Opus Kura OPK 2068, 77:48 [Distr. by Albany] ****:
More, even much-trod Furtwaengler postwar materials, 1949-1950, for which Opus Kura has decided to transfer the 78rpm shellac sources rather than transcribe the tape originals, as has been EMI’s wont. The clarity of articulation of the Vienna Philharmonic–which generally, as Furtwangler’s “mistress” orchestra, sounds studied and less driven than his musical “wife,” the Berlin Philharmonic–emerges despite the obvious, persistent hiss in the shellacs. Engineer Satoru Aihara claims to have used a different take of the last side of the 1950 Oberon Overture, which does provide a mighty vision of Shakespeare’s fairy king.
The woodwind playing in the latter part of the Beethoven first movement, over a tympanic ostinato, proves quite lulling, almost bucolic. The sheen of the VPO strings, along with the ubiquitous oboe, quite compel our respect for Furtwaengler’s decidedly Apollinian interpretation of this “dance symphony.” Not so manic as his 1943 and 1953 performance with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the reading enjoys weight, flexibility, and a definite swagger of confidence. Typical of Furtwaengler, the Allegretto receives a mysterious aura of tragedy, the soft pianissimi graduated most palpably. The serpentine cello line seems to emerge from the Abyss, a version of Bach’s Cantata No. 4. That this sad elegy could become contrapuntal chamber music impresses itself on our consciousness, only a step away from Schubert’s slow movement from Death and the Maiden. The trio and its subsequent canon proceed as delicately as any clavichord performance of a Bach chorale prelude, only for the martial theme to plunge us once more into the breach. A substantial, hefty approach to the Presto, with a much-extended, monumental trio section, suspended in anxious space. The last movement exhibits a bit of stiffness, but the scale and intensity of the forward, cascading, driven figures never wavers, and Furtwaengler carefully molds the string accents. The crescendos are worlds unto to themselves – punching and swirling at once. The cumulative force of the peroration quite takes one’s breath away, a rush of sustained energy.
I have always retained a special affection for Furtwaengler’s Emperor Waltz (1950). Some call it unsentimental, but I feel a restrained fervor and grandly imperial spirit traverses this reading, which often evinces a tragic nuance of a lost, humanitarian age, “of begowned thighs and piercing mustache.” The 78s’ hiss conspicuously absent, the music alternately urges forward and retreats in silken sonorities, the phrase endings lilting romantic yearning. The mystery at the conclusion–the entrance of The Emperor himself, perhaps–makes us forget that majesty too often descended into tyranny. Oberon drips with the Romantic preoccupation with woodland naiads and transcendent spirits. The VPO string line, when it sits still, could be a pellucid lake in Coleridge’s Xanadu. The two 1949 readings–of Mendelssohn and Wagner–could be mirror images of each other, testifying as they do the composers’ contrapuntal mastery and the sheer, fluid tensile strength of their orchestral, balanced parts. The 1949 Mendelssohn had been familiar to me via a French Pathe LP transfer. The shellacs are noisy, but the elastic delineation of the watery venue, the flying birds, and the clashing forces of nature quite mesmerizes. Only Mitropoulos for me has more potently delivered me to the Hebrides. The 1949 Wagner Meistersinger Prelude has been and continues to be much heralded; there are alternate takes that Testament and Music & Arts have bequeathed us. Meistersinger enjoys a pageantry quite in keeping with its aura of the Medieval guilds, the brotherhood of work, the celebration of song. Furtwaengler’s transitions remain marvels of their kind, the rhythmic and dynamic shifts already prepared by the graduated accents in the bass harmonies. Shellac hiss notwithstanding, the inscription manages a white heat within the restrained periods of contrapuntally buoyant motion.
–Gary Lemco
