Jazz Articles about Wilhelm Furtwangler

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 ...