Wilhelm Furtwängler was, with Toscanini and Karajan, the most eminent conductor of the twentieth century by the imprint he left in the world of music and in the collective imagination. Warner Classics publishes ” The Complete Wilhelm Furtwängler on Record », A box set of 55 CDs. This release combines for the first time the legacy His Master’s Voice and Polydor-Deutsche Grammophon, plus the few Telefunken and Decca records, studio recordings and ” lives commercial ”, concerts chosen to be released on disc.
At the heart of this legend mingles History with a capital “H”. At 36, in 1922, Furtwängler succeeded the legendary Arthur Nikisch as conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. He was therefore at its head during the Nazi regime, his case inspiring István Szabó a film, Taking sides (2002), taken from the play by Ronald Harwood.
The sense of form
The publication of the box set therefore did not fail to be the playground of the umpteenth posthumous trial, for example in the New York Times (” A Conductor’s Impossible Legacy “). The cheap moral posture avoids talking about music and going deeper into the real subject, yet so vast, of the artistic legacy and the published box set. So once and for all, Furtwängler was denazified; unlike Karajan, he did not have his party card and did not lie about it, and “it is well known that he helped the Jewish musicians in his orchestra as much as he could” to quote a letter. by Yehudi Menuhin, December 4, 1945. For those who want to deepen, there are the works of Fred K. Prieberg, Musik im NS-Staat Where Die Kraftprobe.
The Second World War allows us, however, to recall that Furtwängler’s “war recordings”, of unheard-of tension, the bands of which had been seized by Russian troops in 1945 and returned to the West in 1989 in favor of the Glasnost, were reissued by Deutsche Grammophon in 1990, then by the Berlin Philharmonic more recently. Not being part of the official discography, they do not appear in this box, which aims to group together the recordings made for a disc.
What makes Furtwängler relevant or unique today? A great thinker, philosopher of music, Furtwängler castigated both the “pose” of the conductors and the “fanaticism of the letter”, which seemed to him to be an academic process. He contrasts the big picture with the “frenzy of detail” by declaring: “The sense of form is what makes the nature of music, what distinguishes art from manufacturing. Furtwängler is therefore a grain of sand in our time, which sanctifies objectivity and obsessive attention to detail.
“Semantic-contractual game”
How far can we tolerate a certain vagueness, in favor of the “big vision”? The 3e Symphony de Brahms is sometimes taken as an example by observers critical of Furtwängler to denounce his supposed negligence in musical production.
And it is there, exactly, that this box causes a major awareness. Because the music lover discovers in 2021, through a kind of semantic-contractual game, the mysteries of which he could not know or master, that there is no Brahms complete by Furtwängler.
In 2011, EMI published a box set of 21 CDs ” Wilhelm Furtwängler – The Great EMI Recordings “. It contained the usual complete of Brahms’ symphonies, with the 3e Symphony of December 18, 1949. This has been published by HMV / EMI since 1959 (Pathé FALP 543). However, we only find here Symphonies nbone 1 and 2. How can a “Great EMI Recordings” suddenly no longer be part of a ” Complete Furtwängler on Record “? The question arises identically with the ” Complete Furtwängler Recordings on DG and Decca »Published in 2019.
The box set is therefore disorienting, especially since the absence of an index of the works adds to the confusion. In fact, the complete Brahms EMI symphonies were made a posteriori, as was much of the legacy published by DG. No Bruckner, apart from the Adagio of the 7e is “On Record”.
But then, if it is voluntarily that there was no complete Beethoven or Brahms and if these were constituted post-mortem through agreements with the beneficiaries, we would come to have a fascinating light on the musical judgment made today on Furtwängler.
To take the example of 3e Symphony of Brahms, if Furtwängler neither recorded nor authorized it, how can one say: “Furtwängler was messy and blind”, when the true analysis would be “Furtwängler was lucid, for he knew very well that the level of the majority of recorded concerts did not lend themselves to reproduction ”?
Furtwängler’s “official” discography (in the sense of recordings published by DG, EMI or Decca) is full of ” lives commercial ”. In 2019, Universal still sold us under the guise of “Furtwängler Decca Recordings” a 4e Symphonyby Bruckner which is in no way a “Decca Recording”, but a 1951 concert edited from 1973 by Decca. This set therefore teaches us that there are two types of ” lives commercial ”that nothing allows us to discriminate.
Illusory light
Stéphane Topakian, great connoisseur of the art and discography of Furtwängler and coordinator of the box set, made this essential legacy in tandem with sound engineer Christophe Hénault. Because the key advantage of this set is its complete remastering. Against EMI’s usual sound philosophy, consensual, filtered and opaque, Hénault and Topakian sought to “extract as much music as possible, without cheating “. Here is a precept which finally gives us treble and violins.
Alas in the content and its articulation, this box is less virtuous than it seems. While expected clarity, it is but an illusory light in an endless tunnel.
It falls into the same pitfalls and contains not what has been approved, but everything that has been recorded with the aim of making it one day (perhaps) into a record. The 9e by Beethoven in London in 1937 (finally restored correctly) was recorded by HMV but, writes Stéphane Topakian: “Walter Legge had every intention of making a record of it. […] Furtwängler did not have to approve it; besides, we did not submit the baby to him. […] Technically, it was deemed insufficient. It’s at best a bonus CD, not, on CD 5, a milestone in the conductor’s official discography.
Ditto for extracts from Ring in 1937 in London in ” official first release “. They were never part of Furtwängler’s legacy. Chef and label had given up publishing anything, wrote Mr. Topakian, who however believes “sincerely that Warner (after long deliberations together) was right to publish these extracts”.
And the Passion according to Saint Matthew by Bach? Within 30 years of the chef’s death, HMV cared about everything but that, but in ” The Complete Wilhelm Furtwängler on Record “, This concert of April 1954 becomes before our eyes a” radio recording intended for a disc “. Would Furtwängler, who died in November 1954, have approved it, despite the desperate bass Otto Edelmann? Pure guesswork.
Finally, the box confirms myths when necessary. When Furtwängler died, EMI had no Ninth of Beethoven (proof that that of 37 was far and forgotten). That of the “reopening of Bayreuth” in 1951 has survived, but it could have been that of August 22, 1954 in Lucerne. It is a choice a posteriori. Clever and honorable sprain to the line, because document published primarily in 1955.
Among a few unpublished works, the most interesting is a Emperor’s Waltz (Vienna, January 1950), failed because, exceeding 10 minutes, it did not fit on 2 sides of 78 rpm. This unknown take therefore represents Furtwängler’s “real tempo” in this work.
Beyond the box set, let us never forget that Furtwängler’s art is also documented by concerts which sometimes surpass his official or commercial recordings. Even though the 9e of Bayreuth is justly legendary, that of Lucerne is an example. The same goes for the fabulous 1D of Brahms of Hamburg of October 27, 1951 or of the Heroic Symphony by Beethoven in Vienna in December 1944.
Finally, “the” Furtwängler box, if you are an amateur, is virtual: it is the list that you will build up over the years on your listening service on demand.