The Greatest Conductor of All Time?
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- Опубліковано 3 лип 2024
- 0:00 Intro and commentary
8:27 Brahms 1 opening (Toscanini)
9:51 Brahms 1 opening (Furtwangler)
12:15 Brahms 3 opening (Toscanini)
13:42 Brahms 3 opening (Furtwangler)
15:23 Brahms 3 2nd theme (Toscanini)
16:00 Brahms 3 2nd theme (Furtwangler)
16:55 Brahms 3 2nd theme cont (Toscanini)
17:45 Brahms 3 2nd theme cont (Furtwangler)
19:16 Brahms 3 2nd mvt (Toscanini)
20:03 Brahms 3 2nd mvt (Furtwangler)
22:53 Tchaikovsky Symphony No 6 2nd theme
26:55 Wagner: Siegfried Act 1 “Forging Song”
32:10 Bruckner Symphony No 8 mvt 3
38:34 Brahms Hungarian Dance No 1
Music in the intro is Earl Wild’s Etude no. 1 after George Gershwin’s “Liza”
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CORRECTION: I misspoke rather seriously in this video when I stated that Furtwängler had been suspended after the war because of charges of collaboration. In point of fact, he was entirely exonerated on all counts of collaboration. I hadn’t originally intended to talk about this and when I did bring it up on the spot I think I got the case of Alfred Cortot (who was indeed suspended for a period of time after the war) mixed up with Furtwängler in my mind.
I was thinkin he actually was suspended from performing in Germany and celibidache took over full time till furtwangler was allowed back.
@@johnrock2173 oh my gosh, I hope I don’t need to make another correction! Perhaps I need to do a follow up video where I figure all of this out. I’m usually more focused on the music 😅
@@TheIndependentPianist There's a film called Sergiu Celibidache, The Triumphant return about Celibidache leading the Berlin Phil after 38 years for a benefit concert of Romania and has tons of interviews of old berlin Phil members from the war era and footage from the post-war years and some of the musicians talk about Furtwangler being unavailable because he hadn't gone through the "De-Nazification" process so this is when Celibidache stepped in as a fulltime conductor in 1946. There's also some great footage of Bruckner rehearsals and explainations by musicians of why they eventually chose Karajan over Celibidache. Hope you can see it. I know it's on MediciTv
One musician said in comparing Celibidache and Furtwangler that "Furtwangler made it more difficult for us because he didn't want a clear downbeat, he wanted us to play on the strength of our own concentration. In that way he made things harder for us, but naturally this concentration produced some wonderful music-making."
@@johnrock2173 I love that!
This lonely old widow in a 🇨🇦 nursing home greatly appreciates your informative videos. Imagine, a UA-cam channel without ratchet screaming & cursing! You have inspired me to try my 80-year-old, arthritic hands at the piano again, something I haven't done in decades. Since my time left on this earth is brief, I'm focusing on one piece, Bach's Air on the G String. I must finally have developed dementia to choose something so difficult 😂. Wish me luck!
That’s wonderful, Claudia! I think the Air on the G string is a great choice. Best of luck, and thanks so much for commenting!
I love your story, Claudia. After training in my youth to be a concert pianist, I stopped playing for more than two decades. I came back to it a couple years ago, not knowing if anything was left of the technique I had worked so hard to develop when I was in my teens. I've found that both my technique and my musicality have improved greatly and I'm getting much more satisfaction from the piano now than I did when I was a neurotic, insecure 20-year-old conservatory student. I hope your return to the piano brings you as much joy and fulfillment as it has brought me.
Awesome you are returning to the piano. I left mine largely moribund for a few years but since the pandemic encouraged me to return to it I have found great pleasure in our joint renaissance! I’m sure you will find it satisfying too
Really excellent appreciation of a phenomenal artist. Your musical examples show how expressively his orchestras played under Furtwangler as opposed to the rigid, mechanical, time-beating of Toscanini and so many other conductors. Furtwangler's most dramatic performances to my mind occured during the darkest war years. HIs January 1945 performance of Brahms 1 is incredibly thrilling. Only the finale survives, sadly, but what a mind-blowing 15 minutes!
Thanks a lot. They are many recordings from Toscanini that are fantastic, but I love Furtwängler. For Brahms, everything he plays seems to me to be exactly what Brahms wanted
and this is always extraordinary.
How great to hear you discuss orchestral works, especially of Brahms. Thanks for putting this together. Really appreciate your insight and being able to follow along with the reduced scores.
