Many thanks from me, Karafan. I listened to my copy yesterday evening - high octane performance, indeed! Wonderful flexibility in the tempi, plenty of urgency where needed. Yes, the sound is extraordinarily good for the vintage; the strings especially rich. Cellos & basses beginning the fugue in the Finale are absolutely stupendous. I look forward to another listen, soon.
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We went to see Taking Sides, Ronald Harwood's drama about the de-Nazification proceedings against WF by the Americans at the Theatre Royal Bath in the mid-nineties. Daniel Massey played the maestro and I think Pinter directed. It was a Saturday matinee and at the end the shops were still open. We went to Bath Compact Discs (still going strong to this day, amazingly) and I decided I simply had to buy a Furtwängler disc to round off the experience. It was the very recording under discussion here, in its Music and Arts incarnation, selected mainly on the basis of the rave reviews printed on the sleeve.
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Finally managed to get around to listening to this unique interpretation and it is indeed a gem. I particularly love the ruggedly shrill, uncompromising brass. This is no 'saintly' Bruckner but an emotionally defiant and ultimately almost bombastically triumphant one, and, against all the odds, the whole thing works magnificently.
An absolute 'must' for any Brucknerian worthy of the name!
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Ditto to all the above comments - hearing one of the finest Bruckner interpretations on disc, well, glow? blossom? astound? is indeed a wonder. And many thanks to Testament for the free postage and quick delivery to FranceComment
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