To answer a question from eaquson from Taiwan, I'd like to post some photos of the extant Furtwängler recordings of the Schumann cello concerto. There are up till now 2 known extant recordings, both from war-time concerts.
The first recording was dated 25-28 Oct 1942, on the same nights when the Bruckner Symphony No. 5 was performed. The latter recording was discussed in a previous post on 29 Apr 2011. The soloist was the Berlin Philharmonic's principal cellist Tibor de Machula. It was issued by DG many times. The one shown on the upper left in the photo below is from a set of 33+1 CDs issued in Japan in 1994, and the other on the upper right is from an international release of a box-set of 5 CDs (which also includes the Bruckner 5th).
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| Furtwängler's Schumann cello concerto recordings |
The second recording was just a fragment of the whole piece (from the coda of the second movement to the end) dated 13-16 November 1943, with Pierre Fournier as the soloist. It was issued by Tahra back in 1994 in the "legendary" box-set FURT 1008-1011 shown below.
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| (This set was reissued later in the form of a jewel-box, quite different from this original set with each CD in a separate case.) |
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| The "unissued recordings" CD in this set |
Fournier's playing was more passionate with a broader tempo. It is really a pity that practically only the last movement was preserved. He took around 9' 54" to finish the last movement compared to 7'10" for de Machula. The sound is even more vivid than that in the DG issue. It is a treasurable document even in its incomplete state.
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