How far down the Furtwangler rabbit hole did you go?

My first Furtwangler exposure was 50 years ago.  My sister and I were both starting to listen to Classical Music.  She bought a Furtwangler recording of Beethoven’s Eroica from late WW II.  It was cheap.  My first exposure to B3, and with the crappy Sonics it sounded like it was recorded in the middle of an Air Raid.  That recording imprinted me on the Eroica; no other recording has ever seemed to be such a life and death affair.

  As I grew older and became a collector I have acquired other WF recordings but my reaction has been more variable.  I’ve read a WF biography and pontificated in various Internet discussions.

  I currently use the Pristine Audio streaming service, which has a good WF selection.  I never shelled out for the expensive Japanese or German SACD collections.

  Nice topic,btw

Many years ago I was driving home after a long day, and the first notes Beethoven's Ninth began on the car radio as I pulled into my driveway.  I had no idea what orchestra was playing, or who was conducting.  I had heard the Ninth before, live and recorded (Karajan, Szell, etc.). But something immediately gripped me about this interpretation.  The music was greater than I had imagined,  I sat in my car in my driveway for the entire length of Beethoven's Ninth, riveted, unwilling to miss a note.  At the end, I learned that the conductor was Furtwangler; it was the famous 1954 Lucerne performance.  

Like many here, my interest in Furtwangler goes back decades. A while back, I purchased the Kaisers Klassik Kunde The Legacy box set despite about Wagner being 25% of the selections. Opera's not my thing. I read Europe Central 3 months ago in which Furtwangler is mentioned in passing but its theme is central to Furtwangler's legacy. Concurrently, Wagner popped up on my radar screen, in conversations with friends and reading reviews of Alex Ross's book on Wagnerism. That eventually provided the impetus for getting Roon, uploading 400-some CD's, including of course the entire 107 CD Das Vermachtnis collection into the Roon Nucleus and upgrading my DAC. A fall project is listening to the entire Ring cycle reading along with John Deathridge's translation.