Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 "Pathétique", Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (Prelude & Liebestod)

Furtwaengler has an overall vision of the symphony’s bleakness and sense of despair. Every subtle tempo fluctuation (and there are many, especially in the first movement) is addressed to helping achieve this vision. Virtuosity and brilliance are not displayed for their own sake, although Furtwaengler manages to ensure that a trumpet semi-quaver cuts through the heavy orchestral texture at Bar 246 in the first movement more accurately and tellingly than I have ever heard in other performances.

Mark Obert-Thorn’s restoration work is exemplary. Some of the playing, especially in the Wagner performance, is very soft indeed, but even the tiniest signal emerges clearly here, well forward, and free of surface hiss.

I have not always been the most avid fan of Furtwängler; I'm certainly not among that number who seem to think he could do no wrong. But in certain repertoire he was sensational, and in these two works that term applies. Both the Pathétique and the Wagner Prélude and Liebestod require sensitive flexibility of tempos and dynamics, and of course Furtwängler was renowned for his preternatural skill at that. Probably the only place that I get a little out of sorts with him in these two works is that place in the third movement of the Tchaikovsky leading up to the whirling scalar passages in the strings at measure 221 where Furtwängler speeds up hysterically and then rather too dramatically slows down for the almost ponderous final appearance of the march theme at m. 229. It made me a little seasick. But then we're in for one of the most moving Tchaik 6 final movements every recorded, and the Berlin strings give him a silken yet vibrant tone that perfectly matches the music's emotionality without becoming maudlin. And Furtwängler's third-movement excess is immediately forgiven. I cannot say enough about how wonderful this transfer makes the BPO strings sound. And, for that matter, the winds and brass are caught in extraordinary similitude. It's no wonder these performances have never been long out of the catalog in one incarnation or the other.

As for the Wagner, what can I say? Is there really any other conductor of Wagner who can match Furtwängler? Much as I love the (more or less) modern sound of the Solti and other 'Ring' recordings, I often go back to the 1937 Covent Garden 'Ring' excerpts with Flagstad and Melchior. In the Prélude to 'Tristan' Furtwängler's famous seemingly indecipherable and fluttery beat is translated somehow by the orchestra into time-stopping ecstasy; one simply wouldn't be aware, absent a score, that this is in plain old 6/8, but one is certainly aware of the emotionality of the score. The 'Liebestod' is similarly voluptuous. Furtwängler conducts this music like the composer he was, as if it was issuing spontaneously from him and his orchestra. The ebb and flow of the music is conveyed, to my mind, absolutely convincingly. This is my favorite recording of this music, bar none.

So, having said that the sound is fabulous for its time, and that Furtwängler is in superb form, I can only ask why, particularly at this bargain-basement price from Naxos (in what appears to be the first in a forthcoming series of Furtwängler reissues), you haven't already ordered it?

TT=67:05

Scott Morrison