Thanks for the great video! I also like Furtwängler very much, for very similar reasons. I learn a lot from your analyses and observations, and it's nice to have someone on youtube who is just as enthusiastic about music and its interpretation - and also about older recordings. I also really like how broad your spectrum is - from Earl Wild and Gershwin to Brahms and Schubert, from Horowitz and Cziffra to Arrau and Furtwängler.
This is definitely my favorite youtube channel!
You inspired me to watch the film Furtwangler's Love again, which has a lot of interviews with Elisabeth Furtwangler his last wife and a lot of footage and quotes and performances of musicians performing his own works. Really informative film. She speaks of in 1933 Furtwangler meeting with Schoenberg in Paris and Schoenberg encouraging Furtwangler to return to Germany and continue making music no matter what happens because it was so important for people. She also talks about later in the war him giving a concert in Lucerne and not returning Germany because he was in danger because of his anti-Nazi sentiments. Really interesting that he was a composer first and always felt that that was his true calling. It probably gave him a different understanding of music in a way. I know he completely at least two symphonies.
Fascinating, I need to see this film!
@@TheIndependentPianist I think you'd like it, it gives some interesting insights into Furtwangler. It's another one that is on MediciTv but it must be available from other sources.
it is a big deal that Furtwängler and Toscanini didn't live long enough to make stereo recordings. Stereo sound has an immense effect on orchestral music reception and because of that, they were both superseded by following generations of conductors.
Very true!
I think Stereo was a stop gap solution to the problem of lack of separation of different instruments. The real answer is Transient response of recording and playback equipment. Great transient response allows us to hear individual instruments apart from each other.
There are stereo recordings of Toscanini with the NBCSO from March and April 1954. Recorded in Carnegie during live broadcast they show the characteristic Toscanini approach but without the familiar glare of the Studio 8H mono recordings he made with RCA. They are available on Pristine Audio. Sadly, there is one almighty cockup in the first movement of Tchaikovsky's Pathetique so not the maestro at his best.
On the more extreme side, Mahler reportedly changed tempo frequently and gave hyper-expressive attention to most works, as stated by musicians in New York during those last years. I’m sure Mahler’s performances of Wagner’s operas in the earliest years of the 20th century were unforgettable. If only we had the smallest record of their sound.
I'm reminded that the great Claudio Arrau, when he appeared in 1960 on the BBC Desert Island Disc program,, chose as the first of his 8 selections, Furtwangler's Schubert 9th w/ Berlin, remarking that "Furtwangler may be the greatest music interpreter of all time." It's a telling choice, Arrau being a musician with a similar characteristic ability to give the music time to breathe, and to inflect phrases with his very personal sense of rubato, of weight, and of songfulness. He had an astonishingly rich tonal palette (the sound always seeming to come from deep in the keys) which allowed him to produce the same range of colors and depth of emotions as Furtwangler. And to my mind, they both evoke a feeling (if it's not too grand to say so) of genuine nobility in their music-making. It's never the only way to play the music, but to me it's an indispensable way and generates a unique, identifiable species of pleasure.
Wow so cool how he voices the Fs the opening chords that lead directly into the first melody note in Brahms 3
I do enjoy Otto Klemperer’s recordings for the similar reason of expressive openness, with lots of room for performers to make their own decisions. Klemperer’s Brahms, Mahler, and Wagner recordings are quite well known. Still haven’t heard a version of Der fliegende Holländer that compares to the 1968 recording with the New Philharmonia Orchestra, when Klemperer was 80 years old.
I also love Klemperer's recordings of the Brahms Symphonies. They are still the gold standard for me. In some ways they lie between the Furtwängler and Toscanini interpretations. They have a lot of the expressive depth of Furtwängler's interpretations but never going too far with that. They also have better ensemble and recording quality.
Excellent video and examples! You and Furtwangler convinced me, it is so enriching to take ...time... in the music and apply a certain degree of flexibility and dynamics, to express ourselves and to make music catchy! Interesting music fragments! How special it must be for a pianist to play with an entire orchestra... And how exciting as a conductor to search for optimal harmonious and natural interplay...
I’m very glad that you got some insight from this! I found it very inspiring in my playing and I think it might be just the right thing for you too :-)
Thanks for another great talk. Tempo is one of those things that can impress but can be like riding on an express train while details of the scenery whizz by. I am also slowing down and smelling the flowers in my piano playing. Let's not forget in the development of the Waldstein piano sonata (often played too fast) Beethoven indicates instruments in the descending 16th notes.
