Читать книгу Two Worlds of Music - Berta Geissmar - Страница 7

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When Furtwängler came to Mannheim there was no doubt that1920 he was unusually talented, but he himself was the first to realize that he still lacked experience. Yet every performance he gave was so outstanding, it was no wonder that more and more invitations from other towns were extended to him.

Unlike many gifted young conductors, however, he remained aloof from all these tempting offers. He had the self-control to wait, and was determined to continue to work towards the ripening of his own musical experience. However, during the two last years of his Mannheim contract, he found it difficult to adhere to this determination.

The first year after the war, rail travel was so complicated that Willem Mengelberg felt unable to keep up his work with the Frankfurt Museum concerts, which he conducted in addition to his traditional Concertgebouw concerts in Amsterdam. Nothing was more logical than that Furtwängler be asked to combine the Frankfurt concerts with his work in Mannheim. However, although he occasionally went there as a guest conductor, he considered that his work in Mannheim excluded him from assuming further permanent responsibilities.

To refuse a similar offer from Vienna was far more difficult. As an entirely unknown conductor he had gone there in December 1918 for a concert with the Wiener Symphonie Orchester, at which he performed Brahms’ Third Symphony, and had been immediately acclaimed by the Viennese press and public as the greatest and most interesting conductor of the younger generation. From that moment Vienna sought him whenever possible. The first invitation for a cycle of concerts with the Symphonie Orchester—the Tonkünstlercyclus—he accepted in 1919 and annually thereafter. He was fascinated by Vienna. He was thrilled by the understanding of Vienna’s musical public; he made friends who had known Bruckner, Brahms, and Mahler; he basked in the atmosphere of tradition and sympathy. With iron self-control, however, he kept to his decision of sticking to the Mannheim work as the necessary basis of preparation for his future activities. He went to Vienna from time to time, but travel made the few visits he permitted himself more and more difficult, and he wrote me resignedly, during an unexpected breakdown on one of these journeys, that he was afraid he would not be able to keep them up.

Meanwhile, his career went its meteoric way. He had given some concerts in Berlin, and, like the Viennese, the Berliners acclaimed him. When Richard Strauss left the Berlin State Opera concerts in 1920 to settle in Vienna, Furtwängler was invited to conduct, as a possible successor. He was unanimously elected by the orchestra, in the interval of the first rehearsal, and was appointed for the coming season (1920-21). Nothing stood in the way. His Mannheim contract expired in June 1920, and the Berlin contract in October.

While Furtwängler was having his triumphant success with the Berlin1921 Staatskapelle, I submitted my thesis in philosophy: “Art and Science as Concepts of the Universe.” As was the custom, the Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at Heidelberg knew my subject, but I had never discussed what I was writing with him, and had worked quite on my own. He rejected my thesis as being too independent, and proposed that I re-edit it under his supervision for another year. I was utterly defeated. I felt as if I would never be able to complete my Ph.D., so many obstacles always arose.

However, I took courage. There were many schools of philosophy in Germany, and it was quite possible that one philosopher might welcome what another rejected. I went to Frankfurt. My thesis was accepted, and I got my degree.

The move to Frankfurt had another advantage. Furtwängler had decided to accept the Directorship of the Frankfurt Museum concerts, in addition to the State Opera concerts, and travelled regularly between Berlin, Frankfurt, and Vienna, where he had also agreed to do some conducting. When he came to Frankfurt we always had a great deal to discuss. I shared his general work as much as possible, and in January 1921 he asked me to consider coming to Berlin, the center of Germany’s musical life and, for Furtwängler, the most exciting place of all. I accepted.

That summer my mother and I went to the Engadine for the first time after the Great War. My parents and grandparents had gone there every summer, and had regularly met the same group of friends, for many well-known people went to the Engadine to enjoy the clear air and the wonderful sun. Among them, in my mother’s day and during the time of the Brahms controversy, were Simrock, the famous Brahms publisher, and Hanslick, his great supporter and the enemy of Wagner, made immortal by Wagner as Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger.

Furtwängler joined us that year. For once he gave himself a holiday of three weeks without work. He fell under the spell of the beautiful landscape. He was a marvellous mountaineer, trained to it from childhood by his father. He loved nature, and soon knew every summit of the area. He liked to climb the mountains without using the better-known paths, and on our many trips together we frequently took our food with us and spent the day on some mountain top. On real climbs through snow and ice, we observed a kind of ritual. We climbed in silence, almost grimly, till we had reached our objective—then we relaxed. Furtwängler threw off his coat and breathed deeply in the crystalline air, and then, sitting in solitude and peace, with the chain of snow-peaked mountains and glaciers facing us, we discussed and planned much of our future work.

We spent many holidays in the Engadine after that, and a few years later, in 1924, he bought his own house there. Situated on a lovely and lonely slope between St. Moritz and Pontresina, the house had every comfort. It had been a painter’s chalet, and the studio made a wonderful music room. Later Furtwängler’s first wife, with her Scandinavian hospitality, never counted the heads of those who sat down to meals, nor did she care how many slept, tucked away somehow in that house. Furtwängler was usually invisible and “not to be disturbed” while working, but at meals he always sat at the head of his table.

