Between 1939 and 1945, Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Berlin Philharmonic gave fifteen concerts intended for radio broadcast. The bulk of those concerts occurred during or after 1942, when the tide of the Second World War had started to turn, a time of air raids, power shortages, uncertainty and fear. The orchestra were resilient: they continued to perform after the declaration of total war forced many of the city’s cultural institutions to close their doors in 1943, and even survived the destruction of their home venue, the old Philharmonie, in January of 1944.
Whether or not we believe the horrors of the times were reflected in these concerts, they remain some of the most vital and intense performances of the standard repertoire committed to tape in the twentieth century. The surviving tapes from all fifteen concerts, amounting to some…
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