Furt****ler?

Fredrik

But wasn't there some sort of controversy with Furtwangler being turned down as leader of the Chicago Symphony due to his Nazi affiliations. Wasn't he rather hurt by this rejection ? Then maybe his decision to remain was nothing but professional pique.

When the uproar occurred over the post war planned BPO US tour, Vladimir Horowitz pointed out that if Germany had won the war, it is unlikely that he, Horowitz, would have been allowed to perform in Germany.

Your first 'hero', Otto Klemperer was right : There is no connection between art and politics, but there is between art and morality.


BB


PS. The Menuhin HMV Beethoven and the pre war 'Pathetique' are the two Furtwangler's that I think are truly great.

Dear BB,

I can only agree. My Norwegian grandfather [born 1916] told me I would conclude that one day, when I knew enough. He was no fool.

Fred

PS That 1938 Pathetiue is about the only Tchaikowsky that I like. In that case I adore it! Such a performance make Furtwangler's subsequent position all the more difficult to undertsand, somehow. There is a splendid transfer out on Naxos of it.

Furtwangler is dead and the war long over. I'm not burdened by his wartime actions; I only consider his recordings. Besides, I don't think Furtwangler ever joined the Nazi party, and there are some stories that he helped Jewish musicians, indicating a rather more humane personality. Why he stayed in his country I can only guess. Perhaps he loved Germany and not the grotesque distortion of it under the Nazis. Why leave your country because barbarians rule it? Does that truly make you a barbarian?

I can also listen to less savory personalities, like Karajan or Strauss or Knappertsbusch. Hell, Fluffy joined the party twice, yet I can still enjoy his music making on occasion.

--

quote:

Originally posted by Fredrik_Fiske:
It can have been no secret what was going on in the Death Camps.

I think we're meant to believe it WAS a secret, at least until near the end of the war.

I'm just reading through Richard Osborne's biography of Karajan, and I'm reasonably persuaded that immediately before the war, and during at least the 1st half of it, people like Karajan and Furtwagler probably didn't really appreciate the full grimness of what the Nazis had in mind. They were clearly not nice, but the Nazis knew they'd have to obfuscate their murderous intent somewhat, and the holocaust was unique and therefore hard to foresee.

I don't think Karajan regarded it as a foregone conclusion he'd survive the war anyway. Both he and Furtwangler probably realised that whatever they did was unlikely to influence the Nazis much; they didn't have much of a stick to shake at them.

EW

Dear Friends,

In my first post I said that I could not see how what was going on in the [Nazi] Death Camps could have been a secret. Dear EW said that he thought it was supposed to be.

On visiting Majdanek, one soon realises that the crematorium is visible from a good portion of Lublin! I obtained the short but very excelent little history book that would normally accompany a guided tour - I walked round on my own - where reference is made to the fact the inhabitants of Lublin [in Eastern Poland] certainly knew what was going on. Soon enough some of these Poles, who knew, found themselves inside the camp as prisoners, as a result of their actions trying to help the inmates... Where is Poland? Not far from Berlin...

More to the point, did every soldier in the Wehmacht have Nazi sympathies? Was every single one so barbaric as to think such things tollerably normal behaviour in the twentieth century? I rather doubt it even if most of those who thought it appaling would have realised that there was nothing they could do as individuals. Did not one these men ever mention what they had seen to their famillies? I would think that what was going on was certainly rather well known in the circles that Furtwangler and Karajan [and other musicians at the top of the profession under the Nazi regime] were moving. [Furtwangler, rather interestingly, confided to his Note Books which have been published, that he considered his governement to be constituted of uncivilised brutes, so maybe he understood rather well, actually]. The idea that this was all secret is completely incredible to me now, having seen the whole wretched business of a Death Camp, and further investigated the history.

So I am no longer in need of being convinced by my late Norwegian grandfather that at best these fellow travellors of the Nazis were horribly complicit, if not actually guilty of the commiting the actual deeds. In this way I think Furtwangler's remaining in Germany till January [or was it February?] 1945, when he walked across the border into Switzerland, is not so easily characterised as pure Naiveté. It smacks of at least something self serving, in that pressumably he felt he would not have been able to compete with the musicians in the US or other neutral territories. The silly thing about that is it surely not true, just taking musicianship into account, but it speaks of a huge insecurity, as well as massive hubris, in imagining that there would no consequence for staying. Apparently Furtwangler was surprised that the Swiss were not prepared to let him work in their land after he left the Nazi orbit.

