[11] In 1933, when Bruno Walter was dismissed from his position as principal conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Nazis asked Furtwängler to replace him for an international tour.

[12] On 10 April 1933, Furtwängler wrote a public letter to Goebbels to denounce the new rulers' antisemitism: Ultimately there is only one dividing line I recognize: that between good and bad art.

He subsequently invited several Jewish and anti-fascist artists (such as Yehudi Menuhin, Artur Schnabel, and Pablo Casals) to perform as soloists in his 1933/34 season, but they refused to come to Nazi Germany.

Mayer later observed that for performances of Wagner operas in Paris prior to the war, Furtwängler cast only German emigrants (Jews or political opponents to the Nazis) to sing.

[25] However, Furtwängler was appointed as the first vice-president of the Reichsmusikkammer and Staatsrat of Prussia, and accepted these honorary positions to try to bend the racial policy of Nazis in music and to support Jewish musicians.

[45][46] In addition, Goebbels sent him a clear signal that if he left Germany he would never be allowed back, frightening him with the prospect of permanent separation from his mother (to whom he was very close) and his children.

When they met again in April, Hitler attacked Furtwängler for his support of modern music, and made him withdraw from regular conducting for the time being, save for his scheduled appearance at Bayreuth.

[50] This performance was broadcast throughout Europe and in the Americas, and was used as part of a propaganda effort intended to portray the "New Germany" as the triumphant inheritor of the German musical tradition rather than a break from the past, to which Furtwängler's place at the podium was instrumental.

[82] He returned to the Berlin Philharmonic in 1937, performing with them in London for the coronation of George VI, and in Paris for the universal exposition, where he again refused to conduct the Horst-Wessel-Lied or to attend the political speeches of German officials.

According to Prieberg, "This piece is part of the cycle in which the Czech master celebrated Má vlast (My Country), and ... was intended to support his compatriots' fight for the independence from Austrian domination ...

The film was finished in December 1943 showing many conductors connected with the Berlin Philharmonic, including Eugen Jochum, Karl Böhm, Hans Knappertsbusch, and Richard Strauss, but not Furtwängler.

Yet Hitler, in gratitude for Furtwängler's refusal to leave Berlin even when it was being bombed, ordered Albert Speer to build a special air raid shelter for the conductor and his family.

He knew Claus von Stauffenberg very well[125] and his doctor, Johannes Ludwig Schmitt, who wrote him many false health prescriptions to bypass official requirements, was a member of the Kreisau Circle.

[131] The general, after meeting Riess and having all the documents translated into English, admitted that no serious charge could be brought against Furtwängler and that they had made a mistake concerning the conductor who was "a very good man".

[133] The latter received him as a Head of State because they wanted to recover the one that Arsenyi Gouliga, the representative of the Soviet Union at the Furtwängler trial, called the "greatest conductor in the world" to lead a great cultural policy in Berlin.

[135] Thus, with the backdrop of the Cold War, Furtwängler, who absolutely wanted to recover the Berlin Philharmonic which was in the British occupation zone, was obliged to go through the denazification court.

According to Fred Prieberg: "when he looked at the audience he realized that this was more than just a concert for school kids in uniform; a whole collection of prominent political figures were sitting there as well ... and it was the last time he raised his baton for this purpose".

[139][140] The chair of the commission, Alex Vogel, known for being a communist,[141] started the trial with the following statement: The investigations showed that Furtwängler had not been a member of any [Nazi] organization, that he tried to help people persecuted because of their race, and that he also avoided... formalities such as giving the Hitler salute.

The reason for Hans von Benda's behavior was as follows: he had been dismissed from his post as artistic director of the Berlin Orchestra on 22 December 1939 for numerous serious professional misconduct.

Two of the main people who prepared Furtwängler's defense for his denazification trial were two German Jews who had to flee the Nazi regime: his secretary Berta Geissmar and Curt Riess.

Could he not realize that people never needed more, never yearned more to hear Beethoven and his message of freedom and human love, than precisely these Germans, who had to live under Himmler's terror?

However the orchestra was forced to rescind the offer under the threat of a boycott from several prominent musicians including Arturo Toscanini, George Szell, Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, Isaac Stern, and Alexander Brailowsky.

He has an ability not only to respect, but to make musical sense of, dynamic markings and the indications of crescendo and diminuendo... What comes through amply... is the rare combination of a conductor who understands both sound and structure.

Unlike Toscanini, Furtwängler sought a weighty, less rhythmically strict, more bass-oriented orchestral sound, with a more conspicuous use of tempo changes not indicated in the printed score.

[187] Furtwängler's recordings are characterized by an "extraordinary sound wealth[179] ", special emphasis being placed on cellos, double basses,[179] percussion and woodwind instruments.

[189] This fluid beat created slight gaps between the sounds made by the musicians, allowing listeners to distinguish all the instruments in the orchestra, even in tutti sections.

Conductor and pianist Christoph Eschenbach has said of Furtwängler that he was a "formidable magician, a man capable of setting an entire ensemble of musicians on fire, sending them into a state of ecstasy".

Other conductors known to speak admiringly of Furtwängler include Valery Gergiev, Claudio Abbado, Carlos Kleiber, Carlo Maria Giulini, Simon Rattle, Sergiu Celibidache, Otto Klemperer, Karl Böhm, Bruno Walter, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Christoph Eschenbach, Alexander Frey, Philippe Herreweghe, Eugen Jochum, Zubin Mehta, Ernest Ansermet, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Bernard Haitink (who decided to become a conductor as a child and bedridden while listening to a Furtwängler concert on the radio during the second world war), Rafael Kubelík, Gustavo Dudamel, Jascha Horenstein (who had worked as an assistant to Furtwängler in Berlin during the 1920s), Kurt Masur and Christian Thielemann.

[a] Soloists such as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau,[203][204] Yehudi Menuhin[205] Pablo Casals, Kirsten Flagstad, Claudio Arrau and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf[206] who have played music with almost all the major conductors of the 20th century have clearly declared upon several occasions that, for them, Furtwängler was the most important one.

John Ardoin has reported the following discussion he has had with Maria Callas in August 1968 after having listened to Beethoven's Eighth Symphony with the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by George Szell: "Well", she sighed, "you see what we have been reduced to.