Beskrivelse
Of the great conductors none has created more controversy than Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954). His unique conducting style, remarkable alike for his flexible tempi and intuitive interpretations, attracted fanatical admirers and repelled others. To Furtwängler a musical score was a blueprint for the imagination. Above all he loathed routine. At every concert he demanded that his orchestra (whom he regarded almost as chamber musicians) should give a ‘first performance’. He retained this freshness of outlook to the end. Controversy also dogged his personal life. Steeped in the tradition of his great predecessors, Furtwängler was spiritually a man of the nineteenth century, to whom German culture was an overwhelming force, and when the Nazis came to power he refused to leave Germany. This attitude was sadly misinterpreted. No German did more to show his contempt for the Nazis or to help his Jewish colleagues, often at great personal risk. Yet the taint of collaboration never left him, particularly in America where he had fallen foul of the musical and social establishment, which he despised. This book, by a professional conductor who first heard Furtwängler as a boy and later came directly under his influence, is the first biography in English to set the record straight. It does full justice both to Furtwängler’s political courage and to his musical genius, as conductor and composer. The resulting portrait is of an intensely private and unassuming man whose outstanding creative gifts were totally absorbed in the art he loved.
