TESTAMENT TESTAMENT

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RRG recordings. In the early 1990s Deutsche Grammophon-
Gesellschaft (DG) brought out CDs of a few Furtwängler Berlin
Philharmonic concerts under the title ‘Wilhelm Furtwängler –
Recordings 1942-1944’. The first CD set included Mozart’s
Symphony No.39, K543; Beethoven’s 4th, 5th and 7th Symphonies,
the Violin Concerto and Coriolan overture; Handel’s Concerto
Grosso No.9, Op.6 No.10; Schubert’s 9th Symphony, D944 and the
overture to Weber’s Der Freischütz. The second set contained
Schumann’s Piano Concerto with Walter Gieseking and the Cello
Concerto with Tibor de Machula, Brahms’s 2nd Piano Concerto
with Edwin Fischer, Bruckner’s 5th Symphony and Richard Strauss’s
Till Eulenspiegel, Don Juan and Symphonia domestica as well as a
few works less typical for Furtwängler, such as Sibelius’s En Saga
and Ravel’s second Daphnis and Chloe suite.
The recording of Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony had been
published several times: USA, 1982/84, Bruno Walter Society
(Denon CD 536); Germany, 1989, DG (471 297-2); Japan, 2005,
Opus Kura (OPK 7013) and Russia, 2006, Melodiya (RCD 10
01103). There were also other releases, most of them of
questionable sound quality. Closer investigation revealed that
various sources lay behind these reissues, namely some good and
some not so good editing of the tapes, which had been ‘abducted’
to Russia. Melodiya and Opus Kura had access to better copies
than DG, who had to rely on the first delivery of tapes in 1987. The
quality of editing and digital processing of the tapes varied
considerably. For instance, resonance added, ambient noise
reduced (to the detriment of musical quality), dynamic effects
curtailed; in one case the digital mastering had added a disturbing
hum throughout the recording.
TESTAMENT
booklet note
English
The present release is sourced from the original tape kept in the
archive of Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB, formerly SFB), a
photo of the box for which is shown in this booklet. The tape
needed only minimal reworking as the quality is very good. It is
indeed quite astonishing how natural, ample, transparent and full
the orchestral sound is; only in one place was remedial intervention
necessary. Two pizzicatos were missing at the beginning of the
finale, but these could be borrowed from the identical figure in the
opening movement.
It should also be noted that the instrumental pitch, though
raised in the majority of previous reissues – in the 1989 DG issue,
for instance, A = 444 Hz with correspondingly shorter running time
– has been left here at the original A = 440Hz as established at the
international standardising conference held in London in 1939.
And so the Odyssey of the Furtwängler recording of Bruckner’s
Fifth Symphony is now, after nearly seventy years, brought to its
conclusion. Admirers of Wilhelm Furtwängler’s art, and of the
excellence of the Berlin Philharmonic, now have an opportunity to
hear afresh a brilliant interpretation which shows, amongst other
things, Furtwängler’s temperamental affinity with a work often
regarded as difficult and unapproachable. And it is an especially
happy outcome that this memento of the great conductor should be
issued to mark his 125th birthday on 25 January 2011.
Helge Grünewald, 2011
Translation: Jonathan Katz
Dr. Helge Grünewald is artistic adviser to the Berliner
Philharmoniker and vice-chairman of the Wilhelm Furtwängler
Society in Berlin.