Welcome to Day 2 of 80 Days of Toscanini! Yesterday was so much fun I thought I would spend another day writing about Toscanini, and what could be more fun than that (don't answer that, those of you who are still on vacation)!
Yesterday we looked at the very first set of recordings Toscanini made in the early 1920s. These were made under extremely difficult conditions that can't have been easy in which to make music. The La Scala orchestra had been stripped down to a tiny string section and stuffed into what was essentially a wooden box with a microphone. Fortunately recording technology seems to have improved somewhat by the time Toscanini made his next recordings in 1926.
Arturo Toscanini had conducted at the Metropolitan Opera between 1908 and 1915, but had been working strictly in Europe for nearly eleven years when the New York Philharmonic secured his services as a guest-conductor between January 5th and February 7th of 1926. He recorded two short Mendelssohn excerpts shortly before returning to Italy, and these sound much more like an actual orchestra than the La Scala recordings of six years earlier. The sound was still rather primitive, but at least the full orchestra does seem to have been used. These recordings were quite disappointing musically, but fortunately this was not the end of Toscanini's collaboration with the New York Philharmonic.
Returning to New York in 1929, Toscanini made a series of excellent recordings with the Philharmonic in music of Haydn, Dukas, Mozart and Verdi. He also recorded yet another (wait for it...) Mendelssohn Scherzo (Of the first twenty works Toscanini recorded already three of them were of the Mendelssohn Scherzo. He must have loved fairies.). The 1929 season was evidently successful enough that Toscanini agreed to become Principal Conductor of the Philharmonic the following year, beginning one of the most successful collaborations in the history of American orchestras. This would culminate in the remarkable recordings of 1936, but that's getting ahead of our story.
Mendelssohn: Scherzo and Nocturne from A Midsummer Night's Dream - February 4th, 1926
After listening to the La Scala recording of the Mendelssohn Scherzo, with its light, fantasy-land atmosphere, this first of Toscanini's recordings with the New York Philharmonic comes as a bit of a shock. It is very slow, earth-bound, and even a bit rhythmically unstable. I am at a loss to explain how this recording ended up sounding the way it did. I can only assume that it has to do with Toscanini being very new to the New York Philharmonic in 1926, and orchestra and conductor did not yet fully understand each other.
The Nocturne is likewise a bit slack and shapeless. The horn solo from the great Bruno Jaenicke is borderline unacceptable with its flat phrasing and numerous clams. Although some pressing forward of tempo in this piece is appropriate, Toscanini fails to keep it under control, and it just comes across as unsteady.
Dukas: The Sorcerer's Apprentice - March 18th, 1929
After twenty years I still cannot listen to this piece without thinking of Mickey Mouse! This says something about the effectiveness of Fantasia, but it also says something about how vividly Dukas exploits orchestral color (very animated, you might say?). Toscanini takes full advantage of this, producing his most exciting and tonally rich recording yet. The one drawback comes from the time limitations then in place for 78 rpm records. It had evidently already been decided to limit The Sorcerer's Apprentice to two sides (a side was a little over four minutes). As a result Toscanini was unable to draw out the amazing contrabassoon moment where Mickey's chopped-up broom comes back to life as many brooms. This is the one problem with what is otherwise a truly spectacular performance.
Verdi: Preludes to Act I and III from La traviata - March 18th and 29th, 1929
At last we come to Verdi. Giuseppe Verdi was the grand old man of Italian music in Toscanini's youth, and he remains virtually a saint-like figure in Italy to this day. I used to have a girlfriend who went to Venice to play in a college orchestra as part of a student exchange with the University of North Texas, where I did my undergrad. There was a rehearsal where my ex started messing around with jazzing up classical pieces on her violin. An Italian violinist started joining in, all in good fun. Then she did a jazzy version of a tune from La traviata, and immediately a hush fell over the room with intense stares hurled her way. The Italian violinist trembled with quiet rage and said "You...do not.......DO THAT...to Verdi." She learned her lesson.
It should come as no surprise that Toscanini fills these heart-rending readings of the La traviata preludes with deep reverence. Later in life Toscanini was sometimes perceived as being cold, calculating and overly literal. The aching beauty of the string playing in these recordings completely blows up that notion, and makes one wish that he had recorded the entire opera at the same time (he did eventually record the whole of La traviata, but not for another seventeen years). This is orchestral theatre at its most beautiful.
Haydn: Symphony No. 101 - March 29th and 30th, 1929
When you look at the list of works Toscanini conducted most, it is interesting that there is only one work from the 18th century to be found. It is this piece, the Haydn Clock Symphony. Exactly why this piece appealed so much to Toscanini and not something by Mozart (or something else by Haydn, for that matter) I have no idea. He consistently performed it with majesty and beauty of phrasing. Though I think the appropriateness of these attributes for a Haydn symphony are debatable (I find it a little slow-going), there is no question that what Toscanini played was very beautiful.
Or is there? In May of 1930 Toscanini took the New York Philharmonic on a tour of Europe. Wilhelm Furtwängler attended the Berlin concert from this tour, and wrote extensively about Toscanini's conception of this very Haydn symphony. As this performance came barely a year after the recording in question and with the same orchestra, I think his comments are worth relating here. From the beginning Furtwängler felt that "the introductory adagio immediately aroused tension: the tempo, unusually restful for Haydn, the stiff execution ... Certainly, psychological coherence and stylistic unity had to be abandoned with the subsequent allegro, but one could still accept that the brash, almost violent interpretation of the first tutti was an attempt to produce this stylistic unity and place the grandeur of the introduction alongside an allegro interpreted with a bias towards grandeur. It soon became clear that this was an error." And so forth.
We will never know for sure what the Berlin concert sounded like, but if it was anything like the recording of March from the previous year I really can't imagine what Furtwängler was talking about. What I hear in Toscanini's Haydn is a somewhat romanticized but deeply felt energy that is not unlike how Furtwängler conducted 18th century music. It is true that Toscanini's performances of Haydn and Mozart with the NBC Symphony did occasionally suffer from "stiff execution," but the New York Philharmonic recording to me sounds beautifully flexible and bitingly exciting where appropriate. We will be returning to the Toscanini/Furtwängler relationship later.
Mendelssohn: Scherzo from A Midsummer Night's Dream - March 30th, 1929
And now we come full-circle. This performance is a vast improvement over the dreadful 1926 reading. The strings come alive and the woodwinds dance puckishly (heh heh) around Mendelssohn's whirling writing. I don't know why Toscanini recorded so many versions of the Scherzo, but we are lucky to have such a range of performances to compare.
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That does it for Day 2. Check back in tomorrow for Mozart's Haffner Symphony and Toscanini's earliest Wagner recordings.
See you soon!
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