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Wilhelm Furtwängler

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Portrait of Wilhelm Furtwängler by Emil Orlik

Wilhelm Furtwängler (January 25, 1886 – November 30, 1954) was a German conductor and composer. He is widely considered to have been one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. By the 1930s he had built a reputation as one of the leading conductors in Europe, and he was the leading conductor who remained in Germany during the Second World War. Although he was never a member of the Nazi party, the morality of his decision to remain working in Germany during this period has been continually debated since his death. However even today, many musicians, critics and record collectors still revere him for his very subjective conducting style, which is often compared and contrasted to the more objective style of Arturo Toscanini, who was probably the most famous conductor at the time. Like Toscanini, Furtwängler was a major influence on many later conductors, and his name is often mentioned when discussing their interpretive style.1

Contents

Biography

Wilhelm Furtwängler

Furtwängler was born in Berlin into a prominent family. His father Adolf was an archaeologist, his mother a painter. Most of his childhood was spent in Munich, where his father taught at the city's Ludwig Maximilian University. He was given a musical education from an early age, and developed an early love of Ludwig van Beethoven, a composer with whom he remained closely associated throughout his life. Though his chief posthumous fame rests on his work as a conductor, he was also a composer and regarded himself first and foremost as such, having in fact first taken up the baton in order to perform his own works.

By the time of Furtwängler's conducting debut at the age of twenty, he had written several pieces of music. However, they were not well received, and that - combined with the financial insecurity of a career as a composer - led him to concentrate on conducting. At his first concert, he led the Kaim Orchestra (now the Munich Philharmonic) in Anton Bruckner's Ninth Symphony. He subsequently held posts at Munich, Strasbourg, Lübeck, Mannheim, Frankfurt, and Vienna, before securing a job at the Berlin Staatskapelle in 1920, and in 1922 at the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra where he succeeded Arthur Nikisch, and concurrently at the prestigious Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Furtwängler also made a number of appearances as a conductor abroad. He made his London debut in 1924, and continued to appear there as late as 1938 to conduct a cycle of Richard Wagner's Ring.2 In 1925 he appeared as guest conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and made return visits in the following two years.2

Towards the end of the Second World War, under extreme pressure from the Nazi Party, Furtwängler fled to Switzerland. It was during this troubled period that he composed what is largely considered his most significant work, the Symphony No. 2 in E minor. Work on the symphony was begun in 1944, and carried on into 1945. It was given its premiere in 1948 by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Furtwängler's direction. Furtwängler and the Philharmonic recorded the symphony for Deutsche Grammophon; the music was much in the tradition of Bruckner and Gustav Mahler, composed on a grand scale for very large orchestra with romantic, dramatic themes. Another important work is the Symphonic Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, completed and premiered in 1937 and revised in 1954. Many themes from this work were also incorporated into Furtwängler's unfinished Symphony No. 3 in C sharp minor.

He resumed performing and recording following the war, and remained a popular conductor in Europe, although always under something of a shadow. He died in 1954 in Ebersteinburg, close to Baden-Baden. He is buried in the Heidelberg Bergfriedhof. The tenth anniversary of his death was marked by a concert in the Royal Albert Hall, London, conducted by his biographer3 Hans-Hubert Schönzeler.4

Furtwängler is most famous for his performances of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, and Wagner. However, he was also a champion of modern music, notably the works of Paul Hindemith and Arnold Schoenberg,5 and conducted the world premiere of Sergei Prokofiev's Fifth Piano Concerto (with the composer at the piano) on October 31, 19326 as well as performances of Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra.

"Third Reich" controversy

Furtwängler's relationship with — and attitude towards — Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party was a matter of much controversy. Because of his international renown, he was appointed as the first vice-president of the Reichsmusikkammer. In 1934 he was banned from conducting the premiere of Hindemith's opera Mathis der Maler, and subsequently resigned from the RMK and the Berlin Opera. Some sources maintain that Furtwängler resigned from his posts at the Berlin Opera and Reichsmusikkammer in protest;2 Frederic Spotts states that he was forced to either resign all his positions or be dismissed.7 In 1936 it seemed possible that he might follow Erich Kleiber's footsteps into exile when he was offered the principal conductor's post at the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, where he would have succeeded Arturo Toscanini. Toscanini's biographer Harvey Sachs wrote that Toscanini recommended Furtwängler for the position, one of the few times Toscanini expressed admiration for a fellow conductor.8 There is every possibility that Furtwängler would have accepted the post,citation needed but a report from the Berlin branch of the Associated Press, possibly ordered by Hermann Göring, said that he was willing to take up his post at the Berlin Opera once more. This caused the mood in New York to turn against him; from their point of view, it seemed that Furtwängler was now a full supporter of the Nazi Party.9

