The Lucerne Festival
Unlike the Salzburg and Bayreuth Festivals, the Lucerne International Music Festival is not the child of a hallowed tradition that has survived into the Twenty-First century. But it does have its own rich musical pedigree. The Lucerne Festival has always been essentially international in character, providing a stage for the music of all countries and periods alike. The idea of such a festival took root first and foremost in the theatre. Shortly before the turn of the Twentieth century, the Swiss dramatist Arnold Ott dreamt of building a theatre in Lucerne where his plays could be performed. That didn't happen. What was born much later was the International Music Festival, an event also inspired by Richard Wagner's stay in Triebschen from 1866 to 1872. Wagner found both great personal happiness and supreme artistic creation in Lucerne. Since then, Lucerne has enjoyed an almost sacred status amongst Wagnerites.
The idea of an International Music Festival began to take shape in 1937 in the mind of the Mayor of Lucerne - Jacob Zimmerli - who also had the support of Ernest Ansermet. After the political annexation of Austria in the spring of 1938, when the Salzburg and Bayreuth Festivals were co-opted into the service of Nazism, Lucerne suddenly saw an unique opportunity to establish itself as a forum for the free pursuit of music. Adolf Busch lobbied the organizers to hire the two main conductors of the Salzburg Festival - Toscanini and Bruno Walter - for the concerts in Lucerne. Two other conductors whose names are still legends - Fritz Busch and Willem Mengelberg - also took part in the first festival. On the same spot where it had been played for the first time on December 25, 1870, as a birthday present for Cosima Wagner, the Siegfried Idyll was finally heard again. Two days later, Toscanini gave another extraordinary concert in the Kunsthaus (erected in 1933 by the architect Armin Meili).
In the following years, the international character of the festival was consolidated. Toscanini had suggested forming a choir and in 1939 the choir made its debuts under Toscanini in a memorable performance of Verdi's Requiem in the Jesuit Church (16 and 17 August). Ever since then the festival has kept the same pattern: symphonic concerts form the basic structure, topped off by a large choral concert and chamber and organ recitals. These chamber concerts were inaugurated by performances of the Mozart serenades in 1944 given by the Zurich Collegium Musicum under Paul Sacher.
The 1939 Festival took place in the shadow of war. The following year it could not be held. The Festivals of 1941 and 1942 were saved by the massive presence of Italian musicians. A specifically Swiss character was added in 1943 when the Swiss Festival Orchestra was established. This was made up of the cream of various Swiss symphony orchestras, and soon ranked amongst the finest ensembles in the world. Foreign orchestras and chamber musicians took part in 1941, 1942 and 1946 with the presence of La Scala of Milan under de Sabata and Molinari. Since the Fifties the presence of the leading European orchestras has become the rule (Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, etc.). Many of the world's leading soloists have also taken part, including Edwin Fischer, Backhaus, Gieseking, Lipatti, Haskil, Seefried, Schwarzkopf, Fischer-Dieskau, Menuhin, Milstein, Fournier, Marcel Dupré and such conductors as Kletzki, Markevitch, Giulini, and Schuricht. Lucerne was the only festival to be able to hire both Furtwängler and Karajan every year, while the former was alive. After Toscanini, it was the unique personality of Wilhelm Furtwängler, which set the stamp on the Festival from 1944 to his death. His performances of the great works of German Classicism and Romanticism, from Haydn to Richard Strauss, (as well as the fascination of watching him actually conduct) remain unforgettable.
The 22 concerts
Furtwängler conducted 22 concerts at the Lucerne Festival between 1944 and 1954 (except for 1952 when he was ill). We have listed each concert, along with a brief excerpt of the reviews published in the Luzerner Tagblatt und Zentralschweizerischer Generalanzeiger.
August 22 1944
Brahms: Variations on a theme by Haydn; Schumann: Symphony No. 4; R. Strauss: Till Eulenspiegel; Wagner: Parsifal, Good Friday Music and Overture to Tannhäuser.
