Toscanini's Ten Best Recordings (Preview Discussion: His Achievement and Continued Importance)
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- Опубліковано 14 лис 2021
- This is both a stand-alone discussion of Toscanini's ongoing relevance to us today, as well as a preview of the ClassicsToday.com Insider video discussing Toscanini's ten most outstanding recordings--or my list of them anyway. I do hope you'll consider becoming a ClassicsToday.com Insider subscriber, where you can find thousands of reviews and sound samples to audition. Just click on the link here to join: www.classicstoday.com/classic...
My Dad was a huge Toscanini fan. Always referred to him as the Maestro and tried to collect everything he ever did. His friend was such a fan that he tried to visit Toscanini at his house after he had retired; got turned away at the front door. 😂
I've been mesmerized by Toscanini since I was a young man of 19. I started collecting records in 1980, and I have an entire 1940s record cabinet filled with classical 78 rpm sets. Quite a few are original albums recorded by Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Also those early red vinyl 45 sets and most of his LPs too. I enjoy watching his films of him conducting, which I have on VHS and also Laserdics. Looking forward to watching your channel.
Finally, The Maestro! Some of us were weaned on Toscanini 70 years ago. Thank you.
Again in listening again , brilliant points David, i always thought the more appropriate conductor comparisons per age were mahler , strauss , nikisch and weingartner and perhaps walter.
Wonderful insight on Toscanini's aesthetic! Fully agree with your findings!
Thank you so much for your informed opinions!
Kudos for another successful, informative installment in this series. I heard the Toscanini/NYPO Beethoven 7 many years ago on LP and the performance blew me away. in spite of the limited sonics. I have just ordered it on CD on the Naxos Historical series (the Opus Cura release is around $40 on Amazon as of this writing).
I’m not familiar with Toscanini’s Cherubini Requiem but plan to check out the recording very soon.
Great that you included the maestro’s unmissable Respighi.
I heard it for the first time at boarding school when I was about 16, and I remember going back to my room practically drunk and reeling with what I had heard.
Thanks for this and the classiscstoday review. Toscanini is rarely if ever played on classical music stations and his representation on CD’s is spotty. But his influence on conductors even today is enormous whether they know it or not.
Toscanini presence on CD is not spotty, there are dozens of recordings on the RCA label alone. Grouped together on the Toscanini edition.
I agree with Toscanini about critics. Their opinions are of no more value than mine or anyone else's. A few, such as you Dave, do great service by making us aware of the vast trove of recordings to which we can listen and form our own opinions. Aside from any evaluation of Toscanini as a conductor, his radio broadcasts, the last of which I'm old enough to remember hearing as a kid, greatly expanded public awareness of classical music. We are all indebted to him for that.
The notion that all opinions are equal is idiotic, frankly. Some are informed, some are not. Some are fact based, others are not. The opinion of a critic doing his job is vastly more valuable to his intended audience than that of a mere fan or enthusiast. I say this not because I am a critic, but because over the years I have been approached by dozens, maybe hundreds, of extremely knowledgeable music lovers who think they can write criticism--and they can't. They have no idea what it means, or what good review writing is. So please spare me that nonsense. You couldn't be more wrong.
Many cannot listen to or appreciate Toscanini because of the dated sound and acoustics. For me, you would really have to listen to the music and interpretation. Next, please present Stokowski and his early recordings.
Watching your ten best Toscanini insider video was worth the price of admission to CT Insider. Thanks. (P.S. I appreciate the "latest reviews" email that appeared in my inbox, a welcome surprise.) Any chance we can locate a copy of the Scholarly Journal "So klingt Wien" article?
It's available online, or at this link on CT.com: classicstoday-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Music-and-Letters-2012-Hurwitz-final.pdf
I got hooked on Toscanini early. Never got hooked on a conductor to that extent since.
