Mendelssohn: Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture. Beethoven: Violin Concerto. Yehudi Menuhin, Berlin Philharmonic, Wilhelm Furtwängler live 30 Sept. ’47. Tahra FURT 1020 (1997) 3504129102012
Compiled in 4-CDs Tahra FURT 1063-1066 (2002) 3504129106317:
Compiled in 41 CDs Tahra / Tower Records Japan WF 1001 (2008) 4997184885904:
A significant occasion, but problematic transfers of a sonically problematic source
Originally posted on Amazon.com in 2014
The series of concerts given at the end of September 1947 by Menuhin and Furtwängler with the Berlin Philharmonic were an important event, and even a political statement. The ban on Furtwängler’s post-war conducting activities in Germany had recently been lifted after months of bureaucratic procrastination (the ban HAD been lifted in Austria earlier, and he had also given concerts in Italy), and on May 25 of the same year the German conductor was able to step back onto the podium in Berlin, with his Berlin Philharmonic, in a program consisting of Beethoven’s 6th and 5th symphonies (documented on a companion Tahra CD, FURT 1016 barcode 3504129101619, and on the Audite set referenced below).
In the Fall of 1945, upon a visit to recently liberated France, Menuhin had asked his French colleagues which German conductor they’d accept to play with and they had all unanimsously answered: Furtwängler. So after the end of the war he had been anxious to play with him. It happened first in Salzburg, on August 13, 1947 with the Vienna Philharmonic, in Brahms’ Violin concerto. They convened again in Lucerne at the end of August for a charity concert with Beethoven’s Concerto and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, on the occasion of which they recorded it for HMV, on the 28th and 29th (reissued by Testament in 1997 in a great transfer, SBT 1109, link will open new tab to my review and details as to why that recording was superseded by the 1953 remake with the Philharmonia Orchestra). So they met again a month later for three repeat concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic, given on the 28th (a charity concert for the Allied military personnel), 29th and 30th, and the same Concerto was played again on October 2 at the Deutsche Staatsoper in the Soviet sector, but with the Berliner Staatskapelle Orchestra.
But this wasn’t Lucerne or Vienna or Salzburg, it was Berlin, still lying in the rubble of the war bombings, and Menuhin met an immense campaign of hostility from some American Jewish circles for siding with the ennemy, the man whom they saw as a Nazi cronie. But Menuhin didn’t view Furtwängler like that; he saw him as an immense musician, one who lived only for and with music, and as a man who had remained in Germany only to protect German culture (and many Jewish musicians) against the Nazis, and he was ready to brave the ire of his compatriots.
There is a question mark on which of the three concerts this is exactly. The Furtwängler discographies say 30 september, and that’s also the date given by Tahra as well as by Music & Arts in their own edition from 1992 (CD-708, barcode 017685070822)
. But the recent Audite set of Furtwängler’s broadcast Berlin concerts, 21.403, barcodes 735084493904 and 402143214038 (link to Discogs.com for complete contents. Note that Discog’s barcode information is false), ascribes it to the 28th. 
The two performances on Tahra and Audite sure do sound alike, but after all, wouldn’t they, three days apart, and a number of pointers suggest that they could in fact be different: Tahra’s performance runs slower than Audite’s, and by a ratio of 3.5 % in the first movement, which is far from insignificant (TT 24:29 vs 23:40). Yet I detect no significant pitch difference. Additionally, the ratio of diffference is not the same in the three movements (it is closer to 2.5 in the two others). However, the pattern of stage noises and coughs contradicts the notion. Certainly, some are on Tahra that are not on Audite, but that could be, and seems to be the effect of deft electronic erasing (and if so, kudos to Audite for erasing so much; on Tahra, end of September in Berlin sounds like hard winter and congested throats; listen to Audite’s first movement at 7:38, what sounds like some indistinct, coarse but soft stage noise, is in fact a gigantic cough at 7:55 on Tahra); and on the other hand some are on Tahra that are also distinctly on Audite, and the same is true with a few minuscule performance glitches. So it seems that they are indeed the same performance after all, with the transfer engineer of Tahra or Audite having electronically adjusted pitch but not the running speed of whichever taped source they had. Whether it is the concert of the 28th or the 30th, or a mixture of both, is an unsolved point (there is even a bootleg edition, from a label called Evangel, FRL-1005, “Furtwängler Rare Live Series” vol. 5, no barcode, that takes no chances and says 28-30 September). I don’t have the Music & Arts edition, but the timings given on the back cover are, in the first movement, more compatible with Audite’s than Tahra’s (23:51, and there’s a separation blank in there), exactly the same as Audite’s in the Larghetto, but too short in the Finale to be compatible with either Audite or Tahra. So other running speeds for what is, presumably, the same performance?
