Search - Ludwig van Beethoven, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Berliner Philharmoniker :: Beethoven - Symphonies 5 & 7

Two treasured works of 1943!

Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 04/22/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Every time you listen Furtwangler `s Beethoven, you may feel how enriched and peerlessly unequaled. That was possible due in Beethoven' s music there are countless intrinsic values. Beethoven talks us primordially to spirit; in that admirable blending of sublime harmony between the radian Apollonian scent and the Dionysian resolution along the score.



Furtwangler just paid admirable attention and special carefulness every single indication in the score; so through an impeccable process of genial dissection his baton worked out as an invisible scalpel, irradiating that sublime majesty and fervent empathy among the 110 musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic.



To play music under these circumstances must have been a gratifying and enriching experience. In the case of this famous recordings we find Wilhelm in wartimes, so you should not astonish about the profound sense of drama, loaded of febrile intensity and violent attacks.



The Fifth is in my opinion his best achievement; it possesses that visible sensation of be listening a work in progress. To put in words of the same conductor: " I always start from what it is coming into being, not from what already is. To me the music is never complete. It evolves from the first bar; everything that follows must grow logically from the way is attacked, including tempo...The important thing is the overall mood., the overall atmosphere of a work, in which one msut be totally conscious."



That is why we easily can feel that every time he even conducted the same work, you experienced the absolute conviction he was sculpting the work over and over, with different results. In this sense in spite of the fact the spiritual environment that surrounded the hall, there was a cloud of human intensity nourishing the interpretation; that is why his fortissimos and climaxes sounded with such genuine eroticism.



The Seventh Symphony is intense, dramatic and precise. The admirable atmosphere of genuine enraptured mood and cosmic enthusiasm may be felt from the first bar. The epic atmosphere, the forceful attacks, the heroic resolution and the impetuous wildness underlining the bitter Beethovenian dissonances are simply overwhelming. That energetic Finale is truly the dance `s apotheosis according those descriptive terms of Wagner.



When you listen them you will know what I mean.



"

The recording will change your view

M. Zhao | Los Angeles,CA, USA | 03/17/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This recording came to me about 5 years after I first heard it from Karajan's famous 63's recording with BPO. The astonishing and shocking not only happened when I was listenning, but also afterward. I even doubted that is a new piece! Furtangler never change score, he just found the essence of the music.

If his last fifth recording with BPO in 1954 recalls the image of the God, here is more into the earth--- The Augustus!"