Beethoven - Handel - Mozart - Schubert - Weber
Berliner Philharmoniker
Deutsche Grammophon
1989
Wilhelm Furtwangler's live wartime recordings bear a stigma not unlike the any other fundamentally good entity tainted with national Socialism at the time. The Nazis claimed Beethoven and other composers as the soundtrack of their own delusion. They also had considerable musical firepower in the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of Wilhelm Furtwangler ("Hitler's Conductor"). These recordings are regulatory for their anger and militancy. I don't know is that is what Furtwangler intended, but these performances bristle with authoritarian attitude and swagger. Schubert's Eighth Symphony here could just as well been conducted by Richard Wagner with its air raid blasting brass. Odd man out here is Handel's Concerto Gross Op. 6 Nr. 10, which comes off strangely Mozartian. Nevertheless, this is essential music, produced under duress, that will never be made like this again.
