# Furtwangler Beethoven 9 Symphonies? Really?



## Tedski (Jul 8, 2015)

I was searching Amazon for some "complete Furtwangler" sets, when I noticed a listing for Furtwangler's complete Beethoven symphony cycle. I have not kept up with comings and goings on the recording industry over the years and I am working off of 40 year old information, here. But it is my understanding that there is no complete Beethoven cycle available from Furtwngler.

Back around the mid 70s when I was beginning to collect, Furtwangler was a conductor I avidly sought out for Beethoven recordings. The problem is that there were records being released purporting to be Furtwangler recordings which in fact were not. An article I read, at the time, even quoted his widow as saying that he never even recorded Symphony #__. (Sorry. After 40+ years, I don't recall which one it was.)

Have things changed since then? Was the widow F. wrong in her assertion? Did someone unearth a hitherto unknown recording of that final symphony? Are there still fake Furtwangler recordings we have to beware of?

Can someone fill me in on what we currently know about Furtwangler's Beethoven recordings?


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## Tedski (Jul 8, 2015)

The website of the Furtwangler Society, on the page listing their preferred recordings http://www.furtwangler.net/bestchoice.html, has no entry for the 2nd symphony.

In this article http://inkpot.com/classical/beeth9furtlast.html on another site, the author states, "Although Furtwängler recorded most of the other Beethoven symphonies in studio recordings with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in the late 1940s and early 1950s (with one notable exception - the Second),"


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## Rangstrom (Sep 24, 2010)

There is a live VPO Symphony nr. 2 from 1948 (at the Royal Albert Hall) that covers the gap. I don't know if it is the same recording that circulated as a 1948(?) Stockholm Philharmonic recording of the second that no longer shows up in his updated discography.


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## Tedski (Jul 8, 2015)

Another page from the Furtwangler Society http://www.furtwangler.net/beethoven/home.html has links to a 1986 article by Benoit Lejay discussing the Beethoven recordings. There is, in fact, a Nr 2 from 1948 with the VPO. However it is not a sanctioned recording; it was recorded off of a radio broadcast onto a 78 acetate, and is of poor quality. That would explain it's absence from the SWF preferred recordings list.


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## Guest (Jul 31, 2015)

This seems fairly genuine...

http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/EMI/5674962

EMI playing tricks then?


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## WJM (Mar 25, 2013)

Furtwangler never officially recorded complete set of Beethoven symphonies, but there is more than one recording of each of them conducted by him. No. 2 is the exeption, there's only one Furtwangler's recording of this work and in a very poor quality.

This might be interesting:

http://www.furtwangler.net/inmemoriam/data/disco_c.htm


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