There is something awesome in this recording of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, taken from a Lucerne Festival performance in which the legendary Wilhelm Furtwangler conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra, Lucerne Festival Chorus and a stellar team of soloists, just three months before his death in 1954.
Allow for those moments where, clearly, the Philharmonia winds are raggedly hunting for a beat to synchronise their entries. Even so, there is a visionary, epic quality to the performance, from the monumental drama of the opening movement, the sea of serenity Furtwangler conjures in the great slow movement, and the seismic crash at the launch of the finale. How Furtwangler did it, I do not know, but the incandescence through the finale, with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Elsa Cavelti, Ernst Haefliger and Otto Edelmann adding their vocal firepower to an already blazing intensity, seems to bring out the very best in the conductor, in whose hands the scorching coda generates an enormous sense of hurtling through the final bars.
Michael Tumelty
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