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In the Forum: Musical Discussions
In the Thread: Furtwangler War Years Recording
Post Subject: It was not me stepping on my Cat — it was Heifetz...Posted by Romy the Cat on: 2/15/2007

 Gregm wrote:
There is a live recording (in stereo) of Beet 5th piano with Gieseking/Rother/Greater Orch of the 3rd Reich. The concert took place in 1944 and, allegedly, Hitler was present. The conductor is reported as Rother -- but there's a rumour (urban legend?) that in fact it was Furt.

“That same year the Magnetophon was used to make the first stereophonic tape recordings, including a performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 with pianist Walter Gieseking and the Berlin Reichsender Orchestra conducted by Artur Rother. This remarkable performance was later issued by Varese Sarabande.”

The Artur Rother is a legitimate conductor; I have some of his recordings. Here is his full discography:

http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/Studio/2891/rother-dis.htm

Still the “urban legend” about Rother/Furt substitution sounds a little fishy. Yes, it is common that some of the musicians and conductors, because of the different reasons, would like do not have own name associated with a specific publicly available recording. They usually invented some kind of fictitious name and print it on a record. The very same Heifetz that you mentioned had for instance a few “second names” that he insisted to print instead of his. However, I never thought that one musician insist that his performance should be attributed to other actual (none fictional) musician. At least I never head about it. If it were true then it would be very interesting to learn about the resins WHY they decided to do it.

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