Though Furtwangler conducted the Ninth more than 90 times between 1913 and 1954, he generally reserved it for special occasions. None was more special, musically or politically, than the re-opening of the Bayreuth Festival in 1951 not least because of Wagners own influence on the performing history of the Ninth. Premiered in Vienna in 1824, the Ninth was the work which finally rendered the modern conductor necessary: not so much because of the finale but because of the first movement where, as Sir Donald Tovey puts it, the broadest and most spacious processes sit side by side with the tersest and most sharply uttered statements. As a young lad of 19, Wagner made a two-piano version of the Ninth out of frustration at the inability of contemporary musicians adequately to perform the work. It was the French conductor Francois Habeneck who initiated the breakthrough. When Wagner heard him conduct the Ninth in Paris in 1839, it was a revelation. Far from