Classical Corner Classical Music Corner (thread #30)

Yes, you may be right, unless he is in some box somewhere.

There still seems to be a great amount of debate over his motives and actions. Wiki says:

"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.

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. 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". Rubinstein likewise wrote in a telegram, "Had Furtwängler been firm in his democratic convictions he would have left Germany"."

 

Furtwangler, compared to active Nazi party member Karajan, maintained what was arguably a sort of neutrality on the subject.
""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.

Essentially he is guilty of supporting Nazism by remaining in Germany, though obviously that in itself is not easily dismissed or to be written off.

 

It's Ok. To be honest, while I admire Beethoven's piano sonatas, I am rarely moved by them.



I am often moved by Brahms.

 

I sat Netrebko as Anna Bolena at the Met last night. Glorious music and her voice is wonderful (although at intermission two of the other singers were replaced due to colds).

 

I'm making no judgement of course. I just find that footage absolutely fascinating for some reason.

 

Off the top of my head, the Brahms works I have in my collection include (and not as part of one big box):

The 4 symphonies
The 4 concertos
All of the other orchestral works
Complete solo piano works
6 discs worth of lieder for the male voice
1 disc of lieder for the female voice
Complete chamber music
Deutsches Requiem

I'm probably forgetting some odds and ends. In most instances I have mutiple versions.

 

Carlos Kleiber has a nice version too.

I see that part of Walter's cycle is available on Spotify. I plan to check that out. In the meanwhile, I'm liking Szell and Klemperer.

My first set on LP was Leinsdorf and the BSO. I'd love to hear that again.

 

There were two choices Lepra or Cholera !
First, you had to be wealthy enough and speak english to leave the country. You could never know how and if you could continue doing what your passion drove you - make music or conduct music. Second-A conductor is also kind of responsible for the people working in your orchestra. They often had no choice but to stay in germany during Nazi time, at first you do not notice how things change and how this will affect you and suddenly you are trapped.
An orchestra musician would not get license to work in the UK or the US because of those strong unions.
What would you do ? At what point would you leave the US ?
Your family the place you were born, where your friends are and your ancestors were buried, leaving for an uncertain fate was not an easy choice; but easier than staying in germany !
All those bombs every night on the big cities with thousands of death daily were just one part. The fear who might ring the door bell in the morning.
Immense amount of psychological pressure.
From a certain point in time there was no more way out. You either left say before 1938, long before the war or you were caught in germany, since no one wanted more gereans in their country..

And then the grotesque situation in vienna, when Hitler announced he would come to hear Beethoven's 9th and one conductor after the other caught a flu or something and finally Furtwängler did the job.

If you take the music seriousand believe in the victory of good over evil or at least that culture is a signal of hope in desperate times someone HAS TO BE THERE to keep the cultural life going on.
For jews there was no choice at all, if they did not leave they would be killed; but for normal german citizens it was not that clear and later on it is easy to blame someone for not boycot Hitler or slap him in the face etc.
Writers like Thomas Mann could still keep on working, but a conductor needs an orchestra ...

 

I concur with your writing.

 

Don't know about Rich, but perhaps my favorite critic--the trenchant, virulently opinionated B.H. Haggin, who for years wrote for The Nation, and who is said to have been a formative influence for several generations of American music critics--was a Brahms basher long before. (He also bashed his fellow critics by name, a habit that did nothing to endear him to the rest of his profession.) I particularly like Haggin because he so well explains himself; even when I disagree with him (and that is certainly the case with much--but by no means all--Brahms), he makes clear what bothers him or appeals to him without any cutsie self-aggrandizing grandstanding a la David Hurwitz. Nor was he an exponent of the "Everything is beautiful in its own way" school of which we see so much these days and that, to be fair, was pretty prevalent during Haggin's lifetime, too. No, he's full steam ahead, "Here's what I consider valid, here's what I don't, here's why, I don't care about the received wisdom, and I dare you to differ." With apologies for the lengthy extract, the following is what he wrote about Brahms in the 1941 edition of Music on Records, his guidebook to, well, you can guess, which went through probably 10 or 12 editions over the course of several decades:

 

Currently spinning one of the best sounding discs I own. Anyone else heard stuff from this label?

 

I have a handful of CDs from way back when. They were some of the best sounding CDs in the format's early days.

 

As I think you know, my purchases are guided by performance. I do not have a single CD on that label in my collection.

 

Every critic has their own style and I often thought Haggin used descriptions that made no sense. He often used terms that were totally non musical related. For instance "saccharine sentimentality" used to describe parts of the Violin Concerto? That is a real push to me.

 

I must admit those recordings are not what you would call "Desert Island performances" but the sound hooked me on many of them.

 

I had no idea, why are they no longer with DG? (This is what passes for celebrity gossip among CM fans. Some gasp at Ashton and Demi; I wonder at the Emerson Quartet, DG, and Sony.) Those quartets are all on Friday's program. So I ordered the disc. It'll be interesting to compare the recording and the concert. Thanks for the tip.

 

I have a number of discs from Reference Recordings especially from their earlier prime period of the 1990's. I see they are now putting out a few more classical titles.

The Nojima Plays Lizst LP is worthwhile and their LP re-masters of earlier Vox issues recorded by Joanna Nikrenz and Marc J. Aubort have performances that I have kept, such as Stanislaw Skrowaczewski and the Minnesota Orchestra performing Ravel's Ma Mere and the Valse Nobles. There are some good bits on an a Leonard Slatkin and St. Louis Symphony Orchestra disc of Gershwin.

 

I do not yet have a single recording by Bruno Walter ...

 

I have this box and it does not have all the symphonies ...

 

Life was certainly very difficult for most musicians in Nazi Germany. The same was true for musicians who lived in Stalinist Russia or Communist China in the 60's through the 70's. Emigration to a foreign country was more easily said than done.

 

Now playing CD1 from the following twofer recently arrived from MDT for a first listen ...

 

That is a situation that cries out to be remedied immediately, and thus:

 

Indeed, it is quite ironic that with 8000+ recordings between my CD's, LP's and tapes (cassettes and open-reels). I do not even have a single recording by this significant conductor.

 

A classic.