I've been listening to a set of Beethoven symphonies conducted by Wilhelm Furtwangler, who died in 1954. I don't consider myself qualified to judge performances of classical music - I don't have the training or the experience. Still, after listening to it casually for many years, I notice that some performers don't leave me with much, while others - Martha Argerich and Maria Callas, for example - do things to me emotionally that cannot be ignored. I'm starting to realize that Furtwangler is one of those artists.
Here is a fascinating film of Furtwangler conducting the Beethoven 9th Symphony in Berlin in 1942 (don't worry, it's only the last 5 minutes). The performance is ecstatic.
But you're probably going to have to watch it twice. Your first impressions may be dominated by the environment of the performance - the "room full of criminals and monsters", as one commenter puts it, the visiting generals with their eye patches and bandages (starting to wonder, one suspects, if the war is going as well as it should), the monumental hall with enormous orchestra and chorus, the musicians playing fervently in hopes of not being sent to the front (many of them having taken the places of murdered Jews), and finally, in the last shot, the conductor wiping his hand with his handkerchief after shaking hands with Joseph Goebbels.
But watch it a second time, ignoring the visuals and concentrating on the music. The power and beauty and control displayed here are breathtaking, two hundred people being almost perfectly controlled by the will of one man, a man whose physical movements remind me of Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein - Wilhelm Furtwangler, in a tie with Toscanini for the title of best conductor of the 20th century.
I don't believe that this music can be played with its full meaning any more. This film may represent the last decade in human history in which this music made sense - by 1945 the civilization that produced it had committed suicide, leaving Europe a vast bombed-out ruin. That may be why modern performances seem like shadows of something we can't put our finger on, and why these old imperfect films and recordings may sound more alive than any classical music recorded in the last 50 years.
You may not want to hear this music - not many people do these days. But this is arguably the supreme work from arguably the finest composer in history, conducted by arguably the best conductor of the last 100 years. This is possibly the best music you will ever hear.
You know this to be true.
