A documentary on the legendary conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler – produced by the BBC 3rd Programme on November 30, 1964, commemorating 10 years since his death.
Without any doubt, lovers of Classical Music will know the name Furtwängler and most likely have a collection of his recordings on their shelves.
He was widely considered one of the greatest artists of the 20th century and one of the most legendary conductors during an era when legendary conductors were a rule rather than an exception.
He was a major influence for many later conductors, and his name is often mentioned when discussing their interpretative styles.
Furtwängler was principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic between 1922 and 1945, and from 1952 until 1954. He was also principal conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra (1922–26), and was a guest conductor of other major orchestras including the Vienna Philharmonic.
Although not an adherent of Nazism, he was the foremost conductor to remain in Germany during the Nazi era. Despite his open opposition to antisemitism and the ubiquity of Nazi symbolism, the regime did not seek to suppress him, at Joseph Goebbels’ insistence, for propaganda reasons. This situation caused lasting controversy, and the extent to which his presence lent prestige to Nazi Germany is still debated.
Furtwängler possessed a unique and deeply personal philosophy of music. He viewed symphonic works as creations of nature, which could only be realized subjectively through sound. Neville Cardus, writing in the Manchester Guardian in 1954, eloquently described 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 realized subjectively…”Similarly, conductor Henry Lewis remarked: “I admire Furtwängler for his originality and honesty. He liberated himself from the slavery of the score; he understood that the notes printed on the page are nothing but SYMBOLS. The score is neither the essence nor the spirit of the music. Furtwängler had the rare and extraordinary gift of transcending the written notes to reveal the true essence of music.”
Many commentators and critics regard him as the greatest conductor in history. Musicologist Walter Frisch, in his book on the symphonies of Johannes Brahms, describes Furtwängler as “the finest Brahms conductor of his generation, perhaps of all time.” Frisch highlights Furtwängler’s recordings as demonstrating “at once a greater attention to detail and to Brahms’ markings than his contemporaries, and at the same time a larger sense of rhythmic-temporal flow that is never deflected by individual nuances.” He praises Furtwängler’s ability “not only to respect, but to make musical sense of, dynamic markings and the indications of crescendo and diminuendo.” Frisch concludes that Furtwängler possessed “the rare combination of a conductor who understands both sound and structure.” He notes Vladimir Ashkenazy who says that his sound “is never rough. It’s very weighty but at the same time is never heavy. In his fortissimo you always feel every voice…. I have never heard so beautiful a fortissimo in an orchestra”, and Daniel Barenboim says he “had a subtlety of tone color that was extremely rare. His sound was always ’rounded,’ and incomparably more interesting than that of the great German conductors of his generation.”
For the next hour and twenty minutes take a trip back in time via the BBC and a 1964 memorial to Wilhelm Furtwängler.
