An interesting question that crops up about Toscanini's discography is about exactly what constitutes an "official" recording. Simply put, it's any studio recording or broadcast performance (some are a blend of the two) the Maestro conducted that he approved for commercial release. From the beginning of his recording career in 1920 he was quite insistent that if a performance he gave was not up to his standards that he would not allow it to be distributed. No fewer than nine works taken down in studio sessions were rejected for release during his NBC years, which must have enormously aggravated the recording company due to the expense it took to make them in the first place.
All of Toscanini's American recordings were made by RCA Victor with the exception of two excerpts from Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream that were made by Brunswick Records in 1926. The eight approved recordings he conducted with London's BBC Symphony between 1937 and 1939 were made by HMV. These BBC items have had a rather shadowy existence in the cd era, mostly consisting of isolated unofficial releases by companies like Pearl and Naxos. Of the works recorded by the BBC to my knowledge only the Brahms Tragic Overture and Beethoven Pastoral Symphony have seen official release on compact disc, both by companies associated with EMI. The American recordings are generally much easier to locate, every one of them having been released by RCA between 1990 and 1992 over 82 discs. These recordings make up the great bulk of his recorded legacy.
Many commentators have expressed dissatisfaction about some of the choices that were made in putting together the "official" discography. All of the broadcast concerts Toscanini gave with the NBC Symphony can still be listened to at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. It is entirely possible to listen to every performance Toscanini gave of a certain piece during the last 17 years of his life, and in some cases he left performances that are widely considered to be superior to the recordings that were left in the official collection.
Perhaps the most well-known instances of this are Toscanini's performances of the Beethoven symphonies. Most of the official releases of these pieces come from recordings he led between 1949 and 1953, when he was past 80. Recorded in relatively good sound, these have understandably formed the most lasting public impression of his way with Beethoven. While they are obviously the work of a master musician, they lack the extraordinary fire that marked many of the earlier recordings. The Beethoven cycle Toscanini led during his third season at NBC in 1939 is widely considered to be among his finest work, featuring a stunning blend of passion and precision. Of the symphonies he led during these concerts only the Eroica saw official release in the RCA collection. We are quite fortunate to have this extraordinary performance, but it remains a bit of a mystery why the others weren't approved for release.
There are a number of other cases like this. Works like the Verdi Requiem, Tchaikovsky Pathétique Symphony, Wagner Die Meistersinger Prelude and the Fêtes movement of Debussy's Nocturnes all exist in performances that are widely considered to be, in varying degrees, finer than the recordings Toscanini approved for release.
Why then, am I concentrating solely on the official discography for the purposes of this blog? First there is the issue of practicality. To get through every Toscanini recording in existence would take more than a year to do full justice to. Plus, living on the left coast, I have no immediate access to the large number of broadcast items that have never seen commercial release. More important is the fact that, for better or worse, the official items represent what Toscanini approved to be his legacy. The NBC broadcasts are sprinkled with many filler works such as Jacopo Foroni's Overture in C Minor and Don Gillis's Symphony No. 5 1/2. These pieces may have made for good concert fare, but Toscanini would probably not have wanted to leave them for posterity.
It's now exactly two weeks before the project starts, and I'm getting quite excited. I will continue to post periodically until then with any Toscanini-related thoughts that occur to me.
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