Furtwangler

This is billed as the first release "from the original mastertape," whatever that means with a recording this old. What matters isn't how original the tape is, but rather what condition it's in. In fact, happily, this is the best-sounding incarnation of this particular performance, from Furtwängler's Nazi heyday (1942).

Success in Europe quickly followed and he appeared with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras as well as local orchestras in London, Stockholm, Edinburgh, Lucerne, Milan, Salzburg and Paris. It is from this time that the superb recordings in this 21-CD set were made. Here is a special selection of some of EMI's celebrated Furtwängler recordings, some recorded live at concerts and some made in the studios.

Wilhelm Furtwangler left six recordings of Brahms' three concertos. This CD contains two remarkable recordings. Violin Concerto (with Yehudi Menuhin and Orchester der Luzerner Festspiele(Luzern Festival Orchestra)) is very important document. Menuhin plays very confidently unlike later recordings(Especially first movement's cadenza by Kreisler and intro of last movement). And Furtwangler made huge scale in orchestral parts very naturally.

Seventy years ago, on the 29th July 1951, Wilhelm Furtwängler conducted Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at a concert marking the reopening of the Bayreuth Festival after seven years of silence following the Second World War. It was a momentous occasion, and the concert was broadcast by Bavarian Radio and trans¬mitted across the world, for instance by Swedish Radio. Using the analogue mono tape as digitized by Swedish Radio, the present disc reproduces the broadcast as it would have been heard by listeners in Sweden: we have chosen to not change anything, not to ‘brush up’ the sound, not to clean and shorten the pauses or omit audience noises within the music, but to keep the original as it was. In this way we hope to recreate the feeling of actually sitting in front of an old radio in 1951, listening to this important concert – a true historical document.

Mozart: Don Giovanni - Furtwängler, Wiener Philarmoniker
DVD9 | 2:57:05 | MPEG2 | NTSC | 720x480 | 4:3 | 29.97fps | PCM Mono | 7.4GB
Language: Italian | Sub: Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese
Classical | Opera | Deutsche Gramophon | 0730199

In 1954, Furtwängler wanted to make of this Don Juan his musical testimony (he died less than 1 year efter this recording), in a "metaphysical ", reserved but alive version, of a unique dramatic strength.
Thanks to the technique still in its beginning of the Movie-opera, we discover in Siepi a Don Juan full of liveliness and in the physical appearance of Hollywood actor, Della Casa so beautiful wasting away in Elvire, or divinely moving Grümmer.
And at the end there is Furtwängler's equally unfashionable reading, romantic and big-honed, taking its time to unfold the drama. Furtwängler definitely tilts the Mozart's "Dramma Giocoso" towards "dramma" aspect, making this performance the most riveting ever seen.
Even if the recording suffers from the technical limits of time (a little faded colors Technicolor), the correct conditions allow us to discover what the spectators of 1954 had seen: a old-fashioned and traditional but alive performance, which gives substance to one of the most mythical and of the most tremendous recordings of Don Giovanni.

Maybe the best Don Giovanni on DVD.

The re-opening of the Bayreuth Festival in 1951 represented a major step forward in the international rehabilitation of Germany following the end of the Second World War. As the leading conductor of his generation, Wilhelm Furtwängler was the obvious choice to conduct the opening performance of the Festival, traditionally devoted to a single work, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, the ‘Choral’.This work had a deep spiritual significance for Furtwängler: he only agreed to conduct it on special occasions, and never made a studio recording of it. First released in 1955, after his death, the recording of this 1951 performance represents one of the most profound realisations of Beethoven’s masterpiece ever to have been committed to disc.