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In the Forum: Musical Discussions
In the Thread: Furtwangler War Years Recording
Post Subject: The “mystery” of the Furtwangler’s tempo is resolved.Posted by Romy the Cat on: 2/14/2007
Sure, those, “events” around musical performance have HUGE affect to the musicians and I in fact LOVE to collect stories about them. What could be more “interesting” from a perspective of “anxiety” then for instance the Tanglewood performance of Shostakovich 5th in 1975 when a conductor and the orchestra a few minutes before the opening of the symphony received a telegram informing them about the Shostakovich’s death? Or for instance the London’s performances of Czech’s Dvorák's cello concerto by Rostropovich given him as a protest right after the Soviet tanks occupated Prague in August 1968… I love those stories and do collect those performances but I feel the beside having just historic meaning they should have also some musical merits. In fact it would be fun to listen the Furtwangler’s recordings and to see if the Furtwangler’s orchestra start to play faster after the bombing or sirens took place :-)
BTW, leaving jokes aside…. There are some technical aspect how it possible to increase the “despair and anxiety” of good performances. I do not know if you “do audio” but if you do then all that you would need a large sealed enclosure with bass driver of near 15Hz free air resonance, an amplifier that might drive a lot of current and a lot of power and a room with reverberation time of longer then 0.7sec at 60Hz. Set your LF section on the low frequency transitions with a mart of approximately +12dB at 8Hz and then play your wartime recordings. It would be irrelevant if it would be Furtwangler’s Bethhoven, Eduard van Beinum’s Bruckner or the Hans Hotter’s Lieder. That ultra LF access will do some very interesting anxiety effect. I used this effect quite aggressively in my own playback.Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site