Symphony No. 3 (Furtwängler)

Wilhelm Furtwängler's Symphony No. 3 in C-sharp minor was written between 1951 and 1954. It is in four movements:

# Largo
# Allegro
# Adagio
# Allegro assai

At first, the four movements had programmatic headings: "Disaster," "Under compulsion to life," "Beyond" and "The conflict continues." [Gottfried Kraus, liner notes to Orfeo d'Or CD C 406 961 B, translated to English by Lionel Salter. In the German original, Kraus gives the headings as "Das Verhängnis," "Im Zwang zum Leben," "Jenseits" and "Der Kampf geht weiter."] At the time of his death, Furtwängler was still working on the last movement. In 1956, Joseph Keilberth conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in the première of the first three movements. Elisabeth Furtwängler did not allow the Finale to be performed until much later (a piece more complete than, say, the Finale of Bruckner's Symphony No. 9). Yehudi Menuhin conducted the premiere of the whole piece in 1986. [Lionel Salter's translation identifies this as January 25, 1956, "the centennial of Furtwängler's birth," but that's actually two years after his death. The German original says January 25, 1986, "Furtwänglers 100. Geburstag."]

Discography

To complement Furtwängler's own recording of his Symphony No. 2 with the Vienna Philharmonic, the Orfeo label recorded Wolfgang Sawallisch for this one with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. Sawallisch's recording does not include the Finale, but Alfred Walter's and George Alexander Albrecht's do (conducting the RTBF Symphony Orchestra on Marco Polo and the Staatskapelle Weimar on Arte Nova, respectively).

References