I don't need books or box sets to tell me what a extraordinary musician Maestro Toscanini was. I knew it the first time several years ago when I heard his 1949 Carnegie Hall recording of Ravel's "Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2" with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. It's about a minute in where I suppose the sun appears at daybreak. One of the most gorgeous segues in all of Western music. Yet most conductors -- in Toscanini's time and now -- always seem to delay those violins coming in by a beat or perhaps it's a splice in the recording. Sometimes the violins come in too loud or too muted. I've found this slight "break" is usually more evident when the suite is played live. Yet on Toscanini's recording, he lets the transition occur naturally at the most perfect instant in time. With the most perfect sound and precision. And what's so breathtaking about is this was not done with some recording studio magic. This was done strictly with that old man's ears, hands and memory. And maybe a few Italian cuss words during rehearsal. I've heard other instances of these little tweaks in Toscanini's recordings, and I can hear them no matter how dry some of those RCA recordings could be. There really was no one else like him and there never will be again.
He always had in mind how the public would hear what the orchestra played. If someone exaggerated a ppp, he would snarl - they'll never hear anything that way!
Just found this outstanding channel and am now working through all the old videos. Thank you from London! PS - any theories as to why all contributors are male?!
Not that I know of.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Hmmm. Now that you mention it, I can't think of a single female record collector. I imagine that such beings exist, but they must be rare.
@@HassoBenSoba They do exist, and there a few female commentators here--very astute ones I might add--but not many.
Very interesting, but for the nerds out there I would like to point out that there has been a shift in the vibrato technique from controlling it from the wrist to using the whole forearm, that does provide for a significant difference in sound colour.
A minor difference.
We have recordings of many modern conductors (Blomstedt, Wand, Haitink...) made when they were 30 and when they were 80 or older, and we know that their aesthetics during those fifty years didn't change much. And yet we should believe that there was a seismic shift in performance around the 1930s, and that every single major conductor (Toscanini, Stokowski, Walter, Klemperer, Monteux…) changed radically the way they conducted. As you say, this is totally absurd!
Monteux had personal interviews with Brahms, Toscanini with Verdi, and they discussed performance. And that is not to mention the people like Bruno Walter who were themselves the sidekicks and disciples of people like Mahler. If Mahler had lived a normal lifespan, apart from maybe half a dozen other symphonies, we might have recordings by his hand. There are pianists on record who were trained by Klara Schumann and by Franz Liszt. Continuity.
Is my memory wrong, or did Toscanini use similar tempi in Beethoven symphonies as Norrington? I'm especially thinking of the adagio of the 9th Symphony.
I remember reading Stravinsky's praise of Toscanini's flawless conducting of The Song of the Nightengale from memory even though the conducting score was stolen just before a premiere performance.
I LOVE making that comparison. More like than unlike. The taught contours of Toscanini's tempi prefigure the early instruments movement, imho.
Although the sound is mono, you can still often hear more of what is going on in a Toscanini recording than in many modern stereo ones. Was it Harris Goldsmith who said that the difference was between a sharply focused Black and White photograph vs a slightly out of focus color one?
Like I said...and that probably was Harris. He was terrific.
@@DavesClassicalGuide You're pretty terrific too, Dave!
Kind of a flawed analogy which implies that there are no color photographs in sharp focus.
@@Don-md6wn It implies no such thing, It's merely a specific comparison.
One of the conductors that has had a significant impact on both Toscanini and Furtwängler (and on Stokowski, Reiner and many others) was Arthur Nikisch. Nikisch conducted e.g. the premier of Bruckner's 7th. He also played the violin in Vienna Philharmonic, when Bruckner himself conducted the premier of his 2nd. Brahms praised Nikisch's performance of his 4th as an exemplary one. If Nikisch had such a tremendous effect on several famous 20th-century conductors, then what can we say about the performance practices? At least Furtwängler's Brahms and Bruckner sound nothing like Roger Norrington's Brahms and Bruckner.
Yes, but you have't said anything to demonstrate Nikisch's impact on those others, or explained specifically what it was. More specifically, how was that impact transmitted in the days before recordings?
