Did Furtwängler have a successor?
OrchestrasThere has long been a theory that the German master lives on in the form of Valery Gergiev, the post-Soviet conductor who provided cultural reassurance and stability for the criminal regime of Vladimir Putin as Furtwängler did for Hitler.
Gergiev also adopted many of Furt’s mannerisms – his wavery beat, distracted air and philosophical pretensions.
But there the parallels end.
Or do they?
Read here.
And here.
Norman, do you have a photo credit for the gathering of Furtwängler, Hitler, Heinz Tietjen (back to camera in the cardigan) and Winifred Wagner? Thank you.
sorry, no
This photo is taken from the book “The baton and the jackboot”, written by Bertha Geissmar, Furtwänglers (jewish) secretary. “Hitler congratulates the artists behind the scenes after the new Lohengrin production at Bayreuth 1936. Photo: Wieland Wagner”. Btw a highly recommended book for all who are interested in further and different details of the Furtwängler-Nazi discussion…..
Likely Weirich, who was from Eisenach and was the house photographer at Bayreuth at this time.
Its a photo published in Bertha Geissmars book „The baton and the jackboot“, credited to Wieland Wagner
And there are other questions. If Fritz Busch could see what was going on in the early 1930s ( check out his amazing Don Juan, btw) why couldn’t Gunter Wand, Jochum, Krauss, Karajan and the utterly awful Karl Bohm?! They would have heard the anti-Semitic rhetoric in the speeches, they would have known about Jewish musicians being removed, about the Nuremberg laws and Kristallnacht.. They turned a blind eye to further their careers and millions never came back.
It”s easy to condemn these musicians when one hasn’t experienced life under the Nazis. Backhaus, for instance, was twice sent to a workcamp for refusing to tour with Furtwangler.
Americans will soon have that experience when Trump uses the military to mass deport all “immigrants” on Day 1 of his presidency.
We’ll see how pure American musicians will be.
So deporting Venezuelan gang members is morally equivalent to putting Jews in concentration camps? Another example of TDS
Since the illegals weren’t invited in the first place it seems reasonable they should be given their orders to leave, then get back into the queue for legitimate entry. (Lefty toys now being hurled from cots)
These legal should have been here in the first place. Biden’s letting countless cross the border and fill
our cities without the funds and services to properly care for this wave of humanity was misguided empathy. At 36 trillion on debt we simply cannot afford unfettered entrance to our country. And then there is the criminal element. Those are the ones who need to go and we need to establish an appropriate level of LEGAL IMMIGRATION.
but that’s what they all do in so called ‘wohlfuehl gesellschaft’
How dare to compare Furtwängler with Gergiev?
We really made it – awful
Maybe they were like the Jews who didn’t leave… they thought, “this is bad but we’ll just have to make do until this administration falls, as they all do…”
Picking up and leaving wouldn’t necessarily be easy for a German musician. There were currency controls in place to prevent all, not just Jews, from taking wealth out of the country.
And who wants you? You list names that are notable today but were not notable outside of (or even in?) Germany in 1933.
I suspect there were many German musicians who got out… and ended up driving cabs or selling newspapers in the West.
If this is about Furtwängler the artist, then why the picture with Herr H.? There are plenty of ‘normal’ Furtwängler pictures around.
As for the core question, there will be many answers in terms of which part of his artistry you seek a successor for. If it’s the principles of him – which I see as key – of him shaping the music in the concert hall during the concert, as a function of the acoustics and atmosphere, and of having a unique sense of the architecture as a whole of a piece then his natural successor is (was) Celibidache. If this is about the gestures on the podium then it’s a different story – probably there is no need for a successor there …
I hear a lot of Furtwängler in Barenboim. But is he a successor? Probably not.
of course NOT! If there was another exciting conductor following it was definitely Karajan
Or the awful Frida Leider. Or the awful Max Lorenz. Or the awful Viorica Ursuleac. Or the awful Clemens Krauss. Or the awful David Oistrakh. Or the awful Emil Gilels. Or the awful Lahav Shani?
I seriously doubt anyone will care about Gergiev’s recordings more than half a century after his passing.
I’ve made a head start. I don’t care about Gergiev’s recordings NOW.
absolute no one – Furtwängler always so will Karajan and of course Carlos Kleiber forever
I have paid many a full price concert ticket on concert nights for Gergiev’s rehearsals with the orchestra.
Gergiev a heir of Furtwaengler? How this could be? His Beethoven, Brahms, etc are of no consequence…
What is sadder is that his Russians are of no consequence either.
I attended a concert at the Royal Festival Hall a number of years ago, can’t remember when precisely. Gergiev was conducting. I was close to the front and got chatting during the interval to a very old gentleman sitting next to me. He remarked that he had seen Furtwangler when he conducted in London and he thought that Gergiev was very similar.
Both were/are somewhat ’fuzzy’ in their interpretations, just compare the beginning of Betthoven 9 conducted by Furtwängler (almost a Schönbergian mist) and by Toscanini (‘precision and soul’). The difference however is that, while Furtwängler’s mystical interpretations were studied out, Gergiev’s ’sound’ maybe come from him not rehearsing that much…
So ein Schwachsinn.
I thought Furtwangler and Gergiev were eminent conductors. What does this have to do with their race, religious or vegan beliefs? What boxes does a conductor now have to check to be deemed acceptable? Leonard Bernstein was Jewish (and American), so obviously out as far as classical European music is concerned. All this witch-hunting is absurd. Strict Moslems will avoid the Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang (because she is female).
I think you need to take into account musicians who actually played under Furtwaengler before Hitler. My father, who played Viola, had this experience
performing with the Leipzig Phil (Gewandhaus) in the 1920s. The music making was, apparently, extraordinary. And it has nothing to do with politics or the opinions of a 21st century critic who apparently has it in for anything German, regardless of whether it actually has anything to do with Nazis.
Note: my father emigrated from Germany in 1929.
Jascha Horenstein, who was an assistant to Furtwängler in the 1920s, told an interviewer that when performing works such as Bruckner’s Ninth or Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique he “could not help but remember, as though under some sort of compulsion, certain details in the interpretations by Furtwängler which I unconsciously incorporated into my own perceptions of these works.”
One can also hear Furt’s influence in Horenstein recordings of Brahms and Beethoven.
There are no musical arguments in this pastiche, sorry.