The story goes that once, when Furtwängler was rehearsing with an Italian orchestra, his unsteady opening downbeat caused one of the musicians to call out sympathetically "Coraggio, maestro!" Whether or not it's apocryphal, the story's totally credible. Just listen to the opening chords of this 1949 recording of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte with Furtwängler conducting the Vienna Philharmonic at the 1949 Salzburg Festival. All the strings come in too soon on the first chord. Only the violins come in too soon for the second chord ...
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The story goes that once, when Furtwängler was rehearsing with an Italian orchestra, his unsteady opening downbeat caused one of the musicians to call out sympathetically "Coraggio, maestro!" Whether or not it's apocryphal, the story's totally credible. Just listen to the opening chords of this 1949 recording of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte with Furtwängler conducting the Vienna Philharmonic at the 1949 Salzburg Festival. All the strings come in too soon on the first chord. Only the violins come in too soon for the second chord, but they do come in almost a beat too soon. The strings are finally together for the third chord, but the violins go out of tune and stay out of tune for the rest of the introduction. Then, suddenly, somehow, Furtwängler pulls himself together and, presto-change-o in the Allegro everything comes together and all at once the music soars off into the air, a living thing of supreme beauty. And the performance more or less stays that way for the rest of the opera. While some of the...
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