"The Complete Furtwangler" -- 55 discs

Disabled Account
Joined 2002
Hello,
This is an audio side. Most people will know Wagner( i hope) but Furtwangler?
Sometimes i think that before investing another few thousand Dollars or Euros in the latest gimmick wouldnt be spending a similar amount of money on learning to listen like musicians do give much more extra enjoyment?
Greetings, Eduard
 
Disabled Account
Joined 2002
Hello,
I do have some Wagner '' boxes '' published by DGG and conducted by Karajan . Old fashioned records with lots of printed information in 3 languages. Nicely done so inviting you to read them.
But with compact discs it became harder to include information that would be easy '' accessible ''.
If you were born in the fifties/sixties a bigger possibility you came across Furtwangler one day or another.
Nelson Pass is a bigger name here than Furtwangler.
Recently i started viewing you tube channels of '' young people'' i guess maximum age 35 years '' exploring '' music like white rabbit by Jefferson Airplane. Most of them never heard about Lewis Carroll's book.
Greetings, Eduard
 
Part of the NYTimes review:

Compiled with the aid of Stéphane Topakian, a former vice president of the Société Wilhelm Furtwängler, a French organization founded in 1969, the box represents a rare sharing of the back catalogs of Warner and Universal. It takes listeners from Furtwängler’s first, timid recordings of Weber and Beethoven, in 1926, through classic accounts like his Tchaikovsky Sixth from 1938 and his Beethoven Ninth from 1951, to the towering “Die Walküre” he taped a month before his death.

Listen to the box, and if you’re left wondering whether microphones ever truly captured Furtwängler’s carefully calibrated dynamics and his as-if-from-the-depths sound, you still find ample, glorious evidence of his famous long line, his ability to make scores cohere. You also find that he was not at all the invariably slow, monumental conductor he is often remembered as. There is touching warmth in his “Siegfried Idyll,” delicacy and charm in his Haydn, dignity in his vivacious Mozart.
 
I am a great respecter of Wilhelm Furtwangler. Acknowledged as being streets ahead of Herbert Von Karajan in the Berlin Philarmoniker Conductor stakes. :D

Reason he hung onto the Kapellmeister title into 1945 was very "Apres Moi Le Deluge".

Herbert Von was snapping at his heels. It was politics.

I always found Herbert Von Karajan technically sound on Wagner. Enjoyed his "Parsifal". But lacking something. Maybe it's Heart?

But my advice is to avoid boxed sets like The Plague. Life is too short to work through all the disks. :cool:
 
www.hifisonix.com
Joined 2003
Paid Member
I have a CD Lorin Maazel box set of his Vienna Philharmonic recordings. Superb.

But I’d agree it’s a chore to work through the whole set. I listen to a few quite a bit (but prefer the Sibelius 5th and 7th on vinyl because I’m a turntable snob. There. I said it :D )
 
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- beautifully filmed and with a great cast including Grummer and Siepi, Furtwangler's 1954 "Don Giovanni" is tough to beat

Don Giovanni, Mozart, Furtwangler, Siepi, Grummer, Edelmann Salzburg 1954 - YouTube

Don Giovanni, Furtwängler, Salzburg 1954 (English subtitles) - YouTube


this upload lists 720p
Don Giovanni - Salzburg Festival 1954 - Amadeus Mozart (multi subtitles/multisubtítulos) - YouTube

Don Giovanni - Cesare Siepi
Leporello - Otto Edelmann
Donna Anna - Elisabeth Grümmer
Don Ottavio - Anton Dermota
Donna Elvira - Lisa della Casa
Zerlina - Erna Berger
Masetto - Walter Berry
Il commendatore - Dezső Ernster