Mendelssohn: Incidental Music from A Midsummer Night's Dream - January 11th and 12, 1942
Toscanini returned to the Scherzo from A Midsummer Night's Dream with exceptional frequency - six recordings in all. He also performed the Nocturne with some regularity, but this wonderful recording shows how deep a grasp Toscanini had over the rest of the score (minus the bits that are too wound up with the drama to make sense apart from an actual staged production of the play). Robert C. Marsh observers that Toscanini gave this music "incandescent tonal brilliance, and playing in which the beauty, the delicacy of inflection, and the plastic distinction of the moving line cause one to gasp as wonder follows wonder." I don't have much to add to that.
The control and even tempers of Mendelssohn's music have never really appealed to my sensibilities except for a few isolated works, but Toscanini has a way with A Midsummer Night's Dream that helps me begin to understand. The overture in particular is played with a magical lightness perfectly evocative of Shakespeare's fairy world. Although the less-familiar excerpts are not at the same level as the Scherzo and Nocturne, they provide the popular extracts with the context that make them really begin to make sense in their larger purpose. Although Toscanini does not place all of the movements in the same order as Mendelssohn, they form a convincing artistic whole that gives this entire score great shape.
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 - February 8th, 1942
Toscanini performed the Pathétique Symphony in one of his earliest orchestral concerts in 1898, and then didn't touch it again until he first performed it with the NBC Symphony forty years later. He claimed he returned to it when he came to the realization that it was "honest music", which is a profound realization about a work that is often performed in a terribly dishonest way.
I once had a friend in college who despised Tchaikovsky's music. We had a long-standing agreement that I would get a free sandwich if I could ever get her to admit that she liked any single piece by Tchaikovsky. At issue was apparently the seemingly rampant emotionalism in his music. Ever the romantic idealist, I have always argued that this a good thing, while her point of view is a bit more rationalist and controlled. At one point I may have gotten her to grudgingly admit that she liked the Pathétique Symphony, but she was still troubled by the overly emotional way in which it was typically performed. "But that's not real emotion the way it's usually played," I argued. "That's just clownish rubbish." We debated this for some time, but after a long while she came to the conclusion that we were actually agreeing without realizing it, and I soon realized she was right. What my friend saw as overly emotional I had been hearing as falsely emotional, and in a way these really are very much the same thing.
Tchaikovsky's music is oftentimes played as though the performer has carte blanche to impose any tempo fluctuation that they may be feeling, as though this somehow makes the music any more emotional and deeper felt. This despite the incredibly detailed tempo modifications that are already in the score, and nearly all of which are provided with metronome markings. I think Tchaikovsky absolutely knew what he was doing, and although I believe in wringing every last bit of emotion out of this music I still believe the best way to reach the heart is through the brain.
Gunther Schuller in particular has argued in favor of following Tchaikovsky's metronome markings, and feels that they are the key to unlocking the emotion in his music. In The Compleat Conductor he writes about the Pathétique that "this is not some tearful maudlin exercise in bathos, but rather a music of extreme anguish, and of anger, a desperate outcry of pain". This is the true essence of this powerful music, and in this Philadelphia Orchestra recording of 1942 Toscanini gave it one of its most honest and, yes, emotional performances.
The Philadelphia Sound has long been described as full and sumptuous, but this remarkable recording shows how biting the orchestra could be when the music called for it. Philadelphia was nearing the end of its collaboration with Toscanini when this recording was made, and orchestra and conductor at last truly sound like they have reached full unity of purpose with this Tchaikovsky performance.
Debussy: La Mer - February 8th and 9th, 1942
Toscanini performed La Mer more often than any other work save for the Die Meistersinger Prelude during the latter half of his career, and that passion is evident in this beautiful performance. Toscanini was particularly pleased with how the first movement turned out in this recording, saying that listening to it was "just like reading the score". Unfortunately he evidently felt differently about the latter two movements. He badly wanted to return to La Mer, but a recording ban that the musician's union imposed shortly after the completion of the Philadelphia sessions put an end to plans to redo the portions Toscanini was unhappy with.
This recording is a bit more sharply etched than one usually hears in the music of Debussy, but this does not to me sound at all inappropriate for the piece. Pierre Monteux played La Mer under the direction of the composer, and reported that Debussy said he couldn't understand why musicians insisted on playing his music with a whispery, ethereal quality. "When I write forte, I mean for it to be played forte," he is supposed to have said. Toscanini takes this score at face value (beyond some reorchestration that apparently had Debussy's blessing) and plays it with great power that in its own way is as evocative of the ocean as the more "whispery" performances.
Berlioz: Queen Mab Scherzo from Romeo and Juliet - February 9th, 1942
This seems to be about the most terrifying piece in the entire orchestral repertoire for the string section (and by "string section" I of course mean "not the basses"). Mercutio's monologue about Queen Mab is one of the most evocative passages in all of Shakespeare, and Berlioz transforms it into breathtakingly virtuosic music that has given nightmares to many a hapless string player (when I played this work with Pierre Boulez in December of 2003 I remember him saying "I'm so sorry but once more through the Queen Mab… just so I can sleep tonight"). According to Shakespeare, Mab's "chariot is an empty hazelnut made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers. And in this state she gallops night by night through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love." If it is indeed possible to directly represent words with musical sound, this piece is a perfect example (in the 1996 Baz Luhrmann film Mercutio used this monologue to describe some sort of ecstasy-like drug, which seems particularly apt for Berlioz's unique descriptive powers).
It's hard to imagine a better performance of the Queen Mab Scherzo than this Toscanini recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The playing is astonishingly light and virtuosic, and remarkably well-balanced. It is particularly clear from listening to this that Philadelphia indeed possessed one of the great string sections the world had ever seen, and the wind playing is remarkable as well (the horns are particularly wonderful).
Toscanini is to be especially commended for championing Romeo and Juliet at a time when Berlioz was inexplicably considered to be low-brow and unworthy of serious attention. This massive score is one of the towering masterpieces of the 19th century and one of the very finest pieces ever composed. Toscanini programmed excerpts from Romeo and Juliet throughout his life (he called the Love Scene "the most beautiful music in the world") but his 1947 performance of the complete score at NBC must rank as one of the most important concerts ever given in the United States. Fortunately that concert was recorded and released by RCA, and we will come to this tremendously important recording in a few weeks.
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That's it for Day 19!
That does it for Toscanini's recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Tomorrow we'll return to the NBC Symphony for good with a slender selection of works that will satisfy a few people but leave most wanting, just like the netflix streaming library.
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