review of the Warner Furtwängler edition last year, feels like an event because it clearly is one – and this is what makes it unique amongst all his other Ninths. Its power comes from Furtwängler giving it huge architectural, even monolithic, structure and weight; it has an immovable gravity, and the best transfers convey this. When this Ninth sounds very good is does have a sense of cataclysm and apocalypse; in a poor recording, it loses these qualities almost entirely and rather than being set aside his great Ninths becomes decidedly indifferent to them. It’s for this reason – and that this Ninth is missing some of the qualities of those from 1937, 1942 and 1954 – that the Bayreuth Ninth has not stood the test of time.
When it comes to the Bayreuth Ninth we really have two versions: the Walter Legge EMI one, and the complete unedited radio broadcast. This BIS
disc is of the unabridged concert performance exactly as broadcast by Bavarian Radio, but transmitted internationally, in this case via Swedish Radio. Frankly, I do not particularly understand the purpose of it – at least from the point of view of adding anything that is equal to or superior to existing transfers of this unabridged version (yes, there are radio announcements but they hardly add much to the disc). BIS have not chosen to “brush up” (their words) the sound, nor have they made a decision to cut the extensive pauses at the end of the first and second movements (at nearly a minute each). Audience noise is not omitted – so you can easily identify, as your first clue, the complete live performance as opposed to the Legge version by the very intrusive cough at 1:46 into the first movement – common to the BIS, Willhem Furtwängler Hallmark Collection (WFHC) and Orfeo discs. BIS’s primary objective, apparemtly, is to give the listener the experience of sitting in front of a radio in 1951 – certainly a novelty for 2022.
Of the two other versions I have, the WFHC have removed the long pauses and also suppressed audience noise to quite a significant extent – although in doing so have flattened the sound which has led to some disintegrating of string tone in the upper range and draining of colour from the performance, although there is good presence in the bass. There is no overwhelming tape hiss; this is quite an issue on the BIS disc. Neither BIS not WFHC have much luck in taming the climaxes in this performance (something which the very best transfers of the Legge transfer were entirely able to do, notably on the Japanese TOCE-6510, or on the EMI Grandmaster TOCE-3007, and in the new Warner box, Warner 9029523240).
The other version of the unexpurgated Ninth is on Orfeo. This has by a long distance the cleanest and most tonally rich picture of this complete performance. Orfeo have not reduced tape noises and crackles as extensively as WFHC – you will notice the difference before the performance even begins here with the Orfeo disc noticeably more prone to tape flutter than on the Japanese one – but their access to the original Bavarian Radio tapes far outstrips the sheer colour and glow than either BIS or WFHC can come close to giving. Details are sharper, and at the same volume level as the other two labels you get a much better sense of the acoustic and sheer space surrounding the orchestra. Orfeo come close to sounding like Legge’s EMI, in fact.
Is this BIS disc necessary? No in my view, unless you particularly want to feel as if you are sitting in front of a radio in 1951. If you want this performance the Orfeo disc is unlikely to be surpassed and it is the one you should own.
Marc Bridle
