Furtwängler in Berlin

by Paul Moor

Even today, half a century after Wilhelm Furtwängler's death in Baden-Baden on Nov. 30, 1954, his unshakable position in the musical life of this country, especially its capital, reminds me of John Collins Bossidy's doggerel quatrain about Boston, "Where the Lowells talk only to the Cabots, / And the Cabots talk only to God." Figuratively speaking, Furtwängler may have missed that ultimate elevation, but he does indeed show permanent signs of ranking with Germany's equivalent of Boston's Cabots.

He also, alas, shows signs of permanently remaining perhaps the most controversial political figure in all music history, because of his having remained at the helm of the Berlin Philharmonic during the 12 ghastly years of the Nazis' Third Reich. His defenders - far from exclusively German, some of the stoutest of them Jewish - can and sometimes do get into shouting rows with outsiders who have only superficial second-hand impressions of what daily life became for ordinary Germans during that dreadful period. I may as well immediately declare myself a staunch member of the latter group.

How ironic, but also how fitting, that a Jewish boy from Buenos Aires who virtually worships Furtwängler today occupies the approximate position in Berlin that Furtwängler did before he tangled with Nazi officials on the highest echelon - and paid for it by getting expelled as musical director of Berlin's Deutsche Staatsoper Unter den Linden, the post Barenboim now occupies. This 50th anniversary of the great conductor's death has touched off a near-avalanche of accolades hereabouts, with Barenboim quoted everywhere and also putting his name as author to one of the warmest and most enthusiastic articles to appear anywhere.

Naturally Furtwängler's own Berlin Philharmonic this month provided the main musical contribution, a performance of Furtwängler's own extra-long Second Symphony. And naturally enough, not the orchestra's English conductor Sir Simon Rattle (also a heart-and-soul Furtwängler fan and defender) wielded the baton, but Barenboim, a favorite guest conductor of this exclusive band since 1969, five years after he had made his debut with it as a pianist (in Bartók's First Piano Concerto with Pierre Boulez conducting). This month Barenboim paid his own personal tribute to Furtwängler with a program that opened with him both playing and conducting Mozart's C-major Piano Concerto K. 503 before conducting a heart-and-soul memorial performance of Furtwängler's own sprawling Second Symphony, in E minor.

Only the most rabid Furtwänglerian would ever compare his as composer with his greatness as a conductor. To my ears, the score owes most to Anton Bruckner, whose symphonies also had little use for brevity. This overblown Furtwängler score seems to have set out to out-Bruckner Bruckner; on Dec. 16, the first of three concerts lasted a full half-hour longer than customary, with an almost frantic mad dash for the exits by auditors dependent upon Berlin's bus system.

Furtwängler recordings will probably long abound, and they bear full testimony to the magic he managed to achieve on so regular a basis - not only with his Berliners but also for many years as the favorite conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic. One of several television documentaries this past week made the flat statement that until the day of his death (preceded by increasing deafness that poisoned his final days even more than anything else) Furtwängler never did understand the political charges against him.

One reason for non-Germans' inability to empathize with his dilemma when Hitler's Nazis seized Germany by the throat definitely derives from the inordinately important position and function in Germany of great music, great orchestras, and great musicians. Especially after Berlin during World War II became a prime target of British and American bombers, Furtwängler and his Philharmonic provided uncountable thoroughly decent "good" Germans with something life-giving to look forward to - literally a reason to go on living - and he had overpowering misgivings about abandoning those fellow countrymen under those circumstances.

He got shabbily treated by the Chicago Symphony the last time he set foot in the U.S. - but probably neither he nor that orchestra could have behaved much differently. The CSO had actually invited him to become its conductor - but chickened out when virtually every top-flight Jewish soloist in the world threatened to boycott any orchestra Furtwängler headed. His widow Elisabeth, who has a well founded reputation for reliability and veracity, herself this week on television told of a meeting abroad, the year after Hitler rose to power, between Furtwängler and Arnold Schoenberg, who as a Jew had almost immediately lost his august Berlin teaching position.

In her own words, translated as verbatim as possible: "Arnold Schoenberg met Wilhelm in 1934 in Paris. Furtwängler was much more desperate than Schoenberg. Schoenberg advised him to go back to Germany and make those unhappy people happy." And after the war, the born American Yehudi Menuhim (whose Hebrew given name itself means "Jew") courageously led the small but unshakably devoted group of famous musicians who rushed to show their support for Furtwängler by not only appearing but also recording with him.

Barenboim's own personal contact with his permanent idol goes all the way back to 1949, when Furtwängler conducted Bach's St. Matthew Passion in Buenos Aires and a friend brought the two together. (Barenboim, then 7 but precociously self-confident: "I'm a pianist." Furtwängler: "I play the piano, too.") At their second meeting, not quite five years later in Salzburg, Barenboim's audition galvanized Furtwängler into inviting him on the spot to come to Berlin as soloist with his Philharmonic; Enrique Barenboim, then shepherding his phenomenal son around Europe's music market, begged off solely because he found it unseemly for such an appearance, especially here in Berlin, that soon after Nazi Germany's downfall.

Today's continued resentment of Furtwängler springs from the lone specter of presumed indirect anti-Semitism - but abundant documentation provides not a trace of such feeling on Furtwängler's part; on the contrary, documentation abounds to prove his personal intervention on behalf of Germans affected by Hitler's Nuremberg racial laws. One wonders, in resignation, how much more time will have to pass before the political peripherals of the involuted Furtwängler case will fade away and music-lovers of all origins can accord one of history's greatest conductors the unstinted admiration he so richly deserves.

Originally published on December 16, 2004 at www.musicalamerica.com.