When I first heard Furtwangler's Vienna Philharmonic recording of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony about 60 years ago, I became a Furtwangler fan.
You remark at the beginning of this presentation how inspiring other musicians can be, thus influencing our own performances or providing insights into the music that enable greater all round engagement and enjoyment. I agree. of course, there are those amongst us who are happy to scoff and see nothing more in conducting than someone just standing up and waving their arms around. They choose not to understand that the conductor's job is to have a vision of the music: to guide the tempo; to shape and mix and balance the sound from each individual musician in order to create something greater than the component parts; to communicate an interpretation of the composer's intent with some sort of symbiotic relationship between each performer and the audience. Good conductors combine technique with a meaningful repertoire of interpretative gestures, as well as verbal skills . . . and the world's great conductors are also blessed with some charisma as well! The late Pierre Boulez remarked that conducting is more difficult than playing a single instrument. He recognised that conductors have to know the culture, to know the score, and to project what they want us to hear. Some conductors can be very well prepared, but cannot transmit their ideas to an orchestra; others are good communicators, but have nothing to transmit because they are not absorbed enough in the score. And as you are a fan of Herbert von Karajan, you'll appreciate his view that, “The art of conducting consists in knowing when to stop conducting to let the orchestra play”.
(I have read through the other comments posted here and see that you have come under some 'attack', Cole, for your celebration of Furtwängler, which I think you handled with great tact and empathy and diplomacy. Although it would seem to be the case that Furtwängler was not an adherent of Nazism, he was still the leading conductor to remain in Germany during the Nazi regime. And despite his open opposition to antisemitism and the ubiquity of Nazi symbolism, as I read on Wikipedia (not always the best source in the quest for truth, I know!), the regime did not seek to suppress him, at Joseph Goebbels' insistence, for propaganda reasons. This situation has caused lasting controversy, and the extent to which his presence lent prestige to Nazi Germany is still debated, as is revealed in some of your exchanges here. Sadly, when political ideology becomes the bedfellow of any of the creative arts that seek to celebrate the virtues of humanity, the outcome is never happy. As we are all unique individuals, so it is inevitable that there will almost never be complete agreement between our values and beliefs. And as conflict and disagreement can never be completely avoided, so we can do no more than try to manage them as graciously as you always do: bravo!)
Thank you for a most insightful comment as always, Graham. I wholeheartedly agree with Boulez in this matter. There were a couple of occasions in my younger days when I dabbled with conducting, and I found it to be an extraordinarily challenging endeavor. It’s not something I would want to try again, but I am left with nothing but admiration for the conductors who can genuinely mold a large ensemble into a cohesive musical unit-and sympathy for those who struggle to attain that!
Not the greatest and certainly not the greatest orchestra trainer, but a man with fascinating ideas.
I read once that he was the master of transitions. I agree! About his orchestral Chords: I read that he learned from some of his teachers that preciision caused some cancelation of sounds so slightly staggered chords provided a richer sound!
Furtwängler was a giant. I love him, but I prefer Mengelberg. In my opinion, Mengelberg combined Furtwängler's romantic inspiration and Toscanini's strictness and achieved results that outmatched them both. Try his Mahler 4, Tchaikovsky 5, Brahms 1, Rach 2 (with Gieseking... the greatest recording of this piece ever?), Grieg Peer Gynt, Bartók Violin concerto etc.
I really like these videos where you talk about specific pianists and I'm definitely enjoyed this video as well. If I may, I would like to suggest a few pianists I would like to hear your commentary on: (rudolf) serkin, pogorelich, backhaus, gould (I've seen all of your videos on pianists and I dont think you made one on gould yet!)
Thank you for the suggestions! These are all really interesting pianists that I would like to talk about at some point. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely I’ll do another video on Gould. I did two on him before actually (quite some time ago). Those were some of my first videos that got a lot of views. Unfortunately, the copyright holders of Gould’s estate blocked those earlier videos recently and seem to be blocking anyone who uses any clips of Gould playing. I think my videos qualified as fair use, but I didn’t really want to get into a legal battle over it. It’s very unfortunate and I have no idea why they take such a hard line, but I guess I recommend not supporting the official Glenn Gould channel for that reason. I think their attitude is really antithetical to his philosophical ideas.
