The Brahms and Bruckner discs are for the Furtwangler completist; the Wagner disc is, as they say, something else. Furtwangler (and Brahms) admirers will hopefully already have the Brahms symphony box issued by EMI a few years ago (2/96), which contains a live 1952 recording of the First Symphony, also with the VPO. As sound, that 1952 recording is tighter and cleaner, with a richer and better defined bass-line, and less background to contend with. This Testament studio Brahms First from 1947 offers a bigger sound, with more hall resonance, but one has to contend with distortion when the orchestra is playing out, and a different take with a strangely hollow sound quality inserted in the finale. Musically, the presence of an audience in 1952 had audible benefits in the way Furtwangler conducted the piece, this 1947 studio recording unpalatably massive in the first movement (though wonderfully settled in the second), and Furtwangler generally less capable of, in his own words, finding that “living flow of the music”.
This Bruckner Eighth is the second of three performances of the symphony Furtwangler conducted on consecutive nights in Berlin in March 1949. The first wasn’t recorded, and the third, given before probably one of Berlin’s noisiest audiences, was recently issued by EMI in a box of historic Bruckner recordings, “Furtwangler’s essentially neurotic view of the work spurred to new levels of intensity by the encircling mayhem” wrote RO in March 1997. There was no audience at the second performance, reissued here on Testament, and the result is a little less neurotic, but it remains a high-flown, often melodramatic and ultimately dislocating experience (with an especially bleak first movement). Perhaps those impressions are heightened by the dry acoustic of the Berlin-Dahlem Gemeindehaus, and the way recording levels can be insensitively raised for quieter sections. Even so, this isn’t Furtwangler and the Berlin players at their best. Despite some exalted playing in the Adagio, tuning, ensemble and balance are rarely as good as one has a right to expect them to be; there are snatched notes in the Scherzo, and what appear to be lapses of concentration (for example, at the end of the first movement).
The Lohengrin Act 1 Prelude opens the Wagner disc of studio recordings, the only item of five – all Legge produced, and from the late 1940s – with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. Lest that cause concern, let me say that ensemble tuning is far better than in the Berlin Bruckner, and the way the Swiss brass crescendo on the upbeat to the climactic delivery of the hymn must rate as among the most elating of all Furtwangler moments. Why this and the Tannhauser Overture have never been issued before remains a mystery, as probably do all the reasons why, in the latter piece, the Vienna Philharmonic sound on fire for Furtwangler and on duty for, say, Knappertsbusch in 1953 (Decca, 10/53 – nla). Siegfried’s Rhine Journey evolves in one seamless sweep, barring the split-second but disconcerting rhythmic hiatus at the moment of take-off (4'51''). And mercifully Furtwangler doesn’t tag on the trite concert ending (as did Reiner and Toscanini), giving a chance to wonder at the uniquely resonant low brass sounds of the VPO as we approach the Gibichung Hall. Then on to the Funeral March, every dark sound fully charting the depths, every phrase carrying special import, and, as in the Siegfried Idyll, the occasional passage reminding us of standards of tuning of the day. The latter account, Furtwangler’s only recording of the piece, engages rather than diverts and charms, with Vienna string playing typically sweet and rapturous, and “Siegfried, Hope of the World” tensely built to an almost delirious climax. Depth, presence and a very naturally achieved clarity characterize all these Musikverein Wagner recordings, and 78 sources only occasionally make their presence felt. '