Furtwangler recordings of Richard Strauss

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Meanwhile what do other forumites think of Furtwangler's recordings of these works ?

They're very good indeed - but I prefer Karajan and Kempe.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

YouTube (of course) allows anyone who doesn't know WF's Strauss conducting to sample it. Here's Don Juan with the BPO in February 1942:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIBI61s3H24

... and here, also with the BPO, in April 1954:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXQl_Hx2Ue4

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

For Till Eulenspiegel we can also watch the performers (again, the BPO) from 1950, WF not using a score:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEf4s6naews

... and here with the VPO (no film) in 1954:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohnikBH0EAU

(There's also a short piece of footage of WF rehearsing Till - but sadly without any actual "rehearsing" details, just a play-through of the opening section):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUdyveM1Loc

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The studio Tod und Verklarung with the VPO in 1950:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmask-YrZoY

... and (in "pseudo-stereo"!) with the Hamburg State Philharmonic from a Live concert in 1947:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwVgNqUdPZA

(I have a sneaking suspicion that this was recorded at the same concert that provided the only recording of the Beethoven Second that EMI could find for their WF Beethoven cycle?)

[PJPJ]

The studio Tod und Verklarung with the VPO in 1950:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmask-YrZoY

... and (in "pseudo-stereo"!) with the Hamburg State Philharmonic from a Live concert in 1947:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwVgNqUdPZA

(I have a sneaking suspicion that this was recorded at the same concert that provided the only recording of the Beethoven Second that EMI could find for their WF Beethoven cycle?)

WF's Beethoven 2 was recorded in the Albert Hall on 3 October 1948.

PS I've now looked up WF's concert diary to find out what they were playing:

28 September 1948: Beethoven : Egmont, Ouverture ; Symphonies n° 6 & 5

30 Septmeber 1948: Beethoven : Leonore-Ouvertüre n° III, Symphonies n° 8 & 7

2 October 1948: Beethoven : Coriolan, Ouverture ; Symphonies n° 4 & n° 3

3 October 1948: Beethoven : Symphonies n° 1 & 2; Concerto pour violon (Yehudi Menuhin)

6 October 1948: Beethoven : Symphonie n° 9 (Ljuba Welitsch, Elisabeth Höngen, Julius Patzak, Norman Walker, BBC Choral Society)

courtesy of the excellent SWF (the French WF Society)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

WF's Beethoven 2 was recorded in the Albert Hall on 3 October 1948.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The "Composer provides the recipe, the performer is the chef" suggestion has been made before - I suppose that the amin objection I have to it is that the "meal" is as sustaining and delicious when reading a score as it might be in performance - whereas you won't get your five-a-day just reading a recipe book.

So, I suppose that I regard the performer as the equivalent of someone describing a painting to somebody who can't see it - points for including as many details as there are in the work, but the description can never be "better" than the painting. And, of course, some Art commentators can draw your attention to details that a viewer who has seen the painting dozens of times hadn't noticed. They don't need to add details that aren't there, or miss out features, or say that an image has a different shape or colour than the original (on the grounds that they think it would be better this way) or suggest that it's desirable to go over a section in enamels/felt tips because surely the Artist would have preferred it that way if they had had access to such "advances" in equipment.

Well - sometimes those who advocate scrupulous OCD sticking to the score, are the same people who get upset if Bach's Brandenburg 3 is played exactly as written. Ditto many other baroque works, and much from the Classical era too. The slow movement of Mozart's 23rd Piano Concerto is played exactly as written by Pollini, but Brendel does his own thing.

Then there are ornaments. Sometimes composers wrote them into the score, which is fine. But when they didn't, is it immediately assumed that the composer """expected""" the performers to add them. But let's just suppose that Handel was perfectly happy with what he wrote. There's absolutely no way of knowing. Stories of Handel having strops with prima donnas, because they took liberties with his music, may well be mostly untrue, but... maybe.

Composers conducting their own music can be revealing. They don't always stick to exactly what they wrote. Hans Richter conducted the first (and several more) performance(s) of Elgar's 1st Symphony, with great success, but those who heard the composer conducting it, during that same period, said the composer's interpretations were better than Richter's, because he added unwritten subtleties that enhanced the music. So sometimes a conductor can indeed improve upon what it on the written page.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Meanwhile what do other forumites think of Furtwangler's recordings of these works ?

I've done me best, Barbs, but no other Forumista seems very interested! Perhaps this recording with the BPO of Metamorphosen from October 1947 might jog a reaction or two:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25Oo2rx8oX8

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well - sometimes those who advocate scrupulous OCD sticking to the score, are the same people who get upset if Bach's Brandenburg 3 is played exactly as written. Ditto many other baroque works, and much from the Classical era too.