In the autumn of 1921, I went to Berlin. The political situation was desperate, but the city was full of life. Old friends were kind, and I quickly made new ones. I attended many concerts, and, of course, all the Staatsoper concerts. They were given on Thursdays and, like the concerts of the Vienna Philharmonic, were purely the concern of the orchestra, which was the Opera Orchestra as well. This series had been in charge of such noted conductors as Muck, then Weingartner from 1891-1908, and finally Richard Strauss from 1908-20. Though there was hardly ever a seat to be had, I was lucky enough to get into one of the boxes above the orchestra where the famous Berlin painter, Max Liebermann, was regularly to be found making sketches of the orchestra and its conductor.

Berlin was exciting. There was a flood of concerts to which everybody came, and there was an enormous competition between the various conductors. Each concert was a new battle for maintaining a reputation. The political depression of the nation was grave, but it is significant, in considering the cultural situation of pre-Hitler Germany, that whatever the material misery, there was a free intellectual and spiritual life.

Looking back on Germany’s musical life in those years, it is amazing how much went on in spite of the adverse times. In the spring of 1921 the first Brahmsfest after the war was held in Wiesbaden. These Brahms festivals had been founded by the Deutsche Brahms Gesellschaft in 1909, and attracted their own special community, a community of real music lovers from all parts of Germany and from abroad. The artists considered it a great privilege to be invited to participate, for these occasions had become a traditional feature of German musical life. I remember at Wiesbaden in 1921 and at Hamburg in 1922 meeting old friends of the Schumann-Brahms Kreis, Professor Julius Röntgen, born in 1855, and Fräulein Engelmann, from Holland; Eugenie Schumann, born in 1851, daughter of Robert and Clara, and the nonagenarian Alwin von Beckerath, who had been an intimate friend of Brahms.

The Brahms festivals were not the only music festivals held after the war. There were the famous Schlesische Musikfeste, there were the Handel festivals, and there were the festivals of small groups for the International Society for Contemporary Music. Somehow they all managed to get financial support from admirers and from the towns where they were held, and the festival spirit was always such as to make everybody temporarily forget that the outside world existed.

In Berlin I looked after Furtwängler and worked for the Artists’ League, a league run on an honorary basis, formed by the musicians themselves for the protection of artists’ interests. It gave advice and ran a concert department which took less than the professional agency fee, and gave me much valuable experience.

Furtwängler became more and more popular in Vienna during this time, and in 1921 after a performance of the Brahms Requiem, which he conducted there, he was appointed a director of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde founded in 1812. He traveled a lot, but in those days I did not always accompany him; I sat in Berlin and held the fort.

During that winter, 1921-22, it was definitely necessary to hold the fort. There was a boom in musical life and a first-rate phalanx of conductors—Busch, Furtwängler, Klemperer, Nikisch, Strauss, Bruno Walter, Weingartner, and others. I went to every possible concert and reported daily to Furtwängler when he was absent.

Furtwängler was then director of the Berlin Staatskapelle, a magnificent orchestra with a splendid tradition. Yet an Opera House is not always suitable for concert purposes, and although Furtwängler highly appreciated the orchestra, he was often depressed after a concert because he had been unable to realize his artistic intentions—the acoustics in the Opera House, with the orchestra sitting on the stage, damped the sound of a big heroic symphony. He considered this fact in the choice of his programs but once could not resist including one of the big Bruckner symphonies. The performance left him unsatisfied, and as we walked down the Linden afterwards, he poured out his despair over the impossibility of achieving what he wanted.

While Furtwängler was worrying about the problem of the Staatskapelle Concerts, things moved unexpectedly to an exciting climax. On January 9, 1922, Arthur Nikisch conducted a Berlin Philharmonic concert for the last time. He had been permanent conductor of these concerts since 1895, of the Hamburg concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic since 1897, and had been in charge of the Leipzig Gewandhaus since 1895 as well. On January 23, Max Fiedler conducted in place of Nikisch, who was ill with influenza. Nikisch was still advertised on the program at the general rehearsal on February 5th, but on February 6th Wilhelm Furtwängler conducted the concert: In Memoriam Arthur Nikisch. A great artist had passed away.

The Leipzig Gewandhaus was immediately offered to Furtwängler. It was alleged to be Nikisch’s last wish. The decision about the Berlin post was not taken immediately. Furtwängler fully realized that this was the opportunity of his life, and that only if, in addition to the Gewandhaus, he could obtain the direction of the Berlin Philharmonic concerts with their acoustically perfect hall, could he fully live up to his artistic ideals.

Shortly afterwards, in spite of several competing conductors of rank, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra unanimously voted for Furtwängler, and he became successor to Nikisch in both Leipzig and Berlin. His talent, the instinct of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and a kindly fate, had made his dream come true.

Furtwängler was thirty-six. Within a short time he had attained some of the highest musical positions that Europe had to offer.

In life and in his relation to the world, Furtwängler may have seemed to have had a wavering and mutable attitude—but this is not so where music is concerned; here he knows exactly what he wants. Even in the days when his name on a bill was sufficient to sell out the house at once, Furtwängler was always striving to improve his technique, and was keenly interested in that of other conductors.