"First symphonic concert under Wilhelm Furtwängler who was finally able to reach Switzerland. The concert took place without air raids or political demonstrations! We are indeed a lucky people! This is our mission: to be a haven of humanity and to love what is Good and Beautiful! (...) It is understandable that Furtwängler wanted to give us an all-German program, but a program of contemporary music might have been more appropriate... "
September 6 1944
Beethoven: Symphony No. 1, Leonore II overture and the Eroica symphony.
"The danger of routine is probably greater for the experienced conductor than for a soloist. But the risk of lowering one's standards often disappears when the conductor faces an orchestra other than his own. The new relationship wakens new reflexes, just as the orchestra experiences new and exciting tensions under a new conductor. The importance and the impact of the relationship between the conductor and the orchestra have been repeatedly noted this summer. Kletzki provided his own volcanic eruptions: Ansermet conjured up the most brilliant artistic palette in sound. However, Furtwängler is different: he somehow manages to produce an infinite variety of subtle colors and sounds from the orchestra."
August 20 1947
Brahms: a German Requiem (soloists: Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Hans Hotter)
[This concert was released by the French Furtwängler society _ and more recently by Music and Arts _ but the only existing sound source is unfortunately very poor, frustrating because the soloists are brilliant.]
"Furtwängler managed to create perfect homogeneity between the orchestra and the choir. This conductor has never been a tyrant and he was able to make the musicians blossom as never before."
August 27 1947
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 1 (soloist: Adrian Aeschbacher) and overture Leonore III; Brahms: Symphony No. 1
The Swedish Radio still has the concerto and Tahra released this tape, which it had acquired from the radio (Furt 1028/1029, still available)
"Furtwängler's hands have unlimited powers of expression which conjure up visions of a spiritual nature: beyond dynamics conveyed visually, one can see the realization of such a "vision". (...) After the concert a dinner was given by the President of the Schweizerische Musikverband. Furtwängler said a few words to the orchestra and thanked it for its great performance: `these last days have been very trying for both of us; but we reached our goal and the orchestra sounded wonderful."
August 30 1947
Wagner: Prelude of Lohengrin; Beethoven: Violin Concerto (soloist: Yehudi Menuhin); Brahms: Symphony No. 1
"After the last notes of the prelude had died away, we certainly didn't expect what Menuhin then gave us. We knew that he has a marvelous technique; what we didn't suspect was the depth of his vision of the music..."
August 18 1948
Wagner: Prelude of Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Siegfried Idyll and funeral march of Götterdämmerung; Bruckner: Symphony No. 4
"The performance of Bruckner's symphony was very intense. Even if the tempi revealed a highly personal and subjective approach, this subjectivity was kept within acceptable limits; it expressed a creative drive that was always at the service of the music itself, even if Furtwängler's vision seemed a bit too personal at times. Over the years, the conductor's hand movements have become more restrained: it's now only at crescendos that his baton reveals the tensions he feels..."
August 28 and 29 1948
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 (soloists: Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Elsa Cavelti, Ernst Häfliger and Paul Schöffler)
"Extraordinary performance, full of passionate musicality..."
August 30 1948
Beethoven: Symphony No. 1; Wagner: Siegfried Idyll, funeral March of Götterdämmerung and prelude of Meistersinger
"The symphony's performance revealed a certain weariness (not long ago the same symphony was conducted by Toscanini with the orchestra of La Scala)..."
August 24 1949
Brahms: Concerto for violin and cello (soloists: Wolfgang Schneiderhan and Enrico Mainardi); R. Strauss: Till Eulenspiegel; Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4
"Furtwängler: it almost seems needless to praise the Maestro once more. However I would like to mention two aspects of his conducting that impressed me greatly: on the one hand, it is not only the sheer majesty of his conducting that leads to such perfection in recreating the music; it's also a kind of fluidity that pours out of him and over the entire orchestra and audience. This "fluid" cannot come from nowhere; the only explanation is that the conductor immerses himself deeply in the music he conducts. And this leads to the second aspect: musical details become part of the rhythm that rises and falls in a wave that embraces the entire piece."