I don’t suppose the stage manager of the concert had his stopwatch and took note of the exact running time of the actual concert for purpose of counting overtime, so we’ll never know which edition is the most faithful representation of the actual event. I will presume that it is the Audite edition, because it claims to have worked from the concert’s original tapes kept in the archive of the Berlin Radio. It also comes in marginally but perceptibly better sound than Tahra’s transfer, not just by dint of its reduced coughs and stage noises, but also more transparent and precise sonics, less muffled and with less background noise.
What neither Tahra’s nor Audite’s engineers did away with is the sound of the heavy airliners flying over Berlin, and it is for the better: it really gives a sense of being there, then. And there and then, one can sense the tension, the excitement of the occasion. Naturally the difference in running speeds changes, marginally but perceptibly, the interpretive picture. Among the five recordings of the Concerto left by Furtwängler – two more with Menuhin in the studio, the 1947 Lucerne version (see link above) and the April 1953 remake with the Philharmonia Orchestra, plus the January 1944 wartime performance with Erich Röhn, and the May 1953 live with Wolfgang Schneiderhan – Audite’s transfer makes the first movement the swiftest and Tahra’s the broadest! Here are the timings up to the cadenza:
Röhn 1944 19:31
Menuhin Lucerne 19:44
Menuhin Berlin 19:25 (Audite) or 20:06 (Tahra)
Menuhin Philharmonia 19:49
Schneiderhan 19:39
It means also that, for nearly a decade, there was never more than a 3.5 percent difference of overall timing in any of Furtwängler’s documented recordings of the first movement, whichever fiddler he did it with – which does leave space for more variance within the movement. And indeed, more than these matters of “absolute” tempo and timing (and I don’t know how much I would have perceived an interpretive difference between Audite and Tahra if I hadn’t been alerted by the clock, or between Tahra’s transfer and Menuhin-Furtwängler’s Lucerne recording – I listened to Audite first, where the difference is more pronounced), what makes this performance stand out is its even greater flexibility of tempo. Aside from the huge power he brought the orchestral outbursts, Furtwängler is often viewed (and was viewed by me when I knew less) as a conductor always favoring very deliberate tempos, but more than that, the true hallmark of his conducting style – more even in concert than in the studio, especially the studio recordings he made for EMI at the end of his life – was the extreme flexibility of his pulse. He may have started with deliberate tempos (and he did in all his recordings of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto), but whenever dynamics rose and more dramatic moments approached, he would step down on the gas pedal and could reach truly Toscanininian frenzy. Such freedom of pulse and extreme rubato is easily associated with an “old world” style of music-making. It fell out of fashion somewhere in the 1930s and 1940s (if ever it was truly a “fashion”, rather than the interpretive choice of individual musicians). You can hear it in the orchestral tutti of Bruno Walter’s 1932 recording of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with Szigeti (on Dante Lys 518-519 barcode 3421710425186 “Bruno Walter vol. 7 1932-19338 Londres Vienne”) – not any more in their 1947 New York remake (CBS Masterworks Portrait MPK 525336, also Dante Lys 397, links to my reviews). Heard today it would probably make everybody laugh and jeer – at the lack of discipline, the arbitrary waywardness, the readiness to let instinct and the spur of the moment override architectural coherence and respect of the score.
