Search - Furtwangler, Berlin Philharmonic :: Early Works 2

From the review in the The Washington Post

Record Collector | Mons, Belgium | 05/14/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Wilhelm Furtwaengler was a poet of the baton, more interested in emotional communication than in the precise discipline favored today. He was likely to make each performance of a work sound different from the last, a quality hard to capture on records, which tend to go on doing the same things in the same way every time you play them. Still, the personality of the conductor comes through in some of his old recordings recently remastered on CD.



The Koch Legacy series has issued a thorough survey of Furtwangler's early recordings with the Berlin Philharmonic, from 1926 to 1937, in two volumes of two CDs each. The first (3-7059-2) has music of Bach (Brandenburg Concerto No. 3), Mozart ("Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" and overtures), Schubert ("Rosamunde"), Beethoven ("Egmont" Overture and Symphony No. 5) and Rossini ("Gazza Ladra" and "Barber of Seville" overtures). The second (3-7073-2) includes theatrical music of Weber, Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Wagner and Johann Strauss Jr., as well as a superb performance of "Till Eulenspiegel" by the other Strauss. There is a special interest in comparing his fine 1926 recording of the "Freischutz" Overture (in the first set) with the more evocative 1935 recording in the second set. These interpretations cannot be called better or worse than their abundant and excellent competition; they are one-of-a-kind and to be treasured for that reason.

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