Hey everyone! Welcome to Day 17!
Tonight it is the big opening night of the Spokane Symphony with the fabulous Jon Kimura Parker as soloist in the Grieg Piano Concerto. Any Spokane readers who have not procured their tickets for this should do so immediately - you don't want to miss a concert like this.
Somehow with all the excitement going on today I managed to listen to and write about Toscanini's remarkable Philadelphia Orchestra recording of Schubert 9. I thought I would go a bit into why Toscanini ended up making these recordings with this most elegant of American orchestras.
During his fourth season at NBC Toscanini had a major falling out with the network and tendered his resignation in April of that year. His reasoning was a bit murky; the letter of resignation Toscanini sent to network head David Sarnoff made note of his ill health and of vague feelings of depression at the tragedy of what was going on in Europe. There may have been some truth to this, but it is widely believed that the catalyst for his decision was a bizarre incident that occurred during rehearsals for Beethoven's Missa Solemnis.
Since joining NBC in 1937 Toscanini had been been under the impression that the musicians of the NBC Symphony were for the exclusive use of himself and his approved guest conductors. In fact this whole time they were also being used for all manner of other broadcasts, ranging from jingles to radio serials. Things came to a head during a Carnegie Hall rehearsal on December 27th, 1940, when the 5:00 start time was delayed by half an hour on a day in which thirty-five players from the orchestra had to leave at 7:30 to get back to the studio for another broadcast. When 7:30 came and went the personnel manager gave the signal for the players who had to leave to sneak out one by one. Although Toscanini had notoriously bad eyesight, it is mind-boggling to think that NBC could have thought he would not notice musicians sneaking out of his rehearsal, and he naturally viewed this as an outright expression of contempt.
Now that the jig was up about how the NBC Symphony was really being used, Toscanini grudgingly served out the rest of the season and then resigned his position. His retirement turned out to be very much temporary, and Toscanini ended up conducting the NBC Symphony for another thirteen years. During his brief period of estrangement from NBC Toscanini made a series of remarkable recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
In 1941 the Philadelphia Orchestra was still very much the instrument of Leopold Stokowski. Eugene Ormandy had become Music Director in 1938, but the orchestra did not really see the full effects of the transition of leadership for several more years. Stokowski had been responsible for procuring some of the world's most remarkable wind players, such as oboist Marcel Tabuteau and flutist William Kincaid. The famous Philadelphia string sound was also largely the work of Stokowski, who would stop at nothing to get exactly the sonority he desired.
Ironically, Stokowski lost his concertmaster, Mischa Mischakoff, to the NBC Symphony due to his unique manner of rehearsing the strings. Evidently at the time it was considered a major faux pas to ask the concertmaster to play by himself during a rehearsal unless it was for a solo. Stokowski disregarded this and asked Mischakoff to play a passage he was unhappy with. When Stokowski seem satisfied, Mischakoff asked him "Excuse me Maestro, did you like the way I played this passage?" When Stokowski said it was fine, Mischakoff left his seat and said "I'm very glad you liked it, Maestro, because it's the last note you're ever going to hear me play."
These Philadelphia recordings are particularly important for giving us the chance to hear Toscanini as a guest conductor with a long-established ensemble. With the NBC Symphony Toscanini was leading an orchestra that did not have the years of tradition built into it, and even the finest of the NBC recordings do not have the same tonal weight as these excellent Philadelphia recordings. Unfortunately, these valuable documents did not begin to see release until the 1960s, long after Toscanini's death. In the meantime the masters had deteriorated significantly, so the sound quality is not what it should have been. Modern remastering has improved the sound to very listenable levels, but it remains a bit depressing to think what these recordings could have been had they been shown proper respect.
Schubert: Symphony No. 9 - November 16th, 1941
By common consent this is the prize of Toscanini's Philadelphia recordings, and it is hard to argue with that. This symphony had long been a staple of Toscanini's programming (it had been on his very first symphonic concert in 1896) and he led it masterfully. As in Toscanini's finest Brahms performances, this Schubert recording shows just how powerful music of the Romantic era can sound when unencumbered with copious rhetoric. This performance is certainly not a dull affair, and Toscanini fills it with an exceptional rhythmic vitality from start to finish.
Schubert 9 is a piece that has taken me a long time to come to terms with. It always seemed to me to badly ramble and utterly fail in its overly obvious attempt to match Beethoven's Ninth in character and spirit. I am very gradually coming to like this music, but I am not yet all the way there. I now realize that at the very least Schubert was really onto something with this music. His amazing way with sonority clearly prefigures Bruckner with its organic blocks of sound, and this is a connection I really didn't make until I listened to this Toscanini recording. By letting Schubert's score (mostly) speak for itself, the sinewy timbre groupings and phrases sing with great power and urgency. Although I am still not entirely on board with this music, the remarkable Toscanini recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra must be considered one of the most persuasive accounts it has ever seen.
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I had originally intended to also listen to Debussy's Iberia, but time has now run out. So I will take that up tomorrow along with Respighi's Roman Festivals, Strauss' Death and Transfiguration, and the incidental music from Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream.
Have a good Saturday night, and I will see you tomorrow!
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