Anyway, a long winded way to say I am happy to talk about the pianists you name although it’s quite possible I won’t do Gould (not for lack of wanting to).
@TheIndependentPianist Thank you for the reply! I have long stopped supporting the glenn gould channel since they took down a video of his goldberg 1981 recording (that didn't have any ads on it). I didn't realize how much they cared about others even making content on it, though.
Otherwise, I'll definitely be looking forward to your videos in the future. Even if they aren't based on my suggestions, I'll probably enjoy them just as much.
He was a colossol figure and certainly breathed life into things that i have to often found mostly uninteresting. Bloch i think is the best example of that.
My teacher's teacher's teacher was Nikolaev (-whose class included people like Shostakovich, Yudina and Sofronitsky) - and did you know that he listened to Tchaikovsky conduct? He was 13. (CF book by Brown on Tchaikovsky). Apparently Tchaik stamped his foot in in appropriate places. Rachmaninoff conducted more than 50 performances before he left Russia. He was apparently rather good. (cf book on Rachmaninoff by Max Harrison)
Rachmaninoff Conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra many times until his death. He said the sound of this Orchestra was just what he had in mind.
@@joedeegan3870 yes.
Really interesting video Cole, much to think on. I think an interesting topic is how did Furtwangler achieve that fluidity. Did he rehearse pieces so that the orchestra simply learned what he wanted, and it’s always the same, or, as I think you suggest, was this happening in the moment. The latter relies totally on the orchestra watching the conductor at the appropriate time and the conductor being able to adapt to what they actually do
Good orchestras can do this, lesser orchestras perhaps not.
I was lucky to see Siegfried last year and the snippet you played was very powerful. I like his expansive tempi and performances, they work for me.
A topic I’d like you to address one day is that which motivated this video, I think. How does a pianist make the piano sound not like a piano. Where do “colours” come from, are they real or imaginary ? Does it matter ? What can you actually do with the pedals? Are there 3 or 25 levels of pedal gradation ? Can you actually affect the sound your instrument makes (you know, wiggling your finger on a key to deliver vibrato - hilarious!).
What quality of instrument do you need to do these things ? What level of expertise do you need ?
There that could fill an entire year’s worth of videos…
There is an expansive article in Wikipedia on Furtwanglers relationship with the Nazis.
Thank you, Neil, these are great issues that you raise (and also great ideas for future videos). From what I understand, Furtwängler avoided rehearsing too much. He expressed sentiments that were a little bit akin to Fritz Kreisler, who spoke about the evils of over practice, and how that could kill inspiration. When you hear the same pieces played at different times under Furtwängler’s direction, you can hear widely differing interpretations.
When you see him conduct (there are a few clips from rehearsals as well as a complete video performance of Don Giovanni, and you can see him conduct the overture) you’ll notice that he has a very simple baton technique, but that at certain points, when he gets excited, his baton will start to shake. So he’s obviously not as clear in those moments, but the orchestra seems to play with renewed excitement-perhaps because they don’t feel like they have to follow him exactly?
He must have been a very efficient rehearsal leader, because the same effect that you hear in his recordings with the greatest orchestras, are present with much inferior orchestras as well (the RAI orchestra that he recorded that ring cycle with). His economy of motion and of words in relationship to the results that he got was also a characteristic of his idol Nikisch.
@@TheIndependentPianist I’ve been reading various articles on him - politics, musicianship, style etc. A lot of diversity of opinion ! Some orchestral musicians are fairly dismissive of his baton skills 😳 (the shaky stuff). I’ve watched some of the film snippets of him also
I’ve had a good musical day attending a piano recital by Piers Lane (including the Chopin fantasy - a very fine performance ) and Bach’s St John passion at a local weekend festival. Plus fun discovering stuff about Furtwängler 😎
One thing to keep in mind is Toscaninnis age at ther time of these recordings. He did not make his best late in life. He became much more stiff, rigid and unpleasant as a person. So anything after the after 1940 is not showing him at his best. Furtwängler did age much better, although he made his best performances during the war. And no one can do anything like what Toscannini or Furtwängler did today
That’s certainly a fair point, and I remember that many of Toscanini’s early recordings are wonderful. On the other hand, I really wasn’t trying to say that these particular recordings were not excellent-because I think they are quite amazing in many ways.
