Arturo Toscanini

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arturo Toscanini listening to playbacks at RCA Victor (BMG Music)
Enlarge
Arturo Toscanini listening to playbacks at RCA Victor (BMG Music)

Arturo Toscanini (March 25, 1867 – January 16, 1957) was an Italian musician. He is considered by many critics, fellow musicians, and much of the classical listening audience to have been the greatest conductor of his era. He was renowned for his brilliant intensity, his restless perfectionism, his phenomenal ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory which gave him extraordinary command over a vast repertoire of orchestral and operatic works, and allowed him to correct errors in orchestral parts unnoticed by his colleagues for decades.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Toscanini was born in Parma, Emilia-Romagna, Italy and won a scholarship to the local music conservatory, where he studied cello. He joined the orchestra of an opera company, with which he toured South America in 1886. While presenting Aida in Rio de Janeiro, the orchestra's conductor was booed by the audience and forced to leave the podium. Although he had no conducting experience, Toscanini was persuaded to take up the baton, and led a magnificent performance completely from memory. Thus began his career as a conductor at age 19.

Upon returning to Italy, Toscanini self-effacingly returned to his chair in the cello section, and participated as cellist in the world premiere of Verdi's Otello (La Scala, 1887) under the composer's supervision. (Verdi, who habitually complained that conductors never seemed interested in directing his scores the way he had written them, was impressed by reports from Arrigo Boito about Toscanini's ability to interpret his scores. The composer was also impressed when Toscanini consulted him personally, indicating a ritardando where it was not set out in the score and saying that only a true musician would have felt the need to make that ritardando.)

Gradually the young musician's reputation as an operatic conductor of unusual authority and skill, supplanted his cello career. In the following decade he consolidated his career in Italy, entrusted with the world premieres of Puccini's La Bohème and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. In 1896 he conducted his first symphonic concert (works by Schubert, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner), in Turin. By 1898 he was resident conductor at La Scala, Milan and remained there until 1908, returning during the 1920s. He took the Scala Orchestra to the United States on a concert tour in 1920-21; it was during that tour that Toscanini made his first recordings.

Outside of Europe, he conducted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York (1908–1915) as well as the New York Philharmonic Orchestra(1926–1936). He toured Europe with the New York Philharmonic in 1930; he and the musicians were acclaimed by critics and audiences wherever they went. As was also the case with the New York Philharmonic, Toscanini was the first non-German conductor to appear at Bayreuth (1930–1931). In the 1930s he conducted at the Salzburg Festival (1934–1937) and the inaugural concert in 1936 of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra (now the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra) in Tel Aviv, and later performed with them in Jerusalem, Haifa, Cairo and Alexandria.

Strongly opposed to Italian and German fascism, he left Europe for the United States, where in 1937, the NBC Symphony Orchestra was created for him. He conducted the first broadcast concert on December 25, 1937, in NBC Studio 8-H in New York City's Rockefeller Center. The acoustics were very dry, until some remodeling in 1939 added a bit more reverberation to the studio. (In 1950, the studio was remodeled for television productions; today it is used by NBC for Saturday Night Live.)

Toscanini was often criticized for neglecting American music; however, in 1938, he conducted the world premieres of two orchestral works by Samuel Barber, Adagio for Strings and Essay for Orchestra. In 1945, he led the orchestra in Carnegie Hall recording sessions of the Grand Canyon Suite by Ferde Grofe and An American in Paris by George Gershwin. He also conducted broadcast performances of Copland's El Salon Mexico and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with soloists Earl Wild and Benny Goodman and Concerto in F with pianist Oscar Levant, as well as music by other American composers, including two marches of John Philip Sousa.

In 1940, Toscanini took the orchestra on a "goodwill" tour of South America. Later that year, Toscanini had a disagreement with NBC management over their use of his musicians in other NBC broadcasts; Toscanini threatened to move to CBS, until the dispute was resolved and he returned as music director.

In 1943, he appeared in a documentary film for the Office of War Information (OWI) directed by Alexander Hammid, Hymn of the Nations, which featured Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra performing the music of Verdi. Filmed in NBC Studio 8-H, the orchestra performed the overture to La Forza del Destino and Hymn of the Nations, the latter featuring tenor Jan Peerce and the Westminster Choir.