As for other Nazis in the world of Music, I find them less perplexing, as they seem to me less talented than Furtwangler was. One can see why Bruno walter did not want to be in the same town as his one time collegue in Weimar Republic Berlin. Even Klemperer and Furtwangler had had cordial relations till 1933.

Really I hope no one offended by this, but it is honest, and represents the result of a considerable amount of thought and work, to find out what was truth in the case of Wilhelm Furtwangler.

Kindest regards from Fredrik

Fredrik

This has been a very thought provoking thread for me. My own ideas concerning musicians and the Third Reich have evolved slowly over many years (almost two decades really).

The point of all this is that over time we forget. To your grandfather and others who lived at the time and understood, the Nazi's were real, not images on a quaint WWII movie or something to be read in books, but a real life taking threat.

WE in the US have not experienced war first hand for over a hundred years. Naturally in Europe they have been unwilling to undertake another war, with fresh memories of one that nearly destroyed all of Europe. Perhaps we have not been so lucky in this respect.


Regards

BB

Dear BB,

My eldest [and late] English Uncle was in WW2 from day one and was at Monte Casino as a Major with Ghurkas. His view was that we should not have fought for the Falklands. I would not venture a view on whether he was right in his view, but it surely showed what the dirty business of war does to people. I think is all too easy to imagine War and the associated suffering as somehow clinically clean. No!

But if there ever was a war worth fighting it was the WW2. I have been struggling with the Furtwangler case for thirty years.

My view is that we may or may not accept his artistry as wonderful, but no one should imagine he was a strong or moral man, and this contrasts starkly with the music he so superbly rendered on occasion.

I knew that I could never avoid the questions of the genocide of the Nazis', and the repercussions will last all my life now...

Kindest regards from Fredrik

Didn't Furtwangler have about 13 kids with many different mistresses? That should tell you a little about his character. Let's face it, a lot of great musicians allowed the Third Reich to use them for propaganda reasons with full knowledge of the horror of the Nazi regime(even if you buy the claim that they did not know of the camps, which I do not) . Furtwangler was no exception. I have never believed being a great musician(or any other kind of artist for that matter) necessarily correlates with being a great human being, and the famous German conductors, most of whom had successful post-war careers, certainly are proof of that. They wanted to advance their careers, pure and simple, and all had immense egos. Yes, it was a long time ago, but it should never be forgotten that lots of famous German artists were only too happy to throw their lot in with Hitler.

I listen to those old great Furtwangler wartime recordings fully realizing that half the audience likely deserved a bullet in the head. Others may choose not to listen, and that choice too is to be respected.

Oldnslow, i think you raise a very valid point in that great musicians are not necessarily great humanitarians. Hitler himself could be considered (as a blue peter presenter did once to their folly) as one of the worlds great leaders (in the context of what he achieved in convincing {his}nation to his beliefs and going to war over it. This does not correlate that he was right in any way, but that what he achieved could be considered 'great'. An interesting concept though and interesting thread.

Ryan

The Paradox of Furtwangler is huge. Till he was forced to resign from being Chief Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic in 1935, because he refused to bow to what the government dictated as acceptable music in concerts, he kept his Jewish players at there desks, employed a Jewish Private Secretary [Bertha Geismar, whom Goebels wanted as his, except for her being Jewish,, and who eventually worked for Beecham in London, as his], and even wrote public [published in the still slightly free press] letters to the governement about their policies. [All his Jewish collegues got away safely when he quit the orchestra]. For almost two years he lived in a sort of limbo, composing music, but in 1937 he caved in and represented the Nazis at the Coronation of George VI, performing Beethoven [Choral Symphony at the Queens Hall and RAH, and Wagner Operas at the Royal Opera House at Beecham's invitation]. By 1938 he was performing Mastersingers at the Nazi Rally in Nuremburg.

So perhaps he had felt that there was still a split Nation he was serving - the good, non-Nazi part. He maintained that view till 1947, when he conceded that there was only one Germany that had gone horribly wrong, as he stated at his American run de-Nazification, which cleared him of war crimes.

I do believe he hid behind that very German tendency to the meta-physical, which can explain away the moral imperative behind a rather long, and ultimately completely bogus, philosophy. He certainly paid the price in being black-balled by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1948, which he very much wanted to direct as chief conductor. He was welcomed [as a severely wounded, but contrite man] in London, and Paris, but apart from neutral Sweden and Switzerland, received no welcome outside Egypt, Italy and Austria. Even his activities in Germany were curtailed to the extent that his sole post 1945 contribution to the Wagner Festival Theatre at Bayreuth was one performence of Beethoven's Choral Symphony. He was re-appointed chief at the BPO in 1952, two years before he died.

