So Much To Do!

I got off on time again today, that is twice in one week and a world's record around my place, lol!  However as it is payday, I have lots  of errands to run as I am most likely going to have to work tomorrow instead of having the day off.  I do have a couple of videos for you today, one a short documentary by students at Cal State University - Long Beach entitled Equality and Love.  The documentary is in support of Gay Marriage and Equal Rights, it also features both LGBT and Straight people having their say about it.  The second video is considerably longer, in fact it runs about the same length as yesterday's video at an hour and 22 minutes.  The composer here is a German mostly know for his orchestral conducting.  Wilhelm Furtwangler is widely considered to have been one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. By the 1930s he had built a reputation as one of the leading conductors in Europe, and he was the leading conductor who remained in Germany during the Second World War.  Today I am featuring his Symphony Number 2 in E Minor written in the closing days of the war (1944-45) while he was principle conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic.  At Furtwängler's conducting debut at the age of twenty he led the Kaim Orchestra (now the Munich Philharmonic) in Anton Bruckner's Ninth Symphony, which was yesterday's video.  That is what led me to this video for today with the performance by The Chicago Symphony Orchestra directed by Daniel Berenboim.  He was controversial in life and after his death because he chose to stay in Germany during its time as the Third Reich.  He was never a member of the Nazi Party unlike some of his contemporaries and his closing statement at his "de-Nazification" trial says a lot about the man:

"I knew Germany was in a terrible crisis; I felt responsible for German music, and it was my task to survive this crisis, as much as I could. The concern that my art was misused for propaganda had to yield to the greater concern that German music be preserved, that music be given to the German people by its own musicians. These people, the compatriots of Bach and Beethoven, of Mozart and Schubert, still had to go on living under the control of a regime obsessed with total war. No one who did not live here himself in those days can possibly judge what it was like.

"Does Thomas Mann [who was critical of Furtwängler's actions] really believe that in 'the Germany of Himmler' one should not be permitted to play Beethoven? 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? I do not regret having stayed with them."

The second of Furtwängler's three completed symphonies was written in 1944 and 1945 and first performed under his direction at a concert given by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in February 1948. The closing years of the war and its aftermath had brought many difficulties and Furtwängler had only been allowed to resume his career as a conductor in 1947. The new symphony, which he conducted on a number of occasions in the following years, justifies clearly enough his view of himself as before all else a composer, compelled initially to turn to conducting as a way of earning a living. The work reflects his own views of the symphony, expressed in his notebook for 1948, and the essential nature of tonality in a form that he saw as the German contribution to music.  All in all another majestic piece of music by an often misunderstood man.  

Of course I could not forget the eye candy portion of the post, and I have some rather fetching photographs of some majestic Men In Jeans lounging about the page under the videos.  Now I have lists to make and errands to run, so I must bid you adieu.  Thanks for stopping by, see you again tomorrow for this week's edition of Naked or Nearly So.  Until next time as always, Enjoy!