The orchestra first appeared on television in March 1948, when Toscanini conducted an all-Wagner program. A few weeks later, the concert featuring Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was also simulcast on radio and television. There were a total of 10 telecasts, from 1948 to 1952, all preserved on film and later released on home video. In the summer of 1950, Toscanini led the orchestra on an extensive transcontinental tour. It was during that tour that the famous photograph of Toscanini riding the ski lift at Sun Valley, Idaho was taken. Some have had said that, because of his broadcasts, tours, and recordings, Toscanini became the first conducting "superstar" of modern mass media.

The NBC concerts continued in Studio 8-H until the fall of 1950, when they were moved to Carnegie Hall, where many of the orchestra's recording sessions had been held, due to the dry acoustics of Studio 8-H. The final broadcast performance, an all-Wagner program, took place on April 4, 1954, in Carnegie Hall. That June he participated in his final recording sessions, remaking portions of two Verdi operas so they could be commercially released. After his retirement, the NBC Symphony was reorganized as the Symphony of the Air, making regular performances and recordings, until it was disbanded in 1963.

With the help of his son Walter, Toscanini spent his remaining years editing tapes and transcriptions of his performances with the NBC Symphony. The "approved" recordings were issued by RCA Victor, which also has issued his recordings with the Scala Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. His recordings with the BBC Symphony Orchestra were issued by EMI. Various companies have issued recordings of a number of broadcasts and concerts, that he did not officially approve, on compact discs. Among these is a stereophonic recording of his last NBC broadcast concert, in which the "lapse of memory" that he had on the air is unnoticeable, perhaps because the rehearsals were also taped in stereo and portions of them were inserted into the final edit.

Toscanini in rehearsal (RCA Victor)
Enlarge
Toscanini in rehearsal (RCA Victor)

On radio, he conducted seven complete operas, including La Bohème and Otello, all of which were eventually released on records and CD, thus finally enabling the listening public to hear what an opera conducted by Toscanini sounded like. He retired at age 87. When he died in New York at the age of 89, his body was returned to Italy and was interred in the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan.

Toscanini conducted the world premieres of many operas, four of which have become part of the standard operatic repertoire: Pagliacci, La Bohème, La Fanciulla del West and Turandot. He also conducted the first Italian performances of Siegfried, Götterdämmerung, Salome, Pelléas et Mélisande, as well as the South American premieres of Tristan und Isolde and Madama Butterfly and the North American premiere of Boris Godunov.

At La Scala, which had what was then the most modern stage lighting system installed in 1901 and an orchestral pit installed in 1907, Toscanini pushed through reforms in the performance of opera. He insisted on darkening the lights during performances. As his biographer Harvey Sachs wrote: "He believed that a performance could not be artistically successful unless unity of intention was first established among all the components: singers, orchestra, chorus, staging, sets, and costumes."

[edit] Personal Life

Toscanini married Carla DeMartini on June 21, 1897, when she was not yet 20 years old. Their first child, Walter, was born on March 19, 1898. A daughter, Wally, was born on January 16, 1900. Carla gave birth to another boy, Giorgio, in September 1901, but he died of diphtheria on June 10, 1906. Then, that same year, Carla gave birth to their second daughter, Wanda.

Toscanini worked with many great singers and musicians throughout his career, but few impressed him as much as the Ukrainian-American pianist Vladimir Horowitz. They worked together a number of times and even recorded Brahms' second piano concerto and Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto with the NBC Symphony for RCA. Horowitz also became close to Toscanini and his family. In 1933, Wanda Toscanini married Horowitz, with the conductor's blessings and warnings. It was Wanda's daughter, Sonia, who was once photographed by Life playing with the conductor.

Despite Toscanini's reported infidelity (documented by Harvey Sachs), he remained married to Carla until she died on June 23, 1951.