But not with Furtwängler, and this is, I believe, the very essence of his art of conducting, and the reason why he viewed Toscanini, disparagingly, as a mere “time-beater”. You can hear it here as early as the first fortissimo tutti in the orchestral introduction (Audite 1:04, Tahra 1:07), where Furtwängler noticeably accelerates, only to return to the opening, unhurried tempo when enters the second theme on the woodwinds (A 1:34 – T 1:38). You have it with the second orchestral fortissimo tutti at 8:43 (Audite 8:25), which has its equivalent only in the 1944 performance with Röhn (and it’s no coincidence that, on Audite’s transfer, Furtwängler reaches the same point at exactly the same timing… and that the soloist should reenter on his ascending scale at 10:25, exactly like Menuhin). On Audite’s transfer it is, as much as the imperceptibly faster basic pulse, that constant playing accordion with tempo that explains the overall swiftness of the performance, and even in Tahra’s, the impression of urgency, even if it is belied by the clock.
The Larghetto runs along the same interpretive lines as Menuhin-Furtwängler’s Lucerne recording, held-back and hushed, just this slightly more animated (even in Tahra’s transfer) but again that’s an information given by the clock rather than something truly perceptible. It is in their 1953 studio remake that Menuhin and Furtwängler strayed from their previous model (which was also Furtwängler’s in his two other concert performances, with Röhn in January 1944 and Schneiderhan in 1953) and adopted a more flowing pace, to a result that, to my ears, sounds less deeply-felt. Furtwängler, with or without Menuhin, was never one to take a brisk and boisterous Finale ala Heifetz, although he usually made up in power and vigor what he lost in pacing (only the 1953 studio version elicits a slight sense of plodding at times, I find). Here again, Audite vs Tahra makes a small difference, but in either case the difference with Lucerne isn’t significant. It is the version with Röhn that is the most animated, and the one with the Philharmonia that is the most unhurried.
But whatever its interpretive merits and the sense of occasion that pervades it, this version can serve as no more than a document and certainly not replace Furtwängler’s other recordings of the Concerto, with or without Menuhin. It is not principally that Menuhin has his share of small technical glitches and pitch vagaries (most conspicuous at 23:49 – Audite’s 23:01) – one could easily do with that, and with the quantiy of coughs that evening, although those are more annoying, especially on Tahra’s transfer. But the sonics are really an impediment to musical enjoyment. The orchestra sounds distant, and the violin even more. When I first listened it gave me the impression the Menuhin was standing behind the orchestra. The ear adjusts I guess (and it helps if your system allows to turn up the volume really high), and after repeated listenings of both Tahra and Audite’s transfers it didn’t bother me as much as it did at the beginning, but jumping to the other recordings, well, you hear the difference. Enjoyment is not just a function of the “objective” interpretive parameters, tempo, phrasings. It also derives from the physical, sensuous experience of the violin tone and orchestral color and impact. You don’t get it here.
And then there’s the unsettling thought that it lies on the listener to choose his preferred “performance of 30 september 1947”. Do you want it marginally more spacious and mellow? It’s Tahra’s. Do you want it slightly (but perceptibly) more urgent and tense? it’s Audite. Of course it is tempting to associate the notion of a live performance, and of such a significant one as this, with more urgent tempos. Also, Audite’s tempos makes this version stand out more among Furtwängler’s other recordings than Tahra’s. But in truth we don’t know, and it’s almost as if there were six, and not five, different Furtwängler versions, and Tahra’s is really for the Furtwängler specialist and completist. The two truly important ones are the 1944 performance with Röhn and the 1947 Lucerne recording with Menuhin. The 1953 live with Schneiderhan comes next, then the 1953 Philharmonia recording with Menuhin, then Audite’s transfer of this performance. So Tahra’s only your 6th Furtwängler version.
This CD release, Tahra FURT 1016, was one of the label’s early releases, made in 1997. They reissued it later, in the same transfer, on the 4-CD Furtwängler box listed in the header, which collated more of these early Tahra Furtwängler releases, including Furtwängler’s 25 May 1947 return concert in Berlin, which is also on the Audite set, but in sonics that are not evidently superior to Tahra’s. I had published the present review on Amazon.com under the individual CD release, somewhere back in 2014 (in August or later) when I was reviewing many recordings of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, but I can’t find the review any more. Possibly Amazon, which since 2014 has become hostile to comprehensive reviews and serious reviewers, has deleted it.
[PS from 25 September 2024] Upon repost, I chanced on a Japanese blog (thanks Google translation) that corroborates the notion that Tahra electronically adjusted pitch without adjusting running speed accordingly, the German Furtwängler Society source which they used being a tone too low.