On the 28th of next August, in Montreux (Switzerland), Charles Dutoit will conduct the Andante Semplice (around 13 minutes) from the Second Symphony as an homage to Wilhelm Furtwaengler. Better than nothing, but indeed a very short homage.The rest of the program is Rachmaninov's Second Concerto ( Danil Trifonov) and Stravinsky's Sacre (I'll attend then concert).
what an odd coupling of Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky
Maybe odd (I'm not at all sure; Pulcinella would have been odder) but not a rare concert or CD / DVD idea.
The concert is the third and last of a tryptich with Dutoit and the RPO. Each concert ends with one of the three Stravinsky great Russian Ballets.
Here are the programs:
1) Mendelssohn The Hebrides, Schumann Piano Concerto (Martha Argerich); Stravinsky The firebird (complete)
2) Rossini William Tell overture Brahms Violin Concerto (L.Kavakos); Stravinsky Petrouchka
3) Furtwaengler Andante Semplice from Symphony n.2 Rachmaninov Concerto n.2 (D.Trifonov) Stravinsky Sacre.
Stravinsky and Rachmaninov were for long time visitors to the Swiss lakes (Stravinsky lived long near Montreux; Rachmaninov had for years a villa at the Lucerne lake;Brahms took various holidays in the Thun Lake zone area; Furtwaengler stayed in Switzerland in hard times since January 1945; Mendelssohn too was a visitor (his is a famous painting of Lucerne; the William Tell associations are obvious. Schumann's Piano Concerto is among those (around ten) concertos Martha Argerich likes to perform).
Quotean odd coupling of Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky
Good way to put it. But, boy, can he grow on you.
Furtwängler was nothing if not eclectic. There's a passage right out of Paderewski in his first symphony. That said, he's a composer I turn to when I want an insight into the high tragedy of 20th-century Germany, formerly the culture (not the land!) of Beethoven and Goethe, with real substance. For example, I cannot recommend highly enough the performance of his Piano Quintet in C Major by the Clarens Quintet on Tacet, written before the Anschluss.
The Clarens Quintet recording mentioned here is now available (mp3, on the expensive side) at Amazon.com as of late last year.
Personally I consider Furtwängler's Second Symphony a great masterwork - and a piece for my "desert island" - be it eclectic or not.
Bach was also eclectic :-)
And I love all of his other compositons too, particularly his Symphonisches Konzert and his Piano Quintet.
Timpani's 3 CDs with the Violin Sonatas and the Quintet are excellent. They have been re-issued in 2006 in box form, unfortunately omitting ist original excellent liner notes.
As far as Chrles Dutoit is concerned, I wish the orchestra having to play for him good luck; he is an excellent, but such an unfriendly and arrogant conductor...
The symphony is now on IMSLP, intriguingly and somewhat surprisingly. It may be out of copyright in the US (it's possible that Brucknerverlag didn't renew properly- this needs looking into, though) though it's certainly out of copyright in Canada, anycase.