Furtwangler: An Unassailable Reputation?

[Conchis]

I can't recall reading any negative criticism of Furtwangler as a conductor, anywhere. Some people may have been sniffy about his 'baton technique' but no-one seems to have a bad word to say about the results it yielded.

This makes F alone in his profession, afaia. Of the other 'titans', Toscanini is disparaged for being too fiery, Klemperer and Knappertsbusch for being too slow or even sclerotic and Karajan for being too suave.

Does anyone actually dislike Furtwangler's conducting?

[Richard Tarleton]

And dare I ask - did any senior forumites actually see him live - it's just possible?! My landlord in the late 60s, who introduced me to Furtwängler on record, had seen him conduct Bruckner (7, I think he said) in Vienna circa 1951 - sitting near the front, they could hear him singing along.

I later got to know a Toscanini buff who was convinced there was a pro-Furtwängler, anti-Toscanini conspiracy at the BBC, headed by Sir William Glock

[Conchis]

I ought to add: I'm normally very sceptical about people who hold 'household god' status. I think about, say, 35% of Shakespeare's output is, if not disposable, certainly well below the standard he set in his finest works.

BUT - I've yet to hear a Furtwangler performance that didn't impress me (and I've heard a lot of them). Whoever the composer, F seemed to be instantly simpatico with their intentions.

[makropulos]

I can't recall reading any negative criticism of Furtwangler as a conductor, anywhere. Some people may have been sniffy about his 'baton technique' but no-one seems to have a bad word to say about the results it yielded.

This makes F alone in his profession, afaia. Of the other 'titans', Toscanini is disparaged for being too fiery, Klemperer and Knappertsbusch for being too slow or even sclerotic and Karajan for being too suave.

Does anyone actually dislike Furtwangler's conducting?

Some people certainly did. There was plenty of negative criticism of his conducting during his lifetime and afterwards. A couple of examples from The Gramophone: In 1951, Edward Sackville-West wrote of a Beethoven 7 on HMV that 'all Furtwängler's worst mannerisms are in evidence in his conducting ... the tempi vary capriciously and the rhythm is ill controlled' and there was regular carping about his 'habitual exaggerations'. Much later (1970) there was harsh criticism of Furtwängler's unusually flexible approach to the Franck Symphony: 'There are too many destructive tempo changes of a kind that do not spring from inner conviction but strike one as merely idisyncratic and arbitrary.' Ouch.

In other words, he was not alone in being uncriticised, since his performances and recordings were often quite harshly dismissed - but that doesn't make him any less of musical giant. For the most part I share your enthusiasm, above all in those works where he seemed to have truly extraordinary insights (Brahms 1, Beethoven 9, most of Wagner).

[richardfinegold]

Great Conductors will always have their Critics. Toscanini Reiner and Szell were called martinets; Karajan too superficial; Bernstein to vulgar; Bohm a kapellmeister; Walter to emotional, Haitink dull, and on it goes

[kea]

It seems like nowadays he's pretty much been canonised. At most people will say 'this is a somewhat alternative interpretation' or 'he must have had an off night'.

In general though it seems like the older the musician, the more rose-coloured the hearing aids people listen to them through. So no one will ever be able to be greater than Furtwängler (or whoever it is the person likes) because the person has set things up in their mind in such a way that the measure of quality is literally 'what Furtwängler did'. It's sort of self-perpetuating.

[gradus]

I'm pleading guilty to a nostalgia for the 'great conductors' that were still performing when I started going to concerts in the early sixties. It's surely true that we gloss our memories of performances and kea has a point however we don't need to rely on memory to recall Furtwanagler's Brahms 1 as we have several recordings that show why he was and remains revered. Nevertheless Furtwangler has an achilles heel but it is not his reputation as a musician where doubt lies and I still find it difficult to listen to his performances recorded in Germany during WW2, although many perhaps most, would disagree with me.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Furtwangler's strengths as a conductor shine ever afresh every time I listen to his recordings: the overwhelming intensity and seismic power of the Music-making turn clichéd hyperbole into simple statements of fact - it requires the listener to devote as much to their listening as the players gave to their performance.

But, to "assail" for a moment, the strengths are often the source of the limitations in Furtwangler's interpretations - and "interpretations" is the correct word. Repeat marks are ignored, tempo and metronome indications ignored, instrumentation retouched - all to serve the vision of what the Art was supposed to do in the Furtwanglerian philosophy. It can often seem to me (in retrospect, never when I listen to the recordings) that Furtwangler poured onto the works he chose to perform most frequently the ideas he had failed to express in his own compositions: the expression "Furtwangler's Beethoven", for example, takes on a special meaning in a way that "Klemperer's Beethoven" (to cite another conductor who composed) doesn't - only "Bernstein's Beethoven" carries a comparable (putting valuations of respective merits aside for one moment) load of creative re-imagining of a score.

And whilst it is frequently a transcendent experience, it is rarely a comic one - Furtwangler lacks the "spots of commonness" (to nick a phrase from Middlemarch) that mars many "lesser" performances, but which also reduces what Furtwangler felt confident/competent to conduct - there is no comedy in his recordings: moments glow, shine and often glare - but they never twinkle. His Strauss waltzes are glorious pre-echoes of Ravel, a yearning for a lost innocence, a presentiment of mortality - but no joyous urge to dance; and can anyone imagine WF conducting Fledermaus (or, for that matter, Rosenkavalier)? (His Meistersinger is rich in "Wahn", but David doesn't feature very highly in Furtwangler's vision of the work.)