August 27 and 28 1949
Haydn: The Creation (soloists: Irmgard Seefried, Boris Christoff, etc.)
"Under Furtwängler's baton, the choir and the orchestra achieved such richness of sound that the lyrical sections sounded as if they had been bewitched."
August 9 1950
Gluck: overture of Alceste; Brahms: variations on a theme by Haydn; Hindemith: der Schwanendreher (soloist: William Primrose); Beethoven: Symphony No. 5
"The audience listened to the overture of Alceste with some reserve whereas its enthusiasm was aroused with the Haydn Variations. In the Hindemith concerto, Primrose splendidly mastered the difficult solo part (...) We all know how intensively Furtwängler experiences the 5th symphony and how he knows to communicate this experience to the orchestra. Heightened dynamics turned this Fifth symphony into the climax of this concert."
August 26 and 27 1950
Berlioz: Faust Damnation (soloists: Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Hans Hotter and Alois Pernerstorfer)
This concert was released by the Italian label Cetra and on CD by Eklipse. The quality of sound is very poor.
"Furtwängler manages to draw from this work all its romantic expressiveness..."
August 15 1951
Weber: Freischütz overture; Bartok: Concerto for orchestra; Beethoven: Symphony No. 7
"The Bartok Concerto lacks that special degree of spontaneity that one feels when the public really feels the music. But in the Beethoven Seventh, Furtwängler was once again in his element: the music literally lit up in his interpretation."
August 25 1951
Wagner: excerpts from Götterdämmerung (soloists: Astrid Varnay, Wilma Lipp, Heinz Rehfuss and Josef Greindl)
"Wagner's music and its brilliant performance turned the evening into a great success..."
August 22 1953
Haendel: Concerto grosso No. 10; Hindemith: die Harmonie der Welt; Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2 (soloist: Edwin Fischer)
"The Hindemith symphony was a bit of a let-down (...) The slow movement of the Brahms concerto was superbly interpreted and in the final movement, the conductor and the soloist were in complete harmony, breathing life into a conversation between orchestra and piano."
August 26 1953
Schumann: Manfred Overture and Symphony No. 4; Beethoven: Symphony No. 3
This concert was recorded by a Swiss music lover when it was broadcast and was released for the first time by the French Furtwängler Society and later by Music and Arts.
"In the trio of the scherzo of the Schumann Fourth symphony, the first violin, Michel Schwalbe, distinguished himself as soloist and embroidered the dreamlike theme with graceful garlands."
August 21 and 22 1954
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 (soloists: Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Elsa Cavelti, Ernst Häfliger and Otto Edelmann)
The concert of August 22 was exceptionally well recorded by the Swiss radio (Schweizerische Rundfunkgesellschaft Basel) and appeared in various editions, some pirated. Our release (for which we had permission from Mrs. Furtwängler, EMI-London, the Philharmonia Orchestra and Madame Schwarzkopf) received the Gramophone Award in 1995 and remains to date Tahra's greatest success (Initially released as Furt 1003, this CD is now part of the set "legendary post-war concerts" as Furt 1067-1070)
"This was a very special present for all music lovers. With the London orchestra Furtwängler emphasized the dramatic nature of this symphony as he had done six years earlier with our own Festival orchestra. He highlighted the melodic nature of the music, as Wagner had himself done in exactly the same place, and the work consequently greatly gained in clarity and intensity. In the finale the ecstatic nature of the music came to the forefront, as if it wanted to tell the audience that if offered `passage into a better world'."
August 25 1954
Haydn: Symphony No. 88; Bruckner: Symphony No. 7
"Furtwängler has already proved in previous years that he is a great conductor of Bruckner: the coda for instance, in the first and last movements, the inner tension and the sound dream in the slow movement, the liveliness in the scherzo, are all worth being mentioned... But in the soft passages, the sound quality of the woodwinds was a little thick and the trumpet's announcement of the scherzo was too loud to be completely acceptable..."
