Image, Poem & Music, Part I, ® 2005 Expose yourself to Life.

842愛的鼓勵 28訂閱站台

Wilhelm Furtwängler conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for the first time on 26th April 1913, in Lubeck, and for the last time on 22nd August 1954, in Lucerne. Yet, between two dates he performed it 96 times.

Furtwängler’s first interpretation of the Ninth Symphony was greeted by the following comments in the 《Lubeckischer Anzeiger》: 

《 Furtwängler’s musical personality is much too exacerbated and passionate to shape the Ninth as tradition would have it.This was immediately evident in the first movement, when he brought out the grandeur and solitude with a penetration and plastic sense that are a reflection of extraordinary importance of this conductor. Among the unforgettable moments of his interpretation there is perhaps most strikingly the emergence of the colossal theme of Destiny from the foggy background of the first 54 bars. Also in the second movement, Furtwängler surprises us with a different vision, and if one thinks about, the only right one; in fact, in the passionate and visionary climate of the scherzo and in its grim humour he always manages to convey the basic spirit of the first movement in order to announce ever more fervently the affirmation of life out of the adagio and the dionysiac hymn of the Finale.  
What Furtwängler managed to convey with these tow movements, even on a purely acoustic level, is one of the most significant events of his two years’ involvement with the symphonic concerts 》.

Nine complete Live recordings of the Ninth Symphony have survived, ranging from the worst acoustic quality (Bayreuth 54) to the best (Lucerne):

May 1937, London and March 1942, Berlin(Philharmonic)-
December 1943, Stockholm-
January 1951, Vienna(Philharmonic)-
July 1951, bayreuth(Festival orchestra)-

March 1952 and May 1953, Vienna(Philharmonic)-
August 1954, bayreuth(Festival orchestra) and Lucerne(Philharmonic Orchestra).

Three of these outclass all the others, i.e. Berlin ’42, Bayreuth ’51 and Lucerne ’54. The Berlin version is highly dramatic and full of paroxystic contrasts, coinciding with the tragedy   of the war. It culminates at bar 330 of the finale, when a triple forte (fff) resounds, full of menace, like a canon.

The musicologist Harry Halbreich commented this interpretation in 1970:
《 In his interpretations, Furtwängler always emphasized the gulf separating the Ninth from the eight earlier symphonies. He did not hesitate to project it into the future of the music history. And the future is Bruckner(Ninth Symphony) in the first case, Mahler (Third and Fourth Symphonies) in the second. (… ) The culminating point of the first movement is the titanic re-entry of the first theme over a tonic pedal which introduces the recapitulation (Bar 301). Furtwängler always used two timpanists for this passage, one sustaining the implacable climatic fortissimo roll, the other marking the furious triple-fort accents at the peak of nervous energy (Bar 301, 305, 309, 311,327). No interpreter has ever approached him in the evocation of his terrifying release of cosmic force.》

And is not the adagio itself,  with all its superhuman amplitude, the highest peak that Furtwängler ever reached —besides the funeral March of Eroica? And on the horizon one perceives, imperceptibly, the finale that will in turn culminate in colossal fortissimo of bar 330, followed by an extended pause where《a divine vision in which Beethoven, thanks to an interpreter worthy of him, equals the stature and power of the Michelangelo of the Sistine Chapel.》

Regarding this finale, Furtwängler declared: 
《 What prompted Beethoven in the Ninth to choose a text, to use the human voice, was nothing more than an urge born of the preceding movements and it was the theme of this last movement that inspired everything else — the text, the human voice, the cyclic form. There is hardly another example in the history of music that demonstrates so clearly the possibilities of purely abstract music. Beethoven’s virtue lies not in the idea as such, but in his power to turn this idea so completely into music.》

The legendary concert that was recorded in 1951, during the reopening of Bayreuth Festival, was met from the beginning by unanimous praise of the nobility and magic of a personality whose intense radiation renders sublime the score’s greatest moments. It is a totally new, almost revolutionary interpretation where the violence becomes less dramatic and the dynamism all the more moving. The first movement overwhelms us, the scherzo gives us new taste for life, theadagio and its bewitching lyricism plunge us into exstasy while the finale, almost paroxystic in its exaltation, brings us to verge of tears.

the Luecern concert is moving on more than one count; it can be considered to be Furtwängler’s 《legacy》, his swan song… in fact he was to die three month later. This interpretation brings Furtwängler’s third manner into being. Thanks the excellent sound quality, each detail of the score become clear; The Philharmonia surpassed itself.

