The present Cd features three very popular symphonic works which Wilhelm Furtwängler, the great and tormented German conductor, recorded at the end of his career. A profoundly tragic inspiration dominates Brahms’s grandiose First Symphony, recorded in Berlin in February 1952 and considered ever since one of Furtwängler’s more controversial and personal interpretations. Wonderful, in all of its dramatic tension, is the reading of Schumann’s Manfred Overture (1953), one of the pieces best loved by the German conductor. The CD ends with Schubert’s Rosamunde Overture (1949), imbued with grave and solemn Romanticism. Three great symphonic pages in a re-mastering which enhances all of their hidden and overlooked qualitites of sound and interpretation.