However, Furtwängler never joined the Nazi Party nor did he really approve of them,10 much like the composer Richard Strauss, who made no secret of his dislike of the Nazis. Furtwängler always refused to give the Nazi salute.2

Furtwängler was treated relatively well by the Nazis; he had a high profile, and was an important cultural figure, as evidenced by his inclusion in the Gottbegnadeten list ("God-gifted List") of September 1944. Furtwängler in turn conducted several concerts for the direct benefit of the Nazis: in February 1938 he conducted the Berlin Philharmonic at a concert held for the Hitler Youth, and that same year conducted a performance of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in celebration of Hitler's birthday.11 Further, contrary to the claims of some writers that he refused to conduct in occupied countries during the war,12 he conducted in Prague in May and November 1940, and again in March 1944 in a concert marking the fifth anniversary of the German occupation.11 His concerts were often broadcast to German troops to raise morale, though he was limited in what he was allowed to perform by the authorities. He later said he tried to protect German culture from the Nazis;13 it is now known that he used his influence to help Jewish musicians and non musicians escape the Third Reich. He managed, for example, to have Max Zweig, a nephew of conductor Fritz Zweig, released from Dachau concentration camp. Others, from an extensive list of Jews he helped, included Carl Flesch, Josef Krips and the composer Arnold Schönberg.14 In spite of this, some sources claim his motives were not as pure as those of e.g. Oskar Schindler.13

Albert Speer claimed that in December 1944 Furtwängler asked whether Germany had any chance of winning the war. Speer replied in the negative, and advised the conductor to flee to Switzerland from possible Nazi retribution.15 Furtwängler did in fact escape to Switzerland shortly after a concert in Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic on January 28, 1945. At that concert he conducted an account of Brahms's Second Symphony that was caught on tape and is considered one of his greatest recordings.16

At his denazification trial, Furtwängler was charged with supporting Nazism by remaining in Germany, performing at Nazi party functions and with making an anti-semitic remark against the part-Jewish conductor Victor de Sabata.17 However, he was eventually cleared on all these counts.18

As part of his closing remarks at his denazification trial, Furtwängler said,

"I knew Germany was in a terrible crisis; I felt responsible for German music, and it was my task to survive this crisis, as much as I could. The concern that my art was misused for propaganda had to yield to the greater concern that German music be preserved, that music be given to the German people by its own musicians. These people, the compatriots of Bach and Beethoven, of Mozart and Schubert, still had to go on living under the control of a regime obsessed with total war. No one who did not live here himself in those days can possibly judge what it was like.
"Does Thomas Mann [who was critical of Furtwängler's actions] really believe that in 'the Germany of Himmler' one should not be permitted to play Beethoven? Could he not realize that people never needed more, never yearned more to hear Beethoven and his message of freedom and human love, than precisely these Germans, who had to live under Himmler’s terror? I do not regret having stayed with them."

(quoted from John Ardoin's The Furtwängler Record)

The violinist Yehudi Menuhin was among the few musicians in the Jewish community and the United States who had a positive view of Furtwängler. In 1933 he had refused to play with him, but in the late 1940s after a personal investigation of Furtwängler, he became supportive of him, and performed and recorded alongside him.19

In 1949 Furtwängler accepted the position of principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. However the orchestra was forced to rescind the offer under the threat of a boycott from several prominent musicians including Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, Isaac Stern and Alexander Brailowsky.20 According to a New York Times report, Horowitz said that he "was prepared to forgive the small fry who had no alternative but to remain and work in Germany." But Furtwängler "was out of the country on several occasions and could have elected to keep out".20 Rubinstein likewise wrote in a telegram, "Had Furtwängler been firm in his democratic convictions he would have left Germany".20

His tomb in Heidelberg

“Taking Sides”

British playwright Ronald Harwood's play Taking Sides (1995), set in 1946 in the American zone of occupied Berlin, is about U.S. accusations against Furtwängler of having served the Nazi regime. In 2001 the play was made into a motion picture directed by István Szabó and starring Harvey Keitel and featuring Stellan Skarsgård in the role of Furtwängler.21

Career

Conducting style

Furtwängler had a unique conducting technique. He saw symphonic music as creations of nature that could only be realised subjectively into sound. This is why composers such as Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner were so central to Furtwängler's repertoire, because he identified them as great forces of nature. He disliked Toscanini's approach to the German repertoire. He walked out of a Toscanini concert once, calling him "a mere time-beater!".

