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One for the Furtwängler fäns • The Radio Recordings 1939–1945

I still fail to understand why music made under such conditions should remain interesting.

Even Furtwangler admitted that it was wrong [to remain in Germany working for the ProMi] before he died.

{Read Sam Shirakawa's very pro-Furtwangler book - The Devil's Music Master - for the details. Published by the Oxford University Press].
 
Recordings made by a great artist are always interesting, the political circumstances of the time are a matter of historical record, they don`t make a great performance into a poor performance even if you might not want to listen to it.
 
Dear Barry,

The term great artist is not only very much over-used, but equally abused.

I suppose it depends somewhat on what one might call a great artist.

I would call Pable Casals a great artist of un-impeachable integrity.

Wilhelm Furtwangler fails on several counts as a great artist ...

____________

Furtwangler is a master of whipping up excitement [very good for Wagner] and distorting the score to the point where one listens to a Furtwangler performance, not a performance of the composer's actual intentions -Wagner aside, I would maintain. He was a particularly nasty piece of work at a personal level who regarded his own fame and fortune as far more important than integrity to the music he so grossly distorted with excessive crescendi and whipping up tension with abominable [unmarked and unintended] accelerandi and so forth. Probably the most over-hyped and least discerning conductor in the whole of gramophone recorded history.

I know where he was as the Nazi army invaded Denmark. Literally a Nazi troubadour. And the nastiest conductor of fame ever to have lived.

Something to wipe off your shoe if you stepped into it by accident.
 
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I don`t doubt he was a deeply unpleasant character, as are many artists, great and otherwise but he was not a Nazi and many people have a high regard for his conducting.
 
He was rather astute, contrary to those who [in an attempt to apologise for him] described him as a naif: He never joined the Nazi party, BUT, he did everything in his power to support it when necessary to achieve his own ends. Not only a political vacillator, but when required totally flexible in his acts to support his own need for fame and fortune by complying with whatever was asked of him by his Nazi masters.

If that is coherent with being a great artist, then he demeans, to this day, his art and his profession. He was not the only one, but he was the first among equals ... in that respect.

As regards his actual musicianship, this remains completely divisive to this day as well.

Morally he was that worst of all types, a fellow traveler of the Nazis. The type that looked the other way in spite of a knowledge what was going on in the name of the German people, administered by his Nazi masters.
 
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There are similarities though Karajan was a Nazi in so far as he joined the party, like most musicians who stayed in Germany under Hitler, such as Richard Strauss, he was primarily concerned with his music and went along with what was required to further his own cause.
 
But if you have a Jewish medical Doctor [as Furtwanger did], then knowing that after the consultation the MD would be taken back to a concentration camp rather implies that WF was fully complicit with the worst aspects of the regime he so fulsomely served.

What did he think once his Jewish Doctor was no longer alive and available to consult?

WF had many opportunities to leave the Hell that was the Nazi State - on his various visits to neutral Sweden for example. Had he done so in 1942 [where he gave a remarkably humane and amiable performance of the Great C Major Symphony with the Stockholm Orchestra recorded by the Swedish Radio], he might well have come out of it as unscathed as his friend Edwin Fischer, who moved from Berlin to Switzerland that same year.

But NO, he carried on right until the Russians were only a few miles away. At the last [in Vienna a few days into 1945] he spent time with that nauseous character [and close personal friend] Baldur von Schirach, before escaping to Switzerland when the defeat of Nazi-ism was obvious.

Naturally the Swiss authorities saw fit to place Furtwangler under arrest ...
 
Also Adolf Busch, and other notable artists, who were approved, chose to leave and take their chance away from Germany.

The Jewish contingent - Klemperer and Walter at their head - of course had no choice but to leave. But there was one [then] famous Jewish Berlin conductor, who survived in the Reich till 1942. Dr Leo Blech who was the Director of the Berlin State Opera. He is to be heard accompanying Fritz Kreisler in his HMV concerto recording from 1926-1928 with the Berlin State Opera Orchestra. Hermann Goering protected his Jewish friend Blech and when things got too hot in Berlin he went to the Baltic States to carry on working under Goering's patronage. Finally he was advised to leave for Sweden. He returned to Germany after the War ended.

Of the two most famous Jewish musicians fired from the Berlin Philharmonic Szymon Goldberg [co-leader of the BPO] never met or commented on Furtwängler again, but Gregor Piatigorsky [first cellist, BPO, appointed by Furtwangler] was very much part of the Artists boycott that tried too prevent Furtwangler conducting the Chicago Orchestra in 1948.

One may conclude that though some reports suggest that Furtwangler helped his Jewish musicians to leave safely those artists themselves may have found hindsight placed a different complexion on that story ...

Neither Bruno Walter nor Otto Klemperer were prepared to meet their former colleague. Walter even refused to conduct at the Edinburgh Festival in the same year Furtwangler was invited. The BBC never placed the BBCSO at Furtwangler's disposal.

So the list of people who wanted nothing to do with Furtwangler is interesting in its depth.

I suppose one may view Furtwängler as being [in his own mind] such a significant person that he could avoid the normal rules and logic that apply to lesser mortals. This attitude has never disappeared of course ... But it does make one gasp at Furtwangler's callous hubris.
 
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An interesting discussion (much more interesting than that awful film with Stellan Skarsgard and Harvey Keitel).

Whatever Furtwangler's culpability/lack of same he is the only conductor to make complete sense of Bruckner's 5th symphony - the most difficult of AB's, in my opinion. I'm a lifelong Bruckner lover, but I finally "got" #5 only when I heard Furtwangler's performance.
 
Here is a recent documentary film from DW that, in considerable depth, covers the place of music during the Nazi era. It focusses in large part on the fates of Wilhelm Furtwangler and Anita Lasker. Furtwangler at the head of the Berlin Philharminic and Lasker as the cellist in the Auschwitz Orchestra.

Altogether it does not pull its punches, but still manages a real balance of differing views.

It may prove of interest in the context of this thread.


Best wishes from George
 
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Yes, an excellent film. It could have been a whole series...

Hitler's favourite composer, though, was Bruckner (they both came from the Linz area) rather than Wagner. Hence AB's elevation to the circle of German cultural demigods at Regensburg. What is now the Bruckner Orchestra of Linz (a very fine orchestra, too) was originally the Reichsorchester, a pet project of Hitler's which he intended to be the flagship organisation of Nazi music.

It is to be expected that the vile man Wagner would appeal to the Nazis; that the unimpeachable Bruckner should have been taken so much to their hearts is sad. Despite his adulation of the music of Wagner, his relationships with Jewish musicians were cordial and mutually respectful.

At least he didn't live to see himself co-opted by the Third Reich.

https://www.abruckner.com/editorsnote/features/bruckner_third_reich/
 
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