@@TheIndependentPianist For me it is not about the recordings. My favorite has for decades been Furtwängler because of his intimate expressions and timing. But in the recent time I have found some old Toscannini recordings with similar value: Example: ua-cam.com/video/8AuFNGCVsgg/v-deo.html
I have always preferred Furtwängler because of his originality and timing. But one example of Toscannini in better shape is ua-cam.com/video/310xL_Mo6x4/v-deo.html
I think Winifred Wagner, Wagner's grand daughter said that Furtwangler's problem was that everyone in Germany thought Furtwangler was an anti Nazi and everyone outside Germany thought he was a Nazi.
Have you listened to Tchaikovsky symphony 6th conducted by Nikolai Golovanov? In my opinion it's even more sincere and soul wrecking than the Furtwangler one
I think singers are as important as conductor. Many piano pieces are very operatic and try to recreate the human voice on the keyboard. I think Josef Hofmann once said that he learned more from hearing great singers than listening to other pianists.
Yes, indeed! That will be a topic for another video.
@@TheIndependentPianist Great, I'm excited~
@@alexcao7502Good suggestion, I'm very curious about this too!
I would have to pick Eugene Ormandy as the most extraordinary conductor. Was he the greatest? That's a less interesting question from my perspective. His bold vision produced such uniquely compelling renditions of the orchestral works he recorded with the Philadelphia Orchestra. I wish I could go back in time to hear him live. It's not surprising that Rachmaninov felt such an affinity with Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Their collaborations are a testament to music's ability to acquaint humanity with the sublime.
It seems to me like it would be just as hard to say who is the most extraordinary as who is the greatest! In the end, it’s not a very important question either way, but I think Ormandy is a fantastic choice if you’re looking for a musician to find inspiration from.
@@TheIndependentPianist Extraordinary because he made artistic choices that most conductors would not allow themselves to make, such as altering the orchestration of the pieces he was conducting to achieve lush textures or more complex tonalities. Some might argue that a "great" conductor would never do such a thing, but others might say that his greatness came from his willingness to exploit every means available--including some that may seem to lie outside of accepted bounds--to engage listeners in new ways.
I would like to know more about how Furtwängler and Rachmaninoff got on with each other when they performed Rachmaninoff's Third Concerto in Berlin in 1928 (Rachmaninoff, of course, played the solo part as pianist, but it is well known that he was also very highly regarded as a conductor). As far as I know, there are no known statements by the two giants about each other. But at the rehearsal for the concerto in question, Rachmaninoff is said to have behaved a little rudely, and at some point of the rehearsal he suddenly placed himself next to Furtwängler on the conductor's podium, so that the orchestra now had two conductors, also somewhat to Furtwängler's amazement.
This was reported by the eyewitness Piatigorsky, as far as I know.
But what the two men thought of each other musically (or personally) does not seem to be known. I would be interested to know whether there are any testimonies from musicians of the orchestra about this collaboration.
It is known that Furtwängler did not get on well with Horowitz and generally took a distanced attitude towards the art of the “virtuosos in America”. The entire collaboration with Horowitz on the occasion of a particular concert resulted in a lasting resentment on Horowitz's part towards Furtwängler. Obviously they could't get along in any way.
Maybe these things are not entirely uninteresting as an aside.
@@germanchris4440 these are very interesting questions that you raise. Unfortunately as far as I know, Rachmaninoff never did speak about Furtwängler. Horowitz on the other hand was very explicit about what he thought of Furtwängler-that he was hysterical as a conductor and couldn’t keep tempo for two bars in a row. Obviously, as we can hear, this is an unfair assessment, and as you mention Horowitz obviously held some kind of resentment against him. His participation in that smear campaign, along with Heifetz, Stern and Rubenstein certainly is a blot on his legacy.
It’s ironic really, because not only did Furtwängler excel in some of Horowitz’s favorite repertoire (i.e. the ring cycle), but it sounds like their musical styles did have certain things that were in common-freedom of tempo, highly varied textures and a very improvisational “of the moment” approach. Despite Horowitz’s veneration of his father-in-law Toscanini, they actually had very little in common musically, and Horowitz many times expressed how dissatisfied he was with various recordings that they made together. You can almost palpably hear how uncomfortable Horowitz was with the kind of musical straitjacket that Toscanini imposed on him in works like Brahms Second Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s First. He sounds much more relaxed in live recordings working with other conductors like Szell, Barbirolli and Walter-or in his studio recordings with Reiner.
