Jazz Articles

Our daily articles are carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. You can find more articles by searching our website, see what's trending on our popular articles page or read articles ahead of their published dates on our future articles page. Read our daily album reviews.

Extended Analysis

Ludwig van Beethoven - Recordings during War Time conducted by Wilhelm Furtwangler

by C. Michael Bailey
April 19, 2014

German conductor and composer Wilhelm Furtwangler (1886--1954) remains a difficult enigma in music. Though never a member of Germany's NAZI party he was nevertheless associated with the regime both tacitly and unwittingly through the long-term efforts of Dr. Josef Goebbels' Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Socially and politically naïve, Furtwangler believed that German Art and Politics existed in separate spheres, the former a self-determined forever force-of-nature gift and the latter, in Furtwangler's mind, a temporary convulsion of fascist nationalism ...