Wilhelm Furtwängler - Symphony No. 2 (1944)

Painting Info - "Jerusalem" by Peyop.

I. Asaai Moderato - 00:00
II. Andante Semplice - 23:06
III. Un Poco Moderato - 36:04
IV. Langsam - Allmahlich Vorwarts - Allegro Molto - 51:51

As a composer Wilhelm Furtwängler was only too well aware of the probable prejudices he would encounter. The "world", he wrote in his Notebooks, would not take "seriously" the compositions of one known for 35 years as a conductor. He adds his own view of himself as, from the outset of his career, a conducting composer rather than a composing conductor. Another problem arose from criticism that accused him of rejecting contemporary music wholesale, a charge he indignantly rejects, while insisting that the future lay with tonality, rather than with the eclectic individualism that he certainly found unsatisfactory. Universal things, he wrote in 1940, can only be said in a universal language.

The second of Furtwängler's three completed symphonies was written in 1944 and 1945 and first performed under his direction at a concert given by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in February 1948. The closing years of the war and its aftermath had brought many difficulties and Furtwängler had only been allowed to resume his career as a conductor in 1947. The new symphony, which he conducted on a number of occasions in the following years, justifies clearly enough his view of himself as before all else a composer, compelled initially to turn to conducting as a way of earning a living. The work reflects his own views of the symphony, expressed in his notebook for 1948, and the essential nature of tonality in a form that he saw as the German contribution to music.

The Symphony No. 2 in E minor, published by Brucknerverlag in 1952, described by Furtwängler as his spiritual testament, is in four movements. The first of these, offering music of dense complexity that is powerfully moving, opens with a sinuous figure from the bassoons, joined by clarinets before the poignant entry of the strings, with music mounting in intensity and animation, as thematic strands are developed. The second movement offers an apparent immediate respite from struggle, although the contemplative mood of the music conceals inner tensions. The opening melody offered by the clarinets is taken up by flutes and oboes, the cellos subsequently leading to a second thematic element of more dramatic intensity. The music reaches a great climax, after which the strings, and in particular a solo cello, usher in a quietly meditative conclusion, dying away to a whisper. The scherzo begins at once, introduced by a bassoon, followed by flute and French horn, before the entry of the strings, leading to an Allegro started by the lower strings, the viola theme taken up by instruments of higher register, with all the insistency of Sibelius, in a movement that contains further thematic allusions to what has gone before. A dynamic climax is followed by a solo flute playing the opening figure, followed by the French horn and the violas. There is a pause before the Allegro resumes, at first entrusted to cellos and double basses only. A lyrical contrast is provided in a central passage that brings its own element of conflict, before the bassoon hints again the scherzo theme, now taken up again by the rest of the orchestra. The last movement is one of considerable substance. It is introduced by the bassoon over a double bass and cello pedal in a slow preface of now familiar contour. A positive E major mode appears, although it is in the final pages that the dénouement takes place, to end in triumphant resolution.