Neville Cardus wrote in the Manchester Guardian in 1954 of Furtwängler's conducting style:

"He did not regard the printed notes of the score as a final statement, but rather as so many symbols of an imaginative conception, ever changing and always to be felt and realised subjectively...Not since Nikisch, of whom he was a disciple, has a greater personal interpreter of orchestral and opera music than Furtwängler been heard."22

Many commentators and critics regard him as the greatest conductor in history.23 However, on the website Classics Today, critic David Hurwitz, a spokesman for modern literalism and precision, sharply criticizes what he terms "the Furtwangler wackos" who "will forgive him virtually any lapse, no matter how severe", and characterizes the conductor himself as "occasionally incandescent but criminally sloppy".24

Conductor and pianist Christoph Eschenbach has said of Furtwängler that he was a "formidable magician, a man capable of setting an entire ensemble of musicians on fire, sending them into a state of ecstasy".25

Furtwängler commemorated on a stamp for West Berlin, 1955

Furtwängler was famous for his exceptional inarticulacy. His pupil Sergiu Celibidache remembered that the best he could say was, "Well, just listen" (to the music). Carl Brinitzer from the German BBC service tried to interview him, and thought he had an imbecile before him. A live recording of a rehearsal with a Stockholm orchestra documents hardly anything intelligible, only hums and mumbling. On the other hand, a collection of his essays, On Music, reveals deep thought. Still, Furtwängler remained highly respected amongst musicians. Even Arturo Toscanini, usually regarded as Furtwängler's complete antithesis (and sharply critical of Furtwängler on political grounds), once said – when asked to name the world's greatest conductor apart from himself – "Furtwängler!"

Influence

One of Furtwängler's protegés was pianist Karlrobert Kreiten. He was also an important influence on the pianist/conductor Daniel Barenboim, of whom Furtwängler's widow, Elisabeth Furtwängler, said, "Er furtwänglert" ("He furtwänglers"). Barenboim has conducted a recording of Furtwängler's 2nd Symphony, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Other conductors known to speak of Furtwängler in reverent tones include Valery Gergiev, Claudio Abbado, Sergiu Celibidache, Christoph Eschenbach, Alexander Frey, Eugen Jochum, Zubin Mehta, Kurt Masur and Christian Thielemann. George Szell, whose precise and martinet-like musicianship was in many ways antithetical to Furtwängler's, always kept a picture of his older colleague in his dressing room. Herbert von Karajan, who in his early years was Furtwängler's most detested rival, maintained throughout his life that Furtwängler was one of the great influences on his music making, even though his cool, objective modern style had little in common with Furtwängler's white-hot Romanticism. The conductor who probably most clearly represented a continuity with Furtwängler's incandescent style was Jascha Horenstein, who had worked as an assistant to Furtwängler in Berlin during the 1920s.

Furtwängler's performances of Beethoven, Wagner, Bruckner, and Brahms remain important reference points today, as do his interpretations of other works such as Haydn's 88th Symphony, Schubert's Ninth Symphony, and Schumann's Fourth Symphony. His performances are grounded in the spontaneous flexibility that Wagner referred to as the "elastic phrase."

Notable recordings

There are a huge number of Furtwängler recordings currently available, mostly live. Many of these were made during World War II using experimental tape technology. After the war they were confiscated by the Soviet Union for decades, and have only recently become widely available, often on multiple legitimate and illegitimate labels. In spite of their limitations, the recordings from this era are widely admired by Furtwängler devotees.

This is only a small selection of some of Furtwängler's most famed recordings. For more information, see his discography and list of currently available recordings. The French Wilhelm Furtwängler Society also has a list of recommended recordings.

  • Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, live performance with the Berlin Philharmonic, June 1943 (Classica d'Oro, Deutsche Grammophon, Enterprise, Music and Arts, Opus Kura, Tahra)
  • Beethoven, Ninth Symphony, live performance at the July 29, 1951 re-opening of Bayreuther Festspiele (not to be confused with EMI's release) with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Elisabeth Höngen, Hans Hopf and Otto Edelmann. (Orfeo D'or, 2008).
  • Beethoven, Ninth Symphony, ostensibly a live performance at the July 29, 1951 re-opening of Bayreuther Festspiele but purported by the President of the Wilhelm Furtwängler Society of America to actually be dress rehearsal takes edited by EMI into one recording, all performed prior to the actual public performance. (EMI, 1955). 26 27

Notable premieres

Notable compositions

For orchestra

Early works

  • Overture in E♭ Major, Op. 3 (1899)
  • Symphony in D major (1st movement: Allegro) (1902)
  • Symphony in B minor (Largo movement) (1908; the principal theme of this work was used as the leading theme of the 1st movement of the Symphony No. 1, in the same key)

Mature works

Chamber music

  • Piano Quintet (for two violins, viola, cello, and piano) in C major (1935)
  • Violin Sonata No. 1 in D minor (1935)
  • Violin Sonata No. 2 in D major (1939)

