Day 0: So you're doing this...why, exactly?

Tomorrow begins the big Toscanini project, and I thought this would be a good time to write a bit about why in the name of all that is holy I decided to do this.

I've told a few people about this blogging project, and I admit I've gotten a few blank stares. This is even coming from professional classical musicians. It seems it's a bit unusual to want to spend eighty days studying the work of a conductor who died fifty-four years ago and who mostly conducted music written 150 to 200 years ago. I do have my reasons, so I thought it might be helpful to talk about why I've decided to spend the next eighty days listening to every official recording of Arturo Toscanini and blog about it. Why?


Toscanini is a part of American history.

Toscanini was a cultural icon in his day, and introduced countless people to classical music through his weekly radio broadcasts and through his sheer force of personality. Whether or not you appreciate the way he made music, what Toscanini represented for American musical life during those years at NBC was something extraordinary, and something we have not seen since. I often wonder if the decline of classical music in mainstream culture has been due to no one with comparable charisma ever really having taken Toscanini's place. By studying the past, hopefully we can improve the future.

The music is really, really good.

The best of Toscanini's recordings can still very much be listened to for pleasure rather than out of strictly historical interest. There is a reason why Toscanini was considered the greatest conductor in the world, and it punches you in the face when you begin listening to one of his great recordings, like the 1936 Beethoven Seventh, the 1939 Eroica or the 1947 Verdi Otello. The music he made came alive with crackling intensity through razor-sharp attacks and carefully molded contours of phrase.


But sometimes it's really bad.

It is true that the negative stereotypes about Toscanini exist for a reason. The worst of his recordings do tend to exemplify the not-so-flattering characteristics his detractors have leveled at his conducting. He conducted everything too fast, too rigid, too uptight, too metronomic, lacking in harmonic emphasis, lacking in tonal depth, lacking in blah, having too much blah blah, just generally blah de blah blah blah.

No musician is perfect, and Toscanini produced clunkers just like everyone else. But what it is amazing about Toscanini's work is how good his mistakes sound. The worst of his performances show a commitment that good performances by mediocre musicians oftentimes lack. Toscanini preached the virtues of commitment throughout his life, and in music he eternally practiced what he preached.

That personal touch.

When I was sixteen years old in the summer of 1996 I met David Walter, a double bass player for Toscanini's NBC Symphony. He was at that time a youthful eighty-seven years old. I was spending the summer at the Marrowstone Music Festival in Port Townsend, Washington learning how to play détaché strokes more détaché-ier than the other bass players. David Walter came to do some coaching at Marrowstone, which turned out to mean he came to give one masterclass (I played Tibor Freso's Mala Fantazia). 

Fortunately he came to a camp barbecue on the beach, where I cornered him and made him talk about the NBC Symphony. I recall quite clearly a number of the things he said. "Every musician in the country would give their right arm to play for Toscanini," he said. "Anyone who was a good musician would try to get into that orchestra. I was one of the lucky ones." In my lame sixteen-year-old way I asked him "so, like, the NBC Symphony was really good, then?" He put his hand on my shoulder in that "sit down, son" kind of way and said that "the NBC Symphony was the greatest orchestra the world has ever seen. It is impossible that we will ever see anything like it again." It's easy enough to dispute that statement just by comparing the NBC recordings with the ones Toscanini himself made with other orchestras, but what Walter said made a huge impression on me. It still does.

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That's my take on why I decided to embark on this project. I hope it makes some sense.

Things officially begin tomorrow with the La Scala orchestra recordings from 1920 and 1921, the very first recordings Arturo Toscanini ever made. Stay tuned for daily updates.