Naxos’s programme for transferring all of Furtwängler’s commercial
recordings from the decade 1940-1950 has now reached his
first post-war studio visit. The 1947 Beethoven concerto
with Menuhin is about Beethoven, but it is also about reconciliation.
The Lucerne venue tells us that Furtwängler’s post-war rehabilitation
process was nearly but not quite complete. A leading figure
in that process was the American-Jewish violinist Yehudi
Menuhin, who had every reason to despise those artists who
had stayed on in Nazi Germany. Indeed, together with two
other Jewish soloists, Artur Schnabel and Bronislaw Huberman,
he had refused an invitation from Furtwängler to perform
in Berlin in 1933. However, Menuhin had subsequently learnt
of Furtwängler’s efforts to protect Jewish musicians in Nazi
Germany and of his refusal to undertake a propaganda tour
of occupied France with the Berlin Philharmonic. The idea
of a collaboration between the two musicians therefore took
on a profoundly symbolic value for Menuhin.
Both Menuhin and Furtwängler were deeply instinctive artists with
a leaning towards the philosophical and the spiritual. It
follows, then, that their performances were coloured by the
events around them. In the case of a more objective, classical
performer such as Jascha Heifetz, perhaps with Reiner or
Szell conducting, the performance would probably not reflect
any external event, however much the artists may have been
moved personally. While reactions to specific events could
many years later draw Bernstein into excessive sentimentalism,
there is no trace of that here. Furtwängler leads off simply
and serenely, without any attempt at manipulating the music,
which seems from both artists to assume the character of
a humble prayer. Perhaps it reflects gratitude to music itself
for having provided that road to reconciliation which might
otherwise have been far harder and longer.
In 1953 the same artists, now regular collaborators, set
down the concerto again in London with the Philharmonia.
It is of
course another great performance, but that word “another” maybe
gives the game away. There is a sense that things are being
taken for granted that were not in 1947. The first movement
appears to aim more deliberately at grandeur, while the orchestral
variation in the slow movement does not attain the fervour
of the Lucerne version. Moreover, the balance is slightly
less good, with a more conventionally forward placement of
the soloist, to the detriment of his dialogue with the clarinet
and then the bassoon in the “larghetto”. The 1953 recording
naturally has a greater dynamic and frequency range, yet
there is a stridency to Menuhin’s violin, at least in EMI’s
own GROC transfer (5 66975 2), which does no justice to his
golden timbre. The Lucerne recording, as transferred by Ward
Marston, is warm and natural, even though nobody could mistake
it for a modern recording. If I had to choose just one of
Menuhin’s recordings of the Beethoven – later commercial
recordings were made with Silvestri, Klemperer and Masur – it
would be this from 1947. Indeed, while I should hate to be
without the insights that so many other violinists have brought
to the concerto, if forced to limit myself to only one recording,
I would have to make it this.
Furtwängler greatly loved Mozart yet his surviving recordings
are limited to a handful of works. Of the symphonies there
is
only this 40th and a 39th on DG. The
40th raised eyebrows in its day for its faster-than-Toscanini
first movement. Nearly sixty years later its lean, biting
attack will shock no-one used to Harnoncourt or Norrington.
Furtwängler makes a tiny pause before the second subject,
as did Bruno Walter, but unlike Walter he then takes the
theme up to tempo. It is noticeable that, though the full
VPO strings are presumably used, he does not bring into play
the rugged, bass-weighted sonorities so typical of his Beethoven,
Brahms and Wagner, preferring a tense, muscular sound. Indeed,
one of the valuable lessons to be learnt from this recording
is that Furtwängler was more of an orchestral stylist than
is commonly supposed. Most of his recordings are of the Austro-German
romantic repertoire and it is easy to imagine that he applied
these saturated sonorities to everything he did. In reality
he could transform the orchestral sound, for Haydn and Mozart
at one end of the spectrum as for Ravel at the other.
The Andante is grave but without excess weight or fat. He
draws from his players luminous sound, infused with humanity,
reminding
us that he was a notable interpreter of Gluck’s “Orfeo ed
Euridice”. The Minuet is trenchant and striding while the
Trio again recalls Gluck in his Elysian Fields mood. This
is a trio which, in most performances, has no character at
all. I am grateful to Furtwängler for proving that it is
not an uncharacteristic lapse in Mozart’s inspiration. We
come back to tense, lean driving for a Finale which completes
an interpretation as rewarding as any in the catalogue. The
recording falls easily on the ear and I quickly adjusted
to it and concentrated only on the music.
Incidentally, those who imagine that the tenser modern readings of
Mozart had to come as an antidote to the affectionate
and comfortable interpretations of, respectively, Bruno Walter
and Karl Böhm, should make a point of listening to this.
They may even have to admit that there is nothing new under
the sun.
These performances have frequently been reissued over the
years, but if you don’t already have them, don’t miss them
now.
Christopher Howell
see also review by Jonathan Woolf
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