@@da__lang that’s interesting-my own understanding was that it’s much more common than one would imagine for conductors to make small adjustments in orchestration. Famously some conductors switch the French horn in for the bassoon in a certain entrance in Beethoven’s fifth, and I think Toscanini was known to have made much more subtle adjustments in the scores he played, and obviously someone like Stokowski did that sort of thing quite a bit!
Not to undermine your point, because I’m sure you’re right that many would consider such liberties to be entirely inappropriate, and it’s only the really daring ones who go for things like that- motivated by what they consider to be the intended effect of the composer. This might be outside the scope of my expertise, but it certainly would be interesting to do a video that analyzes the various orchestration adjustments that people like Ormandy, Toscanini, Stokowski et al, made in their performances.
Hi, it might be that I'm a bit of an odd fish, but "Greatest of all time" titles are the opposite of clickbait - I have an aversion to them (and watched this because it's you and that always brings something nourishing to the table). My "greatest"s change from day to day, it's an open, endlessly inquisitive search engine that never stops believing that somewhere, this week, this month, someone is making music with new intensities, new insights. I can't stand the idea of deciding "Okay, this one performance, this one orchestra, is the greatest" and fixing it there.
Because it strikes me that you have settled on a pair that has been more or less fixed since the 50s. I looked at their discographies, and I didn't get the sense that they reached out much to the contemporary music of their time. Very German (plus occasional forays into American, Italian and French). Very "square" - acknowledging both how unfair that word is and what it kinda means.
It's been over half a century since your two lads battling it out over Brahms. Since when we've had Boulez and Eliot Gardiner using the podium to champion new, or rediscovered repertoire to the public, or Tilson-Thomas, Bernstein and Henry Woods bringing the public to the repertoire. Meanwhile Dudamel and Barenboim strive to use music to heal political and social strife (it doesn't always work). Female conductors, Asian conductors exploding an appreciation for classical music into new territories. So much exploration and outreach.
Meaning I find it jarring that your world's greatest is between Toscanini and Fürtwangler. As if nothing "better" has happened since. (My favourite is mainly Solti, so I am quite squarish myself. With rounded corners, like an old tv set.)
Loved the analyses and my preference is definitely towards the more malleable approach of Fürtwangler. I noticed that in the Brahms 3rd 2mvt, the introduced #s (F and then D) both sound slightly discordant in the Toscanini but not the F.
Thanks for this very well reasoned and thoughtful comment. The title is really just trying to play into the UA-cam algorithm-far more people see the video if I use a title like this then if I use something more generic…at least it seems that way in my experience so far!
As I state in the video I’m quite aware that there is no such thing as a “greatest” anything. As far as it goes, I like both Toscanini and Furtwängler, and I just wanted to share a listening experience that I had recently. There can be no question that Toscanini or Furtwängler were in any way intentionally competing, they were just doing what seemed natural to them. I did say in the video that I’m not actually trying to say that one interpretation is “better”than the other, only what my gut reaction was to hearing them both in close proximity.
In regard to another point that you bring up, it might be unfair to characterize these two conductors as conservative and uninterested in modern music. It’s worth remembering that Brahms was still alive when both these conductors were born. So their championing of Brahms would be similar to me championing a composer like Frederic Rzewski-as a matter of fact, I do need to get to his music on this channel at some point! Besides that they did premiere many works that were modern in their day. I believe Toscanini gave the world premiere of Barber’s Adagio for Strings for example, as well as premieres of at least one Puccini opera, and premieres of some of Wagner‘s opera in Italy (Puccini and Wagner were new music when Toscanini was young). Similarly Furtwängler premiered works by Hindemith (Mathis der Maler Symphony) Schoenberg, Bartok, Prokofiev and Strauss, as well as writing and premiering his own symphonies.
Thanks so much for commenting. I feel kind of bad that so many people comment because of the title. I think when you realize how the UA-cam algorithm works, you will see that a lot of content creators use these kind of titles even when they’re not literally trying to make a black and white point. Hopefully it’s still worth it to watch the videos anyway!
@@TheIndependentPianist Thanks for that engaging reply.
I don't think you have cause to feel bad about one second of the video or the title. If it works, it works - but if it also gives me a bundle of ideas, then I comment.
Yes, it's unfair to regard them as conservative, but I think that's inevitable for me. They - and that generation of great conductors, Karajan, Kleiber etc., were the bulk of my dad's record collection - and his taste was deeply conservative. While I was discovering Shostakovich and Schnittke, world music, electronic music, jazz in all its splendours, he stayed in his world of "the core classics" and didn't stretch to Ravel or Mahler (he hated both with a passion).