[edit] Quotes

  • "The conduct of my life has been, is, and will always be the echo and reflection of my conscience."
  • "Gentlemen, be democrats in life but aristocrats in art."
  • Referring to the first movement of the Eroica: "To some it is Napoleon, to some it is a philosophical struggle. To me it is allegro con brio."
  • At the point where Puccini left off writing the finale of his unfinished opera, Turandot: "Here Death triumphed over art". (Toscanini then left the opera pit, the lights went up and the audience left in silence.) [1].
Toscanini in 1948 (Time Magazine)
Enlarge
Toscanini in 1948 (Time Magazine)

[edit] Recorded legacy

Toscanini made his first recordings in 1920 and his last in June 1954. His entire catalog of commercial recordings was issued by RCA Victor, save for a single recording for Brunswick in 1926 with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and a series of excellent recordings with the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1937 to 1939 for EMI's HMV label (issued in the USA by RCA). Besides the 1926 recording with the Philharmonic, Toscanini made a series of recordings with them for Victor, in Carnegie Hall, in 1929 and 1936. He also recorded with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Philadelphia's Academy of Music in 1941 and 1942. All of the RCA recordings have been digitally re-mastered and released on CD. There are also recorded concerts with various European orchestras, especially with the La Scala Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra.

In some of his recordings, Toscanini can be heard singing or humming. This is especially true in RCA's recording of La Boheme by Puccini, recorded during broadcast concerts in NBC Studio 8-H in 1946. Tenor Jan Peerce later said that Toscanini's deep involvement in the performances helped him to achieve the necessary emotions, especially in the final moments of the opera when the beloved Mimi (played by Licia Albanese) is dying.

He was especially famous for his magnificent performances of Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Strauss, Debussy and his compatriots Rossini, Verdi, Boito and Puccini. He made many recordings, especially towards the end of his career, many of which are still in print. In addition, there are many recordings available of his broadcast performances, as well as his remarkable rehearsals with the NBC Symphony.

Charles O'Connell, who produced many of Toscanini's RCA Victor recordings in the 1930s and 1940s, said that RCA quickly decided to record the NBC Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, whenever possible, after being disappointed with the dull-sounding early recordings in Studio 8-H in 1938 and 1939. (Nevertheless, there were a few recording sessions in Studio 8-H as late as June 1950, probably because of improvements to the acoustics in 1939.) O'Connell, and others, often complained that Toscanini was little interested in recording and, as Harvey Sachs wrote, he was frequently disappointed that the microphones failed to pick up everything he heard during the recording sessions. O'Connell even complained of Toscanini's failure to cooperate with RCA during the sessions. The producer also extensively documented RCA's technical problems with the Philadelphia Orchestra recordings of 1941-42, which required extensive electronic editing before they could be released (well after Toscanini's death). Later, when high fidelity and long playing records were introduced, the conductor said he was much happier with the results.

By most accounts, among his greatest recordings are the following (with the NBC Symphony unless otherwise shown):

There are many pieces which Toscanini never recorded commercially; among these, some of the most interesting surviving recordings (off-the-air) include:

Many hundreds of hours of rehearsal recordings exist; some of these have circulated in limited edition recordings. Broadcast recordings with other orchestras have also survived, including New York Philharmonic broadcasts from 1932-36, 1942, and 1945; Numerous BBC Symphony Orchestra performances from 1935-1939, Pre-war Lucerne Festival Orchestra concerts, and multiple concerts from appearances with the La Scala orchestra from 1946-1952, including Verdi's Requiem with a young Renata Tebaldi. Moreover, his ten NBC Symphony telecasts 1948-1952 survive, including that of Aïda (with Herva Nelli in the title role). They were issued on home video in the 1990s and have been reissued on DVD [2]. They further establish the passionate yet restrained podium manner for which he was acclaimed.

Toscanini DVD (Testament)
Enlarge
Toscanini DVD (Testament)

A guide to Toscanini's recording career can be found in Mortimer H. Frank's "From the Pit to the Podium: Toscanini in America" in International Classical Record Collector (1998, 15 8-21) and Christopher Dyment's "Toscanini's European Inheritance" in International Classical Record Collector (1988, 22-8).

