Furtwangler – one of the finest conductors of the last century – once told a friend that “conducting was the house I fled to because I was about to go to ruin as a composer.” Still, Furtwangler felt himself a composer first and a conductor second. He spent forever on a particular work and even when finally completed he felt it often failed to meet his standards; even his First Symphony and Piano Quintet never got performed in his lifetime. He often had insomnia as a result of his creative work.
When Furtwangler escaped to Switzerland during the last winter of WWII, he was finally able to use the pause in his conducting work to composed his Second Symphony. He searched in his despair for a calm in nature and the spiritual. The work is firmly tonal, bearing some similarity to the nature music of Mahler and Bruckner, but probably closer in intent to Brahms. It is dense and Germanically heavy, but has some compelling passages that build up steadily and emotionally, similar to Bruckner. This is not the first recording of the 81-minute work, but is probably the best available version sonically. Interesting that its length is just a minute-and-a-half over the maximum that can be safely carried on a single CD today.
– John Sunier