In his work Furtwängler was a curious mixture of artistic instinct and intuition, and deliberating intellect. These two main qualities can be traced all through his development, until they achieved a balance in his more mature years. He was always so obsessed by, and intent on, his music that everything else was pushed into the background. Even as conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, he used to rush to the platform for his rehearsal, raising his baton aloft, as if he could hardly wait to begin. I well remember how the famous orchestra resented it at first, and complained to me that he never even said “Good morning.” When I cautiously tried to explain this to him he was completely surprised and full of consternation; and from then on he always remembered to begin his rehearsals with a friendly word.

The incident, trivial in itself, is symbolic of an ever-varying and inexhaustible problem: the relation between conductor and orchestra. From the very beginning Furtwängler had the respect of the orchestras he conducted; there could never be any doubt about his sincere and earnest musicianship; but until the ideal stage of things was reached, until he knew his job not only musically but also psychologically, there were many phases in his relationship to orchestras which are perhaps typical of any conductor’s relation to his orchestra, even if his authority is not supported by world-wide fame.

While Furtwängler was learning he was often handicapped by conflicts between technique and vision. With his relentless self-criticism he was perfectly aware of his shortcomings, and tried to overcome them. During this phase his conducting was restless and unbalanced, and was not easy for the orchestra to follow. One thing, however, was all right from the beginning—the expressive directing movements of his wonderful hands, which seemed to paint the music on an invisible screen or form it out of an unseen piece of clay. But apart from this, he gesticulated in all directions, shook his head constantly, walked about on his rostrum, made faces when something went wrong, stamped, sang, shouted, and even spat (so that a joke came into being that the first desks must be armed with umbrellas). Furtwängler worried deeply when occasional difficulties arose with the players who complained that they could not understand his indications. All his life he has worked on his beat, and has never ceased to try to improve it. I remember him coming off the platform in some European capital one evening during the applause and saying to me that he had “just found out the beat” for a certain passage. Furtwängler’s beat—as orchestras all over the world know—is an absolute nightmare to all players until they get used to it. A member of the London Philharmonic Orchestra once declared that it is “only after the thirteenth preliminary wiggle” that Furtwängler’s baton descends. It has always been a riddle for the outsider how, with his peculiar beat, he gets results of exactitude as well as of richness in sound.

Furtwängler realized that he had two different things to watch—his own technique and his relationship with the orchestra as an understanding medium and friend. He fully appreciated that there is nothing more delicate and sensitive, more relentless and clear-sighted than an orchestra, and that its handling requires the greatest skill, subtlety, human kindness and an undisputed authority. In the course of time he mastered the approach. His orchestras worshipped him though he often asked the impossible, seldom praised them, hardly ever said a word of thanks; his players got to know that a nod given half in a trance during the performance was a greater acknowledgment from him than any spoken word of praise.

While he is preparing to conduct a work, Furtwängler clearly and distinctly identifies himself with it: he absorbs it, and, deeply concentrating on it, he re-creates it as the composer intended. This he does again and again, even if he has performed the work a thousand times before. Nothing disturbs him while he works, that is, while he is walking up and down the room, his hands beating time and his lips silently singing. He fixes the piece before his spiritual eye with intense concentration. An infinite painstaking is always behind every performance that Furtwängler gives, and even in later years he has never taken advantage of his famous name to save himself trouble. He would never risk skimping the conscientious preparation of any concert, and in this may perhaps be found the clue to his artistic fascination. No unrest of the day ever touches him while he works; nothing on earth can induce him to speed up his working time in order to be finished an hour earlier to be free for something else. His whole organism is attuned to this exact conscientiousness, and never would he allow himself to be forced out of it by some exterior pressure. He needs time to live through a great masterpiece again and again in all tranquillity. Only in this way can he feel himself ready, and sure of himself. When he finally arrives at a rehearsal his main work is already done, and he has only to transmit his intentions to the orchestra. When the concert begins, he seems to leave all earthly things behind: he is conscious neither of audience nor of score. With half-closed eyes he seems to mesmerize the orchestra, and owing to his deep musical feelings he relives the creative process of the composer, while the orchestra hangs on his movements.

If the audience leaves such a concert with a feeling of having lived through an extraordinary experience, it is because it has been made to feel the tension and the thrill of a truly visionary process of re-creation. Only if his vision of how a work should sound has been realized does Furtwängler relax after the strain of the concert; otherwise, he is nearly demented, and most difficult for those nearest to him, even if the public has acclaimed the performance with fanatical applause.

Even on the piano, Furtwängler had the gift of calling music to life in a monumental yet plastic way. His velvety touch was envied by many professionals, and to hear him play one of the great Beethoven sonatas, the “Moonlight” or the Hammerklavier Sonata, was a real experience. Never will I forget the first time he demonstrated to me from beginning to end the true spirit and inner meaning of the Choral Symphony. He knew the whole repertoire of piano and chamber music, and it was through him that I got to know the true inwardness of the late Beethoven quartets which he played magnificently—volcanic and lucid at the same time.