Word: ngler
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Harvard's Professor Demos had posed his problem specifically about Pianist Walter Gieseking, who had played at Joseph Goebbels' bidding. But in varying degrees other musicians had been tarred with the same brush: Conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, who had once taken a Nazi post, but who fought to keep the Jewish musicians in his Berlin Philharmonic;* and Flagstad, who had returned to occupied Norway to be with her husband (he died before he could be tried for collaboration). Flagstad had never sung for either quislings or Nazis...
Wilhelm Furtwängler had the edge in prestige but Herbert von Karajan, who is only 39, was pressing him closely. Twenty-three years younger than Furtwängler, Karajan was obviously a man of whom the world would be hearing more...
Karajan conducted the first concert of the Vienna season, and from then on he and Furtwängler took turns. Whatever Karajan did, Furtwängler set out to do better. When Karajan played an 18th Century classical suite by Locatelli, Furtwängler followed with a Handel suite. When Karajan conducted Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony, Furtwängler played Tchaikovsky's Sixth...
Furtwängler is a conductor who swoops and sweeps; Karajan's conducting is as precise as his beat. But he is just as much of a showman. He conducts everything from memory and with his eyes shut. When he finishes a piece, he holds a moment of silence before allowing any applause. Then, as if waking from a trance, he droops off stage...
...living. He first crossed his rival's path back in the Nazi heyday. He was a dark and dapper little Austrian with relentless ambition, a Nazi before the Anschluss (Karajan's part-Jewish wife became one of Germany's five "honorary Aryans"). Goebbels backed Furtwängler; Goring backed Karajan. When Karajan became director of the Berlin State Opera, Furtwängler never got over it. And when Furtwängler was the first to be de-Nazified, Karajan in turn was furious. "They can stop me for one year or for ten years; I have time...