The German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954), who was the son of the archaeologist Adolf Furtwängler, spent his youth in Munich, where his father lectured at the university. He grew up in a humanistically influenced home. In 1906 he became the second rehearsal assistant in Berlin. In 1920, he took over the directorship of the symphony concerts of the Berlin Opera from Richard Strauss. Within two years he gained such renown that he was appointed as the successor of Arthur Nikisch as the director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1928 he succeeded Felix Weingartner as the director of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, but refused to take on the directorship of the opera at the same time. In 1931 he became the joint musical director of the Bayreuth Festival on an equal footing with Arturo Toscanini. Two years later he became the director of the establishment; he took on numerous Jewish artists, which was strongly criticised by the National Socialist regime. In december 1934 he resigned his post “for political reasons”. After that he
received invitations from all over the world to conduct symphony concerts and
operas as a guest conductor, mainly for the works of Richard Wagner.
Furtwängler repertory includes Schubert’s latest two symphonies, but not the first six ones, as it often happens with the conductors of that time. In the Greath Symphony, Furtwängler manages to catch the extreme evolution of Schubert’s language in the solemn and dramatic framework he gives to the whole work, almost to highlight how Schubert latest works seem to anticipate atmospheres of the Late Romanticism.
The Amadeus Quartet made its debut in London in 1984. Three of its four members are Austrian, the forth, Martin Lovett, cello player, is British. When, in the early Fifties, in the occasion of its Viennese debut, the group played Schubert, the comment of a critic was that “only a Viennese quartet could play Schubert such in a way!”
Actually, for over forty years, the Quartet repertory focused on Schubert, even if it spanned from the Viennese classics to the early Nineteenth century. As stated by Norbert Brainin about the style adopted in these early Schubert recordings, “by the time of our first appearance, it was a common tendency to perform Schubert with an excessive schmaltz, that is to say an excessive cloying sentimentality; on the contrary, at present, some quartets go too far in the opposite way, aiming at pure technical perfection to the detriment of the interior drama expressed by this music”. What the Amadeus Quartet pursues is, therefore, a way of making music complying freedom and elegance of sound, two elements deeply characterizing Schubert’s quartets. “To be born in Vienna, or to have lived there, is not a preliminary condition to best perform Schubert. Still, to have Viennese music running in the blood, this is something that helps”. These words of Siegmund Nissel are significant to better understand the complex stylistic alchemy required by Schubert’s music; an alchemy the Amadeus Quartet proved to master since their very early rehearsals in a recording studio. |