I think he paid a personal price which cost him as much as it should have, but I still cannot now find it in myself to easily appreciate those Berlin recordings done in such horrid conditions.

Mind you where does that leave Mravinsky in Stalin's Russia, at much the same time? Had Britain been defeated where would it have left Boult, in charge of the BBC SO?

Good night all, from Fredrik

Fredrik---All this talk about Furtwangler trying to keep a few Jewish musicians doesn't impress me much, quite frankly, considering the larger picture of which he was obviously aware. One can only be grateful that a few of the greatest Jewish musicians (and others of course) were able to get out in time, and were able to contribute so much to the music, particularly in the U.S.

When it comes to character, which manifests itself in difficult circumstances, all these famous German conductors came up short, far short. For instance, I have the always had the highest regard for the thousands of ordinary citizens in Norway who fiercly resisted the Nazi war machine. Now that is character. Of course, they were not great musicians like these bootlicking German conductors of genius(Furtwangler, Bohm, Karajan, Knappersbusch, et al), but they are far greater human beings. On the other hand, when I listen to Edwin Fischer playing the Emperor concerto with Furtwangler it is a very moving experience. This is the dichotomy in equating musical genius with some kind of high moral character. It just doesn't work.

Dear Oldnslow

The defence of Furtwangler along the lines that he helped some Jewish musicians (and others) impresses me not one bit in the bigger picture. A good many Germans of no fame at all did far more without the chance of shielding themselves from authority with fame.

I posted it for balance, and to show the dichotomy! Essentially he was morally weak, on every level from the familly, to politics, and in some ways even his private dealings with certain individuals. But as you note, he was also (or least he seems to have been) the most extra-ordinary musician.

I am almost at the point of turning out every Furtwangler recording I have, so unsatisfactory do I find the dissonance between the man and his music making. I find it hard to believe his emotional response was not other than very cleverly synthesised, rather than actually felt. That is how strongly I am feeling about his recorded legacy, and his activities as a man. This thread has served to underline these feelings, which was not the aim, for certain.

Kindest regards from Fredrik

Fredrik

I have never bought, and will never buy, any music recorded in Nazi Germany. I do love playing, though, Bruno Walther's Mahler Ninth, recorded in Vienna just before the lights went out over Europe.

So that's easy and simple.

Why are you making such a big thing over your trip to the concentration camp? Are you trying to show that we're not worthy?

Graham

Dear Graham,

Not in the slightest am I trying to suggest anything about anyone here. Least of all that I might be suggesting anyone is unworthy. Why should I want to do that?

I do know that talking to grandfather many times, on holiday with him before he died 12 years ago, made my eventual examination of this topic inevitable. In fact the issue of Furtwangler was a rather small one compared to the attampt to understand such things as what chain of events could have led to the Death Camps being built, and so forth.

But the effects of digging deeper have indeed been rather profound for me. If I might observe one thing, it is that history teaching on the subject is far too soft-pedal, even though mine was less so than that of many people I have met. So few lessons seem to have been learned by some of the people in high authority in the world. This was reasonably covered in a thread a month ago on another page in the Forum. That thread had its sole basis in reminding people, but certainly not telling them what to think.

There is no agenda in this thread, beyong a brief examination of one the most renowned of orchestral conductors, whose fame almost equalled Toscanini's for example at the time, and who had a very controversial side to his career. Of course I have a view, which is still in flux, which seems fair enough to me.

I think that is a fair basis for a thread on a musician, in the Music Room, and that is the sole point. I hope you are not offended by it for all that.

Kindest regards from Fredrik

quote:

Originally posted by graham55:
I have never bought, and will never buy, any music recorded in Nazi Germany.

It doesn't bother me. Great music is great music, great artists are great artists. Furtwangler was a conductor and composer, not a saint. I haven't delved into his biography in any great detail, like I am doing at present with Karajan, but Nazi Germany was a place none of us are ever likely really to understand. It was without precedent - certainly in European history - and I think a lot of people were probably swept away on the crest of a wave of evil without having any kind of reference point to given them their bearings. Would Herr Fluffy von Karajan, Doktor Futwangler and the delighful Frauline Schwarzkopf have joined the Nazi party if they'd known they were going to murder 9 million Jews? I doubt it but I might be wrong.

