Back to Berlin

Before the rehearsal, the musicians were tense and worried; no one knew what kind of reception Wilhelm Furtwaengler would get, even though he had been cleared of all charges of friendship and collaboration with the Nazis. "Politics somehow always get mixed up with these things," said one of the Berlin Philharmonic's violinists. But when their old maestro walked in, with the dignified and austere manner the oldtimers knew so well, the tension disappeared. Every man in the orchestra got to his feet; the violinists tapped their bows on the instrument stands in tribute.

Tall, gaunt Wilhelm Furtwae1;ngler, in his shirtsleeves, rehearsed the orchestra with patience and exactitude. In the first half-hour he had shaped only four bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to his satisfaction. One-third of the orchestra was new, and he had only two days to rehearse it. He had arrived from Switzerland to find that his annotated scores had disappeared from his Potsdam home. But the concert had been postponed once and the Titania Palast was nearly sold out. He decided to go on with it.

The ovation that greeted Furtwae1;ngler this week might have been bigger--the audience was willing--but he cut it short. As soon as he reached the podium he raised his arms for silence, launched into his all-Beethoven program. Furtwae1;ngler's performance of the Fifth Symphony, whose first notes had been the Allies' wartime theme, brought down the house. People crowded down the aisles, cheering and calling him back time after time.

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