But how mealy-mouthed and ungrateful I feel making these comments in comparison with the charge that Furtwangler's Music-making brings every time I listen to it. In its own unique terms - unassailable.

[Conchis]

Furtwangler's strengths as a conductor shine ever afresh every time I listen to his recordings: the overwhelming intensity and seismic power of the Music-making turn clichéd hyperbole into simple statements of fact - it requires the listener to devote as much to their listening as the players gave to their performance.

But, to "assail" for a moment, the strengths are often the source of the limitations in Furtwangler's interpretations - and "interpretations" is the correct word. Repeat marks are ignored, tempo and metronome indications ignored, instrumentation retouched - all to serve the vision of what the Art was supposed to do in the Furtwanglerian philosophy. It can often seem to me (in retrospect, never when I listen to the recordings) that Furtwangler poured onto the works he chose to perform most frequently the ideas he had failed to express in his own compositions: the expression "Furtwangler's Beethoven", for example, takes on a special meaning in a way that "Klemperer's Beethoven" (to cite another conductor who composed) doesn't - only "Bernstein's Beethoven" carries a comparable (putting valuations of respective merits aside for one moment) load of creative re-imagining of a score.

And whilst it is frequently a transcendent experience, it is rarely a comic one - Furtwangler lacks the "spots of commonness" (to nick a phrase from Middlemarch) that mars many "lesser" performances, but which also reduces what Furtwangler felt confident/competent to conduct - there is no comedy in his recordings: moments glow, shine and often glare - but they never twinkle. His Strauss waltzes are glorious pre-echoes of Ravel, a yearning for a lost innocence, a presentiment of mortality - but no joyous urge to dance; and can anyone imagine WF conducting Fledermaus (or, for that matter, Rosenkavalier)? (His Meistersinger is rich in "Wahn", but David doesn't feature very highly in Furtwangler's vision of the work.)

But how mealy-mouthed and ungrateful I feel making these comments in comparison with the charge that Furtwangler's Music-making brings every time I listen to it. In its own unique terms - unassailable.

Excellently put.

[Dave2002]

This play makes one wonder - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taking_Sides_%28play%29

When I saw it last I wondered about how unaware of what was going on around him the conductor was. Despite all that, I think his performances of Beethoven 9 are amazing. You can find two examples on YouTube of the last movement - one with the Nazis, the other, later one, without. Very strange watching them.

[Conchis]

This play makes one wonder - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taking_Sides_%28play%29

When I saw it last I wondered about how unaware of what was going on around him the conductor was. Despite all that, I think his performances of Beethoven 9 are amazing. You can find two examples on YouTube of the last movement - one with the Nazis, the other, later one, without. Very strange watching them.

I saw Taking Sides during its pre-London tour. Daniel Massey's performance was, as I recall it, extraordinary: it was like seeing those old b&w films of F coming to life before your eyes.

Furtwangler's vanity and egocentricity are well-documented; I don't think he should be condemned for a certain 'smallness' of personality and it's known that he did far more good than harm in Nazi Germany. Ultimately, though, as for an awful lot of artists in that timeframe (and maybe even now), precasting their art meant far more to them than politics and I can't find it in myself to condemn people who were placed in a situation we can't fully understand.

[richardfinegold]

I saw Taking Sides during its pre-London tour. Daniel Massey's performance was, as I recall it, extraordinary: it was like seeing those old b&w films of F coming to life before your eyes.

Furtwangler's vanity and egocentricity are well-documented; I don't think he should be condemned for a certain 'smallness' of personality and it's known that he did far more good than harm in Nazi Germany. Ultimately, though, as for an awful lot of artists in that timeframe (and maybe even now), precasting their art meant far more to them than politics and I can't find it in myself to condemn people who were placed in a situation we can't fully understand.

I thought this thread was going to concentrate on music and leave the Politics alone, but since it veered there....I saw Taking Sides, which is a great play that became an awful movie, despite Harvey Keitels excellent performance. The play does a nice job of framing the issues. I especially liked the Prosecutor's final judgement of WF as 'the devil's bandleader'.
"You didn't write the tune, but you led the Orchestra".

[Roehre]

The Furtwängler which would interest me were recordings of Schönberg's Variations op.31 and of works by Hindemith e.g.
Listening to F I never get the impression he does primarily the music a service.
It's F, F and F again, whether it is Bruckner, Beethoven or Brahms or which composer whatever.
Oldfashioned music making in the then fashionable romantic sense of the great unassailable composers who were struggling against fate, denying that they were just people of flesh and blood like all other human beings.
An interpretation I don't like.
I like my music more pure, without an über-romantic sauce, recomposed by a conductor(-composer).

F's recordings do have historic value.
Great recordings in that sense.
For me this way of music making is dead and leaves me stone cold.

(There are a couple of exceptions confirming this rule like Flagstad's Last Songs and DFD's Fahrenden Gesellen, but extremely rare)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The Furtwängler which would interest me were recordings of Schönberg's Variations op.31 and of works by Hindemith e.g.

There doesn't appear to be any authenticated WF recording of Schönberg's Variations op.31, but he did record Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis on a Theme of Carl Maria von Weber.

[Roehre]

There doesn't appear to be any authenticated WF recording of Schönberg's Variations op.31, but he did record Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis on a Theme of Carl Maria von Weber.

Yes, I know, but he did more of the then "modern" stuff which hasn't been recorded unfortunately.
Plus: the symphonic metamorphoses are pieces in which one can show off quite easily.