Many great artists had their failings as human beings, and sometimes the dire hellishness of the times they lived in and through contributed to their artistic motivation. But a great performance of a Beethoven symphony is in the last analysis just that. If the conductor - or some guy in the 2nd fiddles - happened to be a git then there it is. But the paradox is interesting I'll grant you!!

EW

Speaking of Beethoven, wasn't he the guy who sold a new "exclusive" work to as many publishers as he could, not to mention stealing his nephew from the boy's biological mother....a great composer, probably the greatest, and perhaps a not so great a person, at least in some respects....

I believe that the nazis are credited with murdering 6 million Jews and 6-7 million other Europeans, the vast majority being Polish.

But for immorality, doesn't Wagner take a medal? Stole his friend's wife, despised Jews (and probably others), except for the conductor (Hermann?) Levi, created the Ring with its revolting moral values... Wagner was one despicable human being, yet his music is considered great.

But the character of the musician is largely beside the point.

The best of Furt's wartime recordings, heard without knowing when and where they were made, are among the most moving recordings I've ever heard.

According to Ardoin, etc., Furt never did the bootlicking that Bohm, Kna, HvK did. His recordings should live.

Regards.

Phil

Conversely you've got Menuhin - nice as pie but not very good.

quote:

Originally posted by Phil Barry:

[...].

But for immorality, doesn't Wagner take a medal? Stole his friend's wife, despised Jews (and probably others), except for the conductor (Hermann?) Levi, created the Ring with its revolting moral values... Wagner was one despicable human being, yet his music is considered great.

[...].

_________________

The best of Furt's wartime recordings, heard without knowing when and where they were made, are among the most moving recordings I've ever heard.

Regards. Phil

Dear Phil,

I am glad someone else made the point about Wagner, rather than me. I cannot stand Wagner and removed almost all of my remordings of his music to Oxfam [and so on] several years ago!

[More generally, as for Beethoven's relationship with his nephew, I am not sure I would characterise it as it was by a contributor above either].

On your point about those Wartime Furtwangler recordings seeming about as fine as any ever, I can only agree. When I first listened to them I was amazed by them, but over time found out more and more about what was going on round Furtwangler, and now I find the idea of listening to them rather like the experience of facing-off some personal dispute. The anticipation is enough to put me of before I start...

Yours sincerely Fredrik

quote:

But for immorality, doesn't Wagner take a medal? Stole his friend's wife, despised Jews (and probably others), except for the conductor (Hermann?) Levi, created the Ring with its revolting moral values... Wagner was one despicable human being, yet his music is considered great.

I think bringing what might be termed private morality into the debate is a mistake - in that if one is going to start judging composers and artists on those grounds we're going to be here quite some while.

As to Wagner's political views, I do not debate that they were disgusting but I do question how unique they were - there have been plenty of other nastily anti-semetic composers and authors and to a great extent, Wanger's 'mistake' was to write those views down. (Of course, the Nazis adoration of his music didn't help either, but then Hitler's favourite composer was supposedly Bruckner and we don't debate those issues much when talking about his works.)

I must say, I know the Ring pretty well and am afraid I have no idea what you mean by its revolting moral values. One of the issues that often puzzles me with regard to the debate surrounding Wagner's anti-semitism is that his works really aren't (only the closing aria of Meistersinger really contains anything politically uncomfortable). To be sure, pretty much everyone in the Ring behaves awfully, but then pretty much everyone meets a sticky end so it can hardly be argued that that behaviour is condoned.


regards, Tam

quote:

there have been plenty of other nastily anti-semetic composers and authors

Shakespeare and Dickens spring to mind.

Indeed.

I went to see Merchant of Venice a few months back, a work with which I wasn't terribly familiar before and was actually a little shocked at quite how anti-semetic a work it is (though, mistakenly, I think, the production had done their best to play this down).

regards, Tam

Dear Friends,

I think Tam makes a very reasonable point about the list of Artists we can admire being rather small if we take their personal moral vaues as a hurdle!

It seems to me that would leave only JS Bach among my heroes!

Where I have an issue with Wagner, as a human being, is not so much that he, like Ceasar Frank, Thomas Mann, Shakespeare [sp], even Dickens were anti-Semite in attitude, [and the list of anti-Semites goes on], is that Wagner actually promoted his ideas in specific writings on the subject. In a way this has a real significance for musicians rather than literary men, as generally unless words are set, it takes a listener to any piece to give it meaning. The meaning is a result of the listener's understanding and therefore no music has any absolute meaning which can be applied to it by all people. With literary men the picture is of course different, but music has no moral position.