"[S]crupulous OCD" is suggestively hyperbolic, Alpie - and I address the rest of your point and your second paragraph in my #44.

Composers conducting their own music can be revealing. They don't always stick to exactly what they wrote. Hans Richter conducted the first (and several more) performance(s) of Elgar's 1st Symphony, with great success, but those who heard the composer conducting it, during that same period, said the composer's interpretations were better than Richter's, because he added unwritten subtleties that enhanced the music. So sometimes a conductor can indeed improve upon what it on the written page.

Ah! So a composer produces better results than a performer - who'd've thought it?! Even allowing that it is true that Elgar didn't write everything in his score necessary to communicate his wishes, who are the performers who can match him as a composer? That a composer changes his/her idea about a work is neither unusual, nor licence to other people to adjust what is written. (One might say that sometimes those who allow such licence to performers are the same ones who get upset when an editor gives Handel's Air from the Water Music an "Allegro" tempo marking. )

[jayne lee wilson]

I think Alps' point is simply that if the composer-as-performer doesn't consider fidelity to the printed score as essential to its communication, it underlines the creative nature of performance, as any other performer may "add unwritten subtleties" i.e. freely interpret, again in the interests of musical communication, in their own way.

When Elgar (or any other composer) takes their own score in a fresh direction in performance, "adjusting what is written", they are not engaged in rewriting or revising it. When that is the case, a new published version appears later, specifically so-described. The very next performance may sound different again; describing it as "adjusting what is written" is stiff and admonitory; it diminishes the essentially creative, fluid in-the-moment nature of musical performance itself.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Ah! So a composer produces better results than a performer - who'd've thought it?! Even allowing that it is true that Elgar didn't write everything in his score necessary to communicate his wishes, who are the performers who can match him as a composer? That a composer changes his/her idea about a work is neither unusual, nor licence to other people to adjust what is written. (One might say that sometimes those who allow such licence to performers are the same ones who get upset when an editor gives Handel's Air from the Water Music an "Allegro" tempo marking. )

I think we've visited this one before. It's a conflict between the view that the composer is placed on such a high pedestal that (s)he alone can interpret the score with freedom of expression, but the humble professional conductor is placed in a straightjacket, and must be a programmed note basher. To quote a former P.M. (for whom I have little or no sympathy on other topics: "No! No! No!"

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I think we've visited this one before.

It's a conflict between the view that the composer is placed on such a high pedestal that (s)he alone can interpret the score with freedom of expression, but the humble professional conductor is placed in a straightjacket, and must be a programmed note basher. To quote a former P.M. (for whom I have little or no sympathy on other topics: "No! No! No!"

I think that we both acknowledge that neither of us take either of the extreme stances you put forward here in our real listening (as opposed to Forum "tennis") - and I don't think anybody does to be honest. I don't know of any performance or recording in which a living Musician has ever functioned as a "programmed note basher" (although it's interesting that I am often drawn most closely to performances which others describe as "cold") - and there is a recording of Xenakis keyboard works performed by a computer-generated keyboard which definitely lacks excitement as far as I'm concerned. And, whilst there are performers (not just conductors) who regard the "score" as merely a "springboard" for their own revelatory "interpretation", these characters are usually ignored by subsequent generations of listeners and performers.

But I strongly believe that meticulous attention to the score - at least those of the very best works - is not a "straitjacket" restricting a Musician's "freedom of expression", but rather (and perhaps this might sound paradoxical) the surest means for a performer to realize his/her deepest Musicianship, to discover freedoms of expression that hadn't - and couldn't have - occurred to them before their encounter with the Music as revealed in the score. If this is what you mean by placing the composer on a high pedestal, then that's exactly what needs to be done - I wouldn't've put in such terms: for me it's simply the essential courtesy extended to Beethoven or Brahms, or whoever that I feel is right for Shakespeare, or Turner, or Tolstoy, or Rembrandt. If Art can change people's lives (something that I passionately believe, because this is exactly what it did for me: I owe a great deal of my present privileged lifestyle to what the Arts have given me) then it isn't unreasonable to suggest that it should change the lives, perceptions, and attitudes of the performers - NOT the performers changing the Music to fit in with their own preconceptions.

And (with exactly the same caveat that you included) I'm not for turning in this

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

And (with exactly the same caveat that you included) I'm not for turning in this

[jayne lee wilson]

[fhg QUOTE from #57 : "whilst there are performers (not just conductors) who regard the "score" as merely a "springboard" for their own revelatory "interpretation", these characters are usually ignored by subsequent generations of listeners and performers".]

Could you give us all a few examples here, please?

[BBMmk2]

This man is not for turning!