[edit] Notable premieres

[edit] Toscanini and the critics

Throughout his career, Toscanini was virtually idolized by the critics, as well as by fellow musicians, with the exception of a few, such as Virgil Thomson, and he enjoyed the kind of critical acclaim that few musicians have consistently had. Over the past twenty-five years or so, however, as a new generation has appeared, there has been an increasing amount of revisionist criticism directed at him by critics who never heard him in person. According to Harvey Sachs, Mortimer Frank, and B.H. Haggin, this criticism is largely founded on false assumptions, generalizations, and erroneous reporting, partly due to the fact that some of the Toscanini recordings were unavailable for so long. Frank, in his recent book Toscanini: The NBC Years, refutes this revisionism quite strongly [[1]], and cites such authors as Joseph Horowitz (author of Understanding Toscanini) as perhaps the worst offender in this case. Frank states that the revisionism has grown to the point that younger listeners and critics, who have not heard as many of Toscanini's performances as the older generation, are easily influenced by it, and as a result, Toscanini's reputation, extraordinarily high in the years that he was active, has suffered a decline. Conversely, Joseph Horowitz, in Understanding Toscanini, states that those who keep the Toscanini legend alive are members of a "Toscanini cult", an idea not altogether refuted by Frank, but not embraced by him, either.

[edit] Sources

[edit] References

  1. ^ Mosco Carner, Puccini, 1974; Howard Taubman, Toscanini, 1951; quoted in Norman Lebrecht, The Book of Musical Anecdotes
  2. ^ Testament Classic Recordings web site

[edit] Books and Articles

  • Antek, Samuel (author) and Hupka, Robert (photographs), This Was Toscanini, New York: Vanguard Press, 1963 (consists of a series of essays by one of the NBC Symphony musicians who played under Toscanini, combined with remarkable performance photographs from the latter part of Toscanini's career).
  • Frank, Mortimer H., Arturo Toscanini: The NBC Years, New York: Amadeus Press, 2002. (Contains devastating criticism of the writings of Joseph Horowitz and other revisionists. Re-evaluates favorably several of Toscanini's most strongly criticized performances. Complete list and analysis of NBC symphony performances under Toscanini as well as other conductors.)
  • Haggin, B. H., Arturo Toscanini: Contemporary Recollections of the Maestro, New York: Da Capo Press, 1989 (reprint of Conversations with Toscanini and The Toscanini Musicians Knew).
  • Horowitz, Joseph, Understanding Toscanini, New York: Knopf, 1987 (a revisionist treatment, attacking Toscanini's legacy; contains factual errors corrected in Reflections on Toscanini.).
  • Marek, George R., Toscanini, New York: Atheneum , 1975. ISBN 0-689-10655-6 (Contains some factual errors corrected by Sachs.)
  • Matthews, Denis, Arturo Toscanini. New York: Hippocrene, 1982. ISBN 0-88254-657-0 (includes discography)
  • O'Connell, Charles, The Other Side of the Record. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1947. (Inside view of Toscanini's recordings)
  • Sachs, Harvey, Toscanini, New York: Da Capo Press, 1978 (considered the standard biography). ISBN 0-306-80137-X
  • Sachs, Harvey, Reflections on Toscanini, New York: Prima Publishing, 1993. (Series of essays on various aspects of Toscanini's life and impact.)
  • Sachs, Harvey,ed., The Letters of Arturo Toscanini, New York: Knopf, 2003.
  • Taubman, Howard, The Maestro: The Life of Arturo Toscanini, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1951 (contains factual errors corrected by Haggin and Sachs).
  • Teachout, Terry, Toscanini Lives, Commentary Magazine, July/August 2002

[edit] External links

See also:

Preceded by:
unknown		 Music Director, La Scala, Milan
1898–1908		 Succeeded by:
Tullio Serafin
Preceded by:
Tullio Serafin		 Music Director, La Scala, Milan
1921–1929		 Succeeded by:
Victor de Sabata
Preceded by:
Willem Mengelberg		 Musical Director, New York Philharmonic
1928–1936		 Succeeded by:
John Barbirolli
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../a/r/t/Arturo_Toscanini_150d.html"