Yes, it does T&F terrible injustice, this lumping together of them and squareness - but it's one of those lumps that my personality has been made out of, I guess.
I am a big fan of Stokowski also !
Right at the end of your second Furtwangler example the clarinetist plays the eighth-note figure with some freedom, lingering a bit on the first note. Another difference from Toscanini.
My 90-year-old organ teacher and I are Bruno Walter fans. Just want to put in a good word for him.
(I see now that Bruno Walter was harshly critical of Furtwangler for his conduct during the Nazi era. I don't know enough to judge that, and my statements above are purely musical.)
While I respect Furtwangler as a considerable musician I cannot go along with deification of him seen in some quarters. He had a rather narrow repertoire within which he could be incredibly inconsistent. The fact he had the Berlin Philharmonic, which was already a great orchestra under Artur Nikisch, must have helped quite a lot to cover hisnlimitations. In contrast, the recordings he made for Decca with the London Philharmonic (a middling to good orchestra at the time) following his de-nazification are frankly nothing special. That he was capable of great things is not in doubt. I think his recordings of Bruckner 8 & Haydn 88 do show what he could produce on his day but you have to wade through other less than stellar performance to find them. Despite this, I would still urge music lovers to hear the La Scala Ring Cycle from 1950. He has a great cast and a first rate orchestra in the pit and his swift dramatic pulse is totally gripping.
What about George Szell, Markevitch, Mackerras, Martineau, Fricsay and a few others that virtually never made a bad recording....
They are all great too! For me it’s not so much about making “good” versus “bad” recordings, but instead about what a transformative experience hearing Furtwängler’s recordings has been for me.
@@TheIndependentPianist I acknowledge that and it is the reason I love your videos. I do feel however that great recordings can be similarly transformative...for instance it used to be that I would only listen to Claudio Arrau playing Chopin's Nocturnes..not necessarily because they were significantly better than Pires or Rubinsteins underrated recordings but simply because of his sublime touch...then I discovered Ivan Moravec...whose playing in the Nocturnes and the Beethoven 4th seems to automatically and inexplicably prompt tears...then recently the Stephen Hough recordings arrived...they won't replace the Moravec but they are eminently worth hearing ....I guess the point I am trying to make is that each of these recordings has been transformative for me in their conception .... Thank you for the videos, you are one of the best on UA-cam...and if you ever have time I would love to hear your views on Moravec and the other great recordings of the Nocturnes.
I don't really understand the autocratic tradition with conductors. It just seems mad to think you'll get a better performance that way rather than your orchestra being relaxed and having a good time. I guess it's from the same school of thinking as the kinda abusive piano teachers that used to be common.
Well, the autocratic conductor type, and the abusive piano teacher type both managed to get good results of a sort, although at the expense of a great deal of friction and trauma. Because music is so difficult I think some people who haven’t learned to control their instincts just want to take the most direct approach, even though that doesn’t really give the best results in the long run. Unfortunately, both types are still pretty common!
It's not exactly a "tradition". It's probably because the role of the conductor, prestigious as it is made out to be, attracts that kind of personality.
No, not for me, much as I love some of WF's recordings, e.g. his Tristan. Toscanini's the one for me.
I knew there’d be at least one of you out there! That’s perfectly fair. Toscanini was a master at what he did.
1/ Excellent, very informative and impressive video.
2/ Furtwängler learned musical analysis from Heinrich Schenker, and this can be heard in his interpretations. In my opinion, this is one of the reasons for his superiority over Toscanini.
Yes, I heard about his deep connection with Schenker and his ideas. It is highly interesting that he would have this kinship with Schenker. Again, personally I don’t really like to talk about the superiority of one over the other, but only about what their music makes me feel!
No not the greatest of all time but one of the greatest of his generation and of the RECORDED history before mid 20th. Century.
There is no such thing as "the greatest conductor of all time ". But Furtwangler was undoubtedly ONE of the greatest conductors of al time .
2:35
A regrettable click bait title for a pretty good video.
I agree most emphatically about Eugene Ormandy
@@leestamm3187 I’m not too concerned about these criticisms of “clickbait” titles. I wouldn’t normally select titles like that from my own choice but unfortunately, it’s how the UA-cam algorithm works. If I hadn’t used that title, you might not have seen the video at all! I’m only asking a question, not making a statement…
@@archie561Thank you!!