So all a composer or player would normally have to do to avoid controversy is avoid writing down his views, or promoting them publicly. This was Wagner's mistake, because if if someone of his fame and stature could write such things down, the result is to give such odious views a gloss of acceptability, at least in the eyes of those inclined to share such views. It sustains their very own perverse ideas, which is a terrible thing to do. I beieve that Furtwangler, by remaining, also lent that regime a gloss of respectability [probably only among a proportion of Germans] because the conclusion might reasonably have been that if this great musician can work here, things cannot be a mad and bad as some of the enemies they had would have them believe, so in this case his very actions were as good as a polemic essay on the persecution of 'undesirables, Jews, Poles etc. and totalitary terror rule' and is tantamount, in my opinion, to a public endorsement of his country's government, even if the private position was the opposite. Quoting the private position later [when brought to book] is hardly an adequate defense in my view.

As for Furtwangler, he actually did make his views clear [if fairly privately in his Note Books], but somehow, I find the very fact that he so condemned his governement [when it was Nazi] all the more perplexing, for he could easily have left of his own accord at the same time as other 'approved musicians' such as Erich Kleiber and Fritz Busch, to name just two. As I said earlier in this Thread, I don't think that Bruno Walter could understand how WF could stand to serve in such conditions, and of course there is no doubt that BW and WF was both patriotic Germans, but one had the misfortune, under tha circumstances, to be a German Jew. I can therefore fully understand why, for example, BW was not prepared to work in post war Edinbourgh if WF was also issued an invitaion to the same Festuval. However, for a such a great musician and very nice man as BW to take this kind of exception to a former collegues [in Berlin before 1933], suggests something that ought to be examined. I do not suppose Menuhin would have condemned BW for his stance, even though he was happy to work with WF. Casals took a different view. So it was and still is a judgement call...

Kindest regards from Fredrik

" Before the whole world I accuse you, German intellectuals, you, non-Nazis, as those truly guilty of...this lamentable breakdown of a great people... It is not the first time that the gutter has reached out for power, but it remains for the German intellectuals to assist the gutter to achieve success.... They bow down and remain silent."

Bronislav Huberman, letter, dated 1936


For me the crux of the Furtwangler case is the fact that he was an established figure before the war and his decision to remain aided and lent a patina of respectability to the Third Reich. As far as the wartime recordings go, many find them moving, I however, find them disgusting on both moral and musical grounds..The Bloated whipped about tempos, he must sentimentalize and pump even the most simple and modest music with an overblown melodrama that perverts and distorts the original meaning of the work in question. Listen to Weingartners' beautiful and well proportioned reading of Brahms First Symphony, and then listen to the episodic pornography that Furtwangler makes of this piece.

My introduction to the great Germans' art was a DG recording of Strauss tone poems , a record which, in all my naivete, I found almost hateful. Yet there is no doubt that there is a kind of fascination in seeing what one conductor can 'do' to a work he performs, much as there is in watching a circus act. As for me, these days I have better things to do.

People may listen to whatever they choose, as I have said before, I have no problem to anyone who likes Karajan or wartime Furtwangler ect, but for me the fascination of this stuff, whatever it was, has long worn out it's welcome.



BB

quote:

Originally posted by Fredrik_Fiske:
I do not suppose Menuhin would have condemned BW for his stance, even though he was happy to work with WF.

... and Furtwangler with him!

I seem to recall Andras Schiff recently canceling a run of concerts in Vienna itself for the antisemitism he perceived there. It's been around for a long time in various guises and with varying degrees of extremity; I suppose music has done a great deal to heal some of the wounds, and despite what Schiff and others think, I don't perceive a serious current of anti-Jewish sentiment in the music world today. But then perhaps that's because I'm not out looking for it whereas he is...

As for artists and their nastiness, I think Wagner's transcendent interest in redemption - at least at the time of Parsifal's genesis - should perhaps temper judgments based on his philandering and dislike of Jews. He wasn't a saint for sure, but nor was he a monster. Parsifal is not the work of an evil man, and here I suppose I AM saying that the art tells us something about the artist. Dickens? Well, he satirised a Jew, but he was hardly "nasty" was he? He did more than perhaps any other artist before or since to bring the plight of poor and needy children into the hearts and minds of the masses.

EW