Controversial he may have been but Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954) was the foremost German conductor of his time. Born in Berlin, he studied composition with Rheinberger and Max von Schillings, having written his first work at the age of seven. In 1906 he made his conducting début in Munich and later that year became a répétiteur at the Stadttheater, Breslau. Following appointments in Zürich (1906-07), Munich (1908-10), and Strasbourg (1910-11), he became Music Director at Lübeck Opera in 1911. This was followed by five years in Mannheim from 1915. His first Viennese engagement took place in 1919. After the death of Nikisch in 1922 Furtwängler succeeded him at the Berlin Philharmonic and Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestras. He made his first visit to London in 1924 and to the United States the following year.
His international reputation grew with further American and European engagements. His appointment as Toscanini’s successor in New York in 1936, however, was blocked for political reasons. Controversially Furtwängler had chosen to remain in Germany during the Nazi period but resigned all his German appointments in 1934. After being ‘de-Nazified’ in 1946, he resumed his European career in 1947 with great success. In addition to his annual appearances at the Salzburg Festival, he also conducted the opening concert at the first post-war Bayreuth Festival in 1951. He died of pneumonia in November 1954, aged 68.
The almost mystic reputation of Furtwängler as guardian of the High German music tradition, a living legend in the interpretation of Wagner, and master of the three symphonic B’s – Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner, tends to overshadow his achievements in other areas of the repertoire. He also conducted Debussy, Ravel, Tchaikovsky, Franck, Sibelius, Stravinsky, Bartók and Hindemith, as well as a wealth of other German composers including Weber, Mendelssohn, Schubert and Schumann. Whatever he conducted, even the lighter works of those composers whose output could be considered predominantly serious, he always brought the same questing spirit to search out the soul of the music, revealing the inspiration and the influences that fired the composer’s imagination.