I think we always need to reflect on the morality of conducting Beethoven’s ode to joy in front of an audience of brown shirt Nazis.
It might be worth taking a look at the works of Riess, Prieberg and Geissmar. I believe they provide documentary evidence of how Furtwängler tried to avoid being caught up in the Nazi propaganda machine, and the ways that he found to resist them as much as possible.
He was a Nazi poster child conducting under the swastika banner until fled to Switzerland at the end when Germany collapsed
@@rcohen3046 Ah, I think you might be revealing your unfamiliarity with the subject here. I would recommend looking into the authors I mentioned above.
I both read the books and seen the films. I suppose it’s an act of resistance to conduct on the stage flanked by enormous swastika, posters, and factories surrounded by swastika posters. I know you say “tried”: I would say failed.
@@rcohen3046 I’m so sorry to contradict you, but I have to wonder if you really have read the authors that I mentioned. They paint a very different picture from what you are describing. During his denazification trial after the war, he was cleared on all counts of collaboration (I misspoke in the video). Even the prosecution at that trial stated that there could be no question of antisemitism or Nazi sympathy reflected in any of Furtwängler’s actions.
He repeatedly refused to be part of Nazi propaganda, refused to give the Heil Hitler, refused to conduct the Nazi anthem, refused to conduct in occupied France and was almost entirely successful at avoiding giving concerts in halls that were adorned with swastikas. There’s documentary evidence that Goebbels and Hitler considered him to be a Jewish sympathizer and a continual thorn in their sides with his refusal to capitulate to their demands. Nevertheless, they did find ways to manipulate him into becoming a propaganda tool often enough. It should be well-known, (but isn’t) That Furtwängler did try to leave Germany before the war, by accepting a post as music director of the New York Philharmonic, but the Nazis leaked a story that he was to be reinstated at the Berlin Philharmonic (he had been suspended because of critical statements he had made about Hitler) and at the Berlin State Opera. The reaction to this was negative in the states and he was forced to give up on a move to New York.
Furtwängler also took concrete steps to resist the Nazis, before and during the war. He defended Paul Hindemith and championed his works when the Nazis tried to ban him, protected Jewish members of the Berlin Philharmonic from persecution, and did his best to help other Jews to escape Nazi persecution.
The only reason he was able to succeed in whatever resistance was possible was because of his prestige as a conductor. Someone less well-known than him and less useful to the Nazis would have been killed out of hand-as many were.
So again, I don’t mean to contradict you, but I do think you might want to do a little bit more research in this area. Although the good that someone like Furtwängler could do was limited at that time and place he still managed to do much more than you or I probably could have. Thank you for leaving your comment!
Furtwangler, as great as he was, was a complete opportunist. Sure, not a Nazi, but definitely an egotistical opportunist (like most conductors, sadly).
Furtwangler, the most overrated conductor of all time. Yeah, he had those flexible tempi and lots of drama, so what?? I've never heard a single performance of his that made my blood boil, unlike Klemperer, Sanderling, Barbirolli, Kempe or Mitropoulos. But for some reason people still following this silly narratives 🤷
Well, you said it yourself: he had flexible tempi, and lots of drama! Most people would see those things as very positive qualities, especially since they are fairly rarely found-but if he doesn’t do anything for you, that’s fair enough. To each their own.
@@TheIndependentPianist excellent retort
I used to also think that until I listened to his Brahms 4 with the BPO. Also, I don't think anything Klemperer did has made my blood boil (despite him probably being my favorite conductor)
@@maxscholl7021 yeah, Klemperer is the Grim Reaper, that's for sure 💀💀💀
I think we always need to reflect on the morality of conducting Beethoven’s ode to joy in front of an audience of brown shirt Nazis.
Furtwangler avoided propaganda so well that he conducted publicly with swastikas on stage and that wartime concerts at factories on platforms displaying swastikas prominently.are
If you think that’s bad, you should see how many people were placed in government positions in West Germany after the war. Close to 60% were party members. They continued ruling West Germany, as if nothing happened. It’s high and mighty when we complain about wartime musicians, but it’s another thing when society hardly ever acknowledges that most of the Nazi bureaucracy were not punished or reprimanded by the allied powers.
@@ShaneyElderberry I pray with you about the functionaries we’re not subject to punishment.