De esta, la composición más importante del genial director, ya existían las formidables interpretaciones del autor con la Filarmónica de Berlín (DG 1952) y de Barenboim con la Sinfónica de Chicago (Teldec 2002). Ahora se publica esta otra, grabada en público los días 9 y 10 de diciembre de 1954. Su sonido, mono, es aceptable, aunque inferior al de estudio de DG dos años anterior. Es una ferviente interpretación, de gran interés y espléndida por la relevancia de la batuta, una de las más notables de su tiempo en el repertorio germano. Y por las curiosas circunstancias: Jochum (1902–87), que había sido recomendado por Furtwängler ya en 1929, admiraba sobremanera al director y le invitó a dirigir “su” Sinfónica de la Radio Bávara. Pero Furtwängler, que había dirigido la Filarmónica de Múnich para ayudarla en sus dificultades financieras, comprendió que no debía subirse al podio de su más próxima competidora. Así, Jochum se consoló programando esta Segunda Sinfonía. La súbita muerte del autor unos días antes, el 30 de noviembre, convirtió estos dos conciertos en un inesperado homenaje. Jochum, que parece desplazar el habitual centro de gravedad del finale al primer movimiento, queda sólo algo por debajo tanto de su autor como de Barenboim.

…of more than historical interest is the new release of a Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra performance from 1954 of Wilhelm Furtwangler’s Symphony No. 2, by conductor Eugen Jochum. This is a mega-symphony (more than 80 minutes long) very much in the tradition of Bruckner and Mahler. Though Furtwangler wrote it at the end of World War II, its language belongs solidly in the late Romantic period. However, unlike Richard Strauss’s autumnal Four Last Songs, written at the same time, the Second Symphony does not have anything valedictory about it. It is written as if the late Romantic tradition were still alive. This is a storm-tossed work, fraught with peril, possessed of fury, and written from within a maelstrom.

Time for full disclosure: At the time of Barenboim’s recording (2001), I was managing the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and I played a role in persuading him to conduct the piece and him and Teldec to record it. Because of that I could not review it for Fanfare, but two reviewers did…Marc Mandel liked it very much but felt that Furtwängler’s own Vienna Philharmonic performance issued on Orfeo trumped Barenboim’s in the concluding section of the finale, where Mandel felt Barenboim let down just a bit. Martin Anderson expressed no reservations at all, in an unreservedly enthusiastic review.

German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler composed three symphonies. They are in a pure post-Romantic idiom, and from time to time they’re revived, especially the Symphony No. 2 in E minor offered here, and put forth as the great pure symphonies Richard Strauss never wrote. They’ve never quite taken hold as such, for Furtwängler wasn’t half the orchestrator Strauss was, and nor do his structures have Bruckner’s overarching, transcendent qualities. The Symphony No. 2 consists of two giant movements in mostly moderate tempo, framing a shorter (but still hefty at 13 minutes plus) slow movement and a substantial scherzo and trio. The outer movements build to great horn-fanfare climaxes that are stirringly rendered here by the Bavarian Radio Symphony under Eugen Jochum. This is a live recording from the year 1954, issued by the symphony’s own new label, BR-Klassik. Its chief attraction may be the sound, which is superior to many a studio recording of the period; there’s little background noise of any kind, and the brasses get good spatial definition. German engineering had plainly come roaring back by this time. Conductor Eugen Jochum was Furtwängler’s direct protege and has as much claim to the work as the notoriously idiosyncratic Furtwängler himself, but Furtwängler, for those interested, did record the work a couple of times. Jochum’s version comes in at about 83 minutes, just barely spilling over onto a second CD. With deep roots in interwar musical practice in Germany, this historical release should appeal to students of the period.