Choral

(all early works)

  • Schwindet ihr dunklen Wölbungen droben (Chorus of Spirits, from Goethe's Faust) (1901–1902)
  • Religöser Hymnus (1903)
  • Te Deum for Choir and Orchestra (1902–1906) (rev. 1909) (first performed 1910)

Media
Brahms Second Symphony, first movement
Furtwängler's handling of this passage from the first movement of Brahms's Second Symphony has been widely praised for its handling of tempo and mood
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

References

  • Cairns, David "Wilhelm Furtwängler" in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians London: Macmillan, 1980.
  • Kater, Michael H. The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
  • Spotts, Frederic Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. London: Hutchinson, 2002. ISBN 0-09-179394-7
  • Shirakawa, Sam H. The Devil's Music Master: The controversial life and career of Wilhelm Furtwängler Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992 ISBN 0-19-506508-5

Notes

  1. ^ Cowan, Rob. "Furtwängler – Man and Myth". Gramophone. http://www.gramophone.co.uk/HallofFame/Furtwangler/Feature/Manandmyth. Retrieved 10 April 2012. 
  2. ^ a b c d David Cairns "Wilhelm Furtwängler" in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians London: Macmillan, 1980
  3. ^ Open Library
  4. ^ The Independent
  5. ^ Michael H Kater The Twisted Muse, p.198
  6. ^ Daniel Jaffé Sergey Prokofiev, p.128 (London: Phaidon, 1998)
  7. ^ Frederick Spotts Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, p.291
  8. ^ ASIN 0761501371
  9. ^ "Music: Partisans on the Podium". Time. April 25, 1949. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,856244,00.html. 
  10. ^ Galo, Gary A., Review of The Furtwängler Record by John Ardoin (December 1995). Notes (2nd Ser.), 52 (2): pp. 483-485.
  11. ^ a b Frederick Spotts, p.294
  12. ^ See David Cairns, ibid
  13. ^ a b http://www.classicalnotes.net/features/furtwangler.html
  14. ^ Shirakawa, Sam, chap. 15
  15. ^ Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (1970) Macmillan pp 548.
  16. ^ Bernard D. Sherman. (1997[1999]). "Brahms: The Symphonies/Charles Mackerras". Fanfare. http://www.bsherman.net/mack.html. Retrieved 2010-09-05. 
  17. ^ Monod, David (2005). Settling Scores: German Music, Denazification, and the Americans, 1945-1953. The University of North Carolina Press. pp. 149. ISBN 0-8078-2944-7. http://books.google.com/?id=Yx6UUD6M1LEC&pg=PA149&vq=sabata&dq=%22de+sabata%22. 
  18. ^ Roger Smithson (1997) (.RTF). Furtwängler’s Silent Years: 1945-47. Société Wilhelm Furtwängler. http://www.furtwangler.net/doc/45-47en.rtf. Retrieved 2007-07-21. 
  19. ^ "Wilhelm Furtwängler". James C.S. Liu, M.D. http://members.macconnect.com/users/j/jimbob/classical/furtwaengler.html. Retrieved 2006-07-06. 
  20. ^ a b c Taubman, Howard (1949-01-06). "Musicians' Ban on Furtwaengler Ends His Chicago Contract for '49". New York Times.  reprinted in McLanathan, Richard B K; Gene Brown (1978). The Arts. New York: Arno Press. p. 349. ISBN 0-405-11153-3. http://books.google.com/?id=dht-QrfdzIwC&pg=PA349&vq=Musicians%27+Ban+on+Furtwaengler+Ends+His+Chicago+Contract+for+%2749&dq=0405111533. 
  21. ^ Taking Sides (2001) at the Internet Movie Database
  22. ^ Martin Kettle (26 November 2004). "Second coming". The Guardian (London). http://arts.guardian.co.uk/fridayreview/story/0,,1359271,00.html. Retrieved 2007-07-21. 
  23. ^ "Wilhelm Furtwängler Biography". Naxos. http://www.naxos.com/conductorinfo/846.htm. Retrieved 2007-07-21. 
  24. ^ http://www.classicstoday.com/review.asp?ReviewNum=12213
  25. ^ Christoph Eschenbach Own Words on His Life
  26. ^ Beethoven's 9th - Fraud & misrepresentation by EMI - Is this really so?. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090807111933AAIBBsi. 
  27. ^ Kees A. Schouhamer Immink (2007). "Shannon, Beethoven, and the Compact Disc". IEEE Information Theory Newsletter: 42–46. http://www.exp-math.uni-essen.de/~immink/pdf/beethoven.htm. Retrieved 2007-12-12. 

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