Bücher von Wilhelm Furtwängler

In the 200th anniversary of Anton Bruckner's birth on 4 September 1824, Laanshøj Publishers continues our e-book series with facsimile editions of conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler's scores with all his notes and instructions. This time we present the score for Bruckner's 5th Symphony, which Furtwängler acquired around 1920. This is the first commercial print, published in 1894 by the Doblinger publishing house in Vienna. The score, a gift from the conductor's widow, Elisabeth Furtwängler, to The Wilhelm Furtwängler Society of America, through its president, Dade Thieriot, was kindly made available to the publisher by him.During his career, Furtwängler conducted the work 28 times between 1919 and 1951. Two concert recordings of the symphony with Furtwängler conducting the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, respectively, have been released, both based on this score.

In May 1953 Wilhelm Furtwängler made his highly acclaimed recording of Robert Schumann’s 4th symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for DGG. The work was – of course – familiar to both orchestra and conductor; but what did the score, used by Furtwängler, look like? His good friend, the Swiss clarinettist Antoine de Bavier, who was studying conducting with Furtwängler, made an exact copy of Furtwängler’s score. This copy is now in the hands of the German violinist and conductor Michael Kuen, whom I have met several times during the annual music festival Møn Sommerkoncert in Denmark. Mr. Kuen is a great admirer of Wilhelm Furtwängler, and soon we found out that publishing this score would be of great interest to all admirers of Wilhelm Furtwängler’s art. Now, Laanshøj Publishers proudly present the score. Henning Smidth