@@DavesClassicalGuide Well, how should I know since there aren't any sonically decent recordings by Nikisch. Hence it's really difficult for me to compare Nikisch to the conductors who admired him. I don't know how did he influence each of them, but I just have to take their word for it. My point is that Nikisch sure as hell didn't make anyone of them sound like Roger Norrington.
@@anttivirolainen8223 Than don't do it. Either you have the evidence to support your contention or you don't.
I worship at the altar of Toscanini, though, as you say, I will say it when he has performed a clunker. (For that matter, I think he was the first to do so.) But one criticism I heard from a couple of sources from his time is that, certainly through no fault of his own, he was the international face of a great homogeneization of style and performance. Before the rise of the great orchestral recording, there seem to have been a much greater variety of approaches and tempos. I remember hearing of an Austrian concert master, whose name I forget but who was described as respected and admired, whose one recording of the Mozart Requiem was supposed to have been 73 minutes long. I am sure I remember this right. And the man hated Toscanini as the face of the international blanderizing style. Theodor Wiesegrund Adorno said something like that, too. IN Adorno's case I have not much respect for the man, who was an insufferable combination of Communist theorist and grumpy old colonel, and whose pages on jazz and popular music ought to be shown as an example of everything wrong that a snob can say of stuff he does not understand. But he did know music, and his view of the international influence of Toscanini should be kept in mind. Of course, what it boils down to is that Toscanini was not only the best, but the man from whom there was most to learn in term of control, audibility and overall design, and he was influential because his recordings sold and keep on selling. Still, this business of an international style tending to suppress or replace local approaches might be kept in mind.
Apparently John Malkovich will portray Celibidache in an upcoming biopic. I’m trying to think who a good fit for Toscanini would be. Maybe John Turturro for some added yucks. Toscanini’s Beethoven is still pretty hard to beat in my book (although I’d rather hear Szell from very roughly that era), but I’ll admit I haven’t listened to much Toscanini aside from that. Time to keep on listening!
Seriously, a bio picture?
@@quietmind7476 so I read somewhere. No idea when or if that project will actually come to fruition.
@@AlexMadorsky Good news. The movie will be shot in Romania 2022.
Celis son is writer and director. James Oliver is co writer. Title The Yellow Tie.
How about Robert Downey Jr. for Toscanini?
Al Pacino. No other
Klemperer on Mahler: "I heard him conduct and the concert, it was wonderful. It was very very great. Today we speak always of the enormous greatness of Toscanini. I assure you that Mahler was much greater."
Just to put things in perspective.
Needless to say, Toscanini was a great conductor.
Assuming you accept Klemperer's opinion, which I do not. Interesting, for sure. Dispositive? Hardly.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Fair enough.
I can see reasons for taking Klemperer's assessment at face value.
On the other hand, I can think of some good reasons for not doing so.
I found that Toscanni always went overboard with his quick tempos.
But they weren't always quick. You don't know him well at all.
@@DavesClassicalGuide True enough ! By stopwatch timings, Toscanini's 1931 Bayreuth PARSIFAL was the slowest on record - slower than even Kna's 1951, if I am not mistaken...It's not strictly a question of 'fast vs. slow' tempos; it's more a matter of maintaining a lively pulse across long stretches regardless of tempos. And Toscanini HAD that. Period.
@@markfarrington5183 Not just Parsifal (though I read somewhere that the next performance of Parsifal was 15 minutes quicker.) His Tristan also set records, the first act was 90'! A 1934 Stockholm Eroica funeral march is preserved and back then he took nearly 20' over it, like Fricsay's 1961. Dave is right, he was always changing.
@@markfarrington5183 Indeed he did.
@@DavesClassicalGuide you can tell that with his 1937-8 and early fifties sets of Beethoven symphonies. They are quite different, and the differences in length can be notable. I think everyone agrees that the 1937-8 ones are better, sometimes incomparable, but the difference does show that he was still rethinking the heart of the repertory.