I never heard Furtwangler at a concert. This was certainly by chance and not intention; but it does mean that I never came under the spell which by all accounts he cast over his audiences; yet I had heard of his interpretative ways (there was fierce criticism as well as adulation when he brought the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra over for concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London before the war) but as I had been brought up with conductors like Boult and Walter I came to the conclusion that if I admired them, then I should not enjoy his approach to music. So I sat down to listen to this disc with a large sheet of paper in front of me for listing the outrageous things I expected to happen. At the end of my session I had heard two very good performances of much the usual kind and my sheet of paper remained completely blank!
The earlier recording of these two is the Unfinished (1950) so a comparison with the early Walter (1961) which I have just been hearing is reasonable. (Seemy comments on page 353 under Solti.) Walter had the advantage of stereo recording and perhaps it is the limitation of the earlier sound that makes Furtwangler seem to be getting the strings to play sul ponticello at the start, to get as near pp as possible; but the big interpretative difference is between the tempos of the two movements. Walter takes the second very slowly, presumably to make as great a difference as possible between the two. It is scarcely con moto and the pizzicato bass sounds dreadfully plodding. Furtwangler takes it more swiftly and to that extent is carrying out what Schubert apparently intended.
In the Beethoven the place where many conductors of an earlier generation often started to be outrageous was in the very opening bars. Apart from pulling them out to an enormous length, they apparently never realized that the pauses are only on the notes and never on the quaver rest which separates them. All conductors nowadays, since the rest is so short, make the beat which cuts the pause note off also the first beat of the new bar. Furtwangler doesn't quite do this but the gap is minimal. By the way, he also observes the exposition repeat which Walter (needless to say!) does not and this movement does need the extra length thus given to it if it is not to be too short for the rest of the symphony.
In the scherzo Furtwangler's treatment of the frequent poco ritardandos is always anticipated and surely overdone; and they seem to get worse as they go on, the final one being as molto as one can imagine. The timpani passage leading to the finale is splendidly effective, even on this old recording, and the opening of the finale is a fine outburst delivered with great breadth—too broad, indeed, for the speed to be kept so slow and later on it is moving at a considerably faster rate.
The decisiveness of the attack surprised me, for Furtwangler's indecisive beat was notorious; but though the Berlin Philharmonic was his for most of his life, the VPO knew him well, especially in his latter days (he died in 1954). But orchestras to whom he came new simply could not follow him. There is a story of him trying to start such an orchestra in the Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream which begins, you may remember, with a chord just for two soft flutes . . . .
The Unfinished is the older recording dating, as can be seen above, from as long ago as 1950, and it is a remarkable technical achievement to have remastered the old mono recording into sound which is as good as it is on this disc. The Beethoven is equally successful.'