Symphonies Nos.1 & 3

Notes

Despite making his name as an interpreter of Wagner and Bruckner, Furtwängler’s first and last love was Beethoven. Furtwängler came back to the symphonies again and again. Throughout his career they dominated his concert programmes, increasingly so in the final years. Furtwängler was the culmination of the German tradition of conducting. In its view, the score told only part of the truth. To quote Neville Cardus, Furtwängler “did not regard the printed notes as a final statement but rather as s