After this last interpretation of the Ninth, Furtwängler was only to appear in a concert hall five more times: 
on 25th August in Lucern (Bruckner’s Seventh),
on 30th August at Salzburg Festival,
on 6th September in Besançon (Beethoven concerts), and 
on 19th and 20th September in Berlin (his Second Symphony and Beethoven’s First).

Then there are the last recording sessions of the Ring in Vienna (from 28th September to 6th October). He then left for medical treatment of his hearing in Gastein. But during his journey back to Clarens he caught a cold. He was hospitalized in the Sanatorium of Schloss Eberstein, near Baden-baden, where he was to  pass away, perfectly peacefully.

Furtwängler resumed his artistic belief in a few words:
《Once the rubato has been assessed scientifically, it stops being true: the exercise of Music is not the same as striving for accomplishment. Trying is what counts. Take Michelangelo’s sculptures for example: some are perfect, some remain no more than sketches. And yet, the latter are the ones that affect me the most as in them I sense the stamp of desire, the progress of a dream. That’s what rouses my passion: fixing without congealing, playing the game while respecting chance, conceiving a piece of music in all its superior coherence, in other words, giving the movements of the soul a new architectural balance.  i said one day that Bach and Beethoven were like the oak and the lion. The first is epic, the second is tragic, in the first one’s work I perceive the image of the sea, in the second’s the image of the river…》

A critic commented thus on the antepenultimate concert in Besançon (6th September 1954): 
《 For Furtwängler, Music has turned to flesh. Nothing but truth remains of the aging master. This truth was called itself Beethoven last night. Because, in other times, Beethoven was Furtwängler. Now it is nothing but music. It was a painful ascetic journey. We were expecting a magician, we encountered a Magus. His search for perfection resembles one of those shrines where Tibetans bathe in the snow, in order to be cured. Furtwängler’s achievement is attained thanks to a succession of ascetic journeys like in a nightmare. It is also due to the bareness, to the nakedness of his gesture, to a sort of mortification. To him music has become a sort of purification淨化: fire and ice. Having reached the peak of his art, Furtwängler reaches a sort of apocalyptic moment in his conductorship…》

In October 1934, the German musicologist Johanna Thoms-Paetow wrote quite “prophetically”: 
《Through Music, Furtwängler leads us to the affirmation of life despite all its dubiousness and pain, into the depth of human soul. At that moment we experience the most tender vibrations as well as all degrees of the giant forces in us and we take part of the miracle of the human creative Spirit which reveals itself in all musical work. Through Music he lead us from the universal chaos to light, from restlessness and noise to peace and quiet. Furtwängler is Music itself as by the sole strength of his gesture he creates a rhythm that is like true pulsation of the human heart and with him we are the privileged witnesses of Music as expression of Mystery: God, Life, the Universe, Man…》 

Furtwängler’s work has many parallels with that of Mahler, not only as far as the external dimensions are concerned but particularly with regard to the immense act of will by which the vision is lead almost with violence by the need for expression. For Furtwängler, there can be no doubt that this expression of will was a fundamental requirement of the creative ethic and that he revered no works of art more highly than those which, like the creations of Michelangelo, revealed how the creator had striven to fulfill this requirement. A friend was once to ask him if the music brought into being by such an irresistible will would not inevitably reflect the final cataclysm; after a stupefied moment of silence, Furtwängler answered almost in anguish: 《 Well, you see, I am a tragedian…》.

Let it suffice to say that Furtwängler, throughout his career, was a convinced romantic whatever exaggerations this belief may have led him to. In conducting Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, he accomplished a sacred rite and gave us a clear illustration of Schopenhauer’s theories: 《 Music is the only Art which creates a direct link with the essence of the world; and it is this essence that becomes existence.》


René Trémine
Translated by Myriam Scherchen