Credits:

Wilhelm Furtwangler

Description:

Celebrating the 135th anniversary of Furtwängler's birth! Despite his fame as an interpreter of Wagner and Bruckner, Furtwängler consistently loved Beethoven's music. Furtwängler performed Beethoven's symphonies again and again, and in his last few years they came to increasingly dominate the concert program. Furtwängler was the culmination of the German tradition of conducting. In his view, the score tells only part of the truth. According to the famous critic Neville Cardus, "Furtwängler did not regard the printed score as a final statement, but as a symbol of so many imaginative concepts, always changing, always subjectively felt and realized." The first movement of "Hero" in this 1952 studio recording at the Musikverein Vienna is an excellent example of his flexible yet organic handling of tempo. The tempo is altered in response to the ever-changing pulse of the drama, but everything is driven and permeated by a single underlying impulse. At the same time, the conductor's concern for balance and clarity is such that we hear everything. Every melodic line sounds luminous and every sharp accent speaks volumes.Lyricism and heroic conflict are fused into a single act of joyous re-creation. The two symphonies recorded here have been remastered at 24bit/192kHz from the original master tapes by Studio Art & Son in 2021 for the "New Furtwängler Complete Works" scheduled for release in the fall of 2021, and the LP is the first release of this new remastering The LP will be the first public release of this new remastering. The most recent remastering was done by Abbey Road Studios in 2010-2011, but this time around, the new master tapes have been meticulously remastered using state-of-the-art equipment and even higher bit rates to better reproduce the original master tape recordings. This recording will be available on 180g analog vinyl (limited edition) and digital distribution only. Warner Music Japan