It is not infrequent to run into the war between die-hard
fans of LPs and their counterparts of CDs. Each camp will claim the superiority
of their ethos with reasons of subjective pleasantness or objective physical
characteristics or a mixed combination of both. I’m somewhat frightened by this
exclusiveness of interests.
In the case of Furtwängler’s recordings, it would be
foolhardy to limit oneself to either LPs or CDs as the reasons for selection
are challengingly complicated: sound source, remastering, unedited live
recording vs edited and patched live recording, first editions vs. reissues, or
even extant or not at a particular time, to name but a few.
On the issue of “extant or not at a particular time”, by the
end of the last millennium, we can only listened to 9 different recordings of Furtwängler’s
Eroica. The 31 August 1950 recording
was still unissued. And the last recording on 4 September 1953 was even unheard
of at that time. These 2 recordings at last saw light of the day in the early
years of this century, of course in the format of CD. If you insist on the LP
format, sorry, they are not available. (However in these days of the crazy
renaissance of LPs, one won’t be surprised to see these recordings being
reissued in vinyl. Of course, if the sound source is the same, I won’t buy the
vinyl of the 1950 recording given its poor existing form. I may consider the
1954 one if it appears.)
The existence of the recording on 31 August 1950 during the
Salzburg Festival with the VPO has been known for years since the Olsen days (Olsen No. 221), but it was still stated as unissued in the
discography compiled by John Hunt and René Trémine, and also in the book by
John Ardoin (utilizing John Hunt’s discography) in the 1990’s.
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| Listed as "Not issued/Private archive" in Hunt's discography |
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| Left blank in Tremine's discography |
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| The 31 August 1950 and 4 Sep 1953 recordings are not listed in Ardoin's book |
It was first issued in an EMI double CD set (CMS 5674222) in 2000. The sound is not satisfactory because of a poor sound source. The performance, however, is top-notch and entirely lovable, with a special quality of its being a post-war Furtwängler reading sounding paradoxically akin to his fervent, angst-ridden wartime ones. It was later also issued by Orfeo in its Salzburg Festival box set (C409048L). This recording also appeared secretively in 2010 as a “bonus” in an Archipel double-CD of “Wilhelm Furtwängler in his last Salzburg concert” on 30 August 1954 (ARPCD 0504), in which the Eroica is not mentioned in the cover art or even on CD2 which contains it; however, the sound is surprisingly good.
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| The CDs of the 31 August 1950 Eroica |
The 4 September 1953 recording has now become his last extant Eroica recording. Out of the blue, it sprang
into being in 2004 in the Furtwängler 2CD of the “Great Conductors of the 20th
Century” series issued by IMG/EMI (5628752), more than half a century after his
death. It is a live recording of the VPO on tour in Munich. Michael Tanner, in
the liner notes, writes, “This whole performance will come as a revelation to
anyone who thought they knew the Eroica
but has not previously heard Furtwängler conduct it”. It is a very well
recorded account. Although it is without the white heat of his wartime
concerts, it is nevertheless a reading that pushes him to another level of
sublime expressiveness, stunning deep down to your soul yet without the
scorched stamp of war.
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| The IMG/EMI CD of the 4 September 1953 Eroica |
The CDs of these 2 recordings have impressively enriched the
discography of Furtwängler in particular, and that of Eroica in general.