The Devil's Music Master: The Controversial Life and Career of Wilhelm Furtwängler

From 1922 until his death in 1954, Wilhelm Furtwängler was the foremost cultural music figure of the German-speaking world, conductor of both the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras. But a cloud still hangs over his reputation, despite his undeniable brilliance as a musician, because of a fatal and tragic decision. Wilhelm Furtwängler remained in Germany when thousands of intellectuals & artists fled after the Nazis seized power in 1933. His decision to stay behind earned him lasting condemnation as a Nazi collaborator-"The Devil's Music Master." Decades after his death, Furtwängler remains for many not only the greatest but also the most controversial musical personality of our time.
In The Devil's Music Master, Sam H. Shirakawa forges the first full-length and comprehensive biography of Furtwängler. He surveys Furtwängler's formative years as a difficult but brilliant prodigy, his rise to pre-eminence as Germany's leading conductor, and his development as a musician, composer, and thinker. Shirakawa also reviews the rich recorded legacy Furtwängler documented throughout his forty-year career-such as the legendary Tristan with Kirsten Flagstad and the famous performances of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in 1942 & 1951.
Equally important, Shirakawa goes backstage and behind the lines to explore how the Nazis seized control of the arts & how Furtwängler single-handedly tried to prevent evil characters as Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels & Luftwaffe Chief Hermann Göring from annihilating Germany's musical life. He shows how Furtwängler, far from being a toady to the Nazis, stood up openly against Hitler & Himmler-at enormous personal risk-to salvage the musical traditions of Bach, Mozart, & Beethoven. Shirakawa also presents moving & overwhelming evidence of Furtwängler's astonishing efforts to save the lives of Jews & other persecuted individuals trapped in Nazi Germany-only to be proscribed at the end of the war & nearly frame