Complete Furtwängler on record

ATTENTION EVENT! The first complete studio set of the legendary conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler! Monumental edition in a luxurious box of 55CD + 160p booklet - Includes unreleased tracks - HD remastering 24bit/96kHz & 24bit/192kHz - 135th anniversary of his birth. Wilhelm Furtwängler is a sacred monster, one of the most eminent conductors of the 20th century. Some even go so far as to say he was the greatest of all. An exceptional performer, unique even, of the Austro-German symphonic repertoire and Wagner's operas, he remains an essential reference for both performers and music lovers. The unprecedented scope of this 55 CD box makes its acquisition indispensable. It brings together for the first time not only the entirety of his studio recordings (HMV, Telefunken, Polydor, DG, Decca), but also all his commercial live performances. In-depth research has even managed to uncover invaluable unreleased tracks, recorded in Vienna and Copenhagen. This monumental edition has been crafted with extreme care, both artistically and technically: each recording has undergone meticulous remastering in high definition. The editorial component (160-page booklet), which includes abundant documentation and in-depth analyses, sheds light on the philosophy of Wilhelm Furtwängler, the genius he had for bringing a score to life with apparent spontaneity. Wilhelm Furtwängler was born in Berlin in 1886, into an eminent family. His father Adolf was an archaeologist, his mother a painter, and his brother Philipp a mathematician. Most of his childhood was spent in Munich, where his father taught at the university. He received a musical education from a young age and developed an early love for Beethoven, a composer with whom he remained closely associated throughout his life. At the time of Furtwängler's conducting debut at the age of twenty, he had written several pieces of music. However, they were not well received and this, combined with the financial insecurity that a career as a composer would bring, led him to focus on conducting. At his first concert, he conducted the Kaim Orchestra (now Munich Philharmonic) in Anton Bruckner's Ninth Symphony. He then held positions in Munich, Lübeck, Mannheim, Frankfurt, and Vienna, before obtaining a job at the Staatskapelle Berlin in 1920 and, in 1922, at the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig (where he succeeded Arthur Nikisch) and simultaneously at the prestigious Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Later, he became music director of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Salzburg Festival, and the Bayreuth Festival, which was considered the greatest position a conductor could hold in Germany at the time. Towards the end of the war, under extreme pressure from the Nazi party, Furtwängler fled to Switzerland. He resumed conducting and recording after the war and remained a popular conductor in Europe, although he was always somewhat in the shadows. He died in 1954 in Baden-Baden. Furtwängler is best known for his interpretations of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, and Wagner. However, he was also a champion of modern music and gave performances of contemporary composers such as Bartók, Hindemith, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Bloch.