Day 7: The classics should never be played like classics.

Welcome to Day 7! I can't believe I'm now a full week into the project. It's been great fun listening to these performances, but the writing really wore me out during the first few days. I feel like I'm starting to get into a groove now, and the finish-line doesn't seem so dauntingly far away as it did at the beginning of the month.

I broke the chronology a little bit to listen to all of Toscanini's BBC recordings as a set. Now we'll move backwards a bit to the recordings Toscanini made at the end of his first season with the NBC Symphony. On Christmas Night of 1937 Toscanini performed his first radio broadcast concert with his new orchestra. He went on to perform thirteen concerts that season in broadcasts that changed the American musical landscape. For the first time classical music was being heavily marketed in the mass media, and Toscanini was the figurehead of this new cultural entity.

Shortly after the last broadcast of the season Toscanini made his first commercial recordings with NBC in symphonies by Haydn and Mozart and two movements from Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 135. For some reason the Mozart recording was not completed until the following year, and I have yet to discover the reasons for this, nor have I found out which movements were recorded in which session. All I know is that some portion of the Mozart symphony was recorded on March 7th of 1938, and the Beethoven and Haydn works were recorded the next day.


Mozart: Symphony No. 40 - March 7th, 1938 and February 27th, 1939

This isn't your daddy's Mozart. This is an aggressive, angry-sounding Mozart that is worlds removed from what one typically hears. I don't, however, find this entirely inappropriate. As I mentioned in Day 2's discussion of the Haffner Symphony, I find the compulsively light and elegant performances of late-18th century music that now pass as "stylistic" to be both suffocating and wrong-headed. This was, of course, new music at the time it was written (a fact that seems bizarrely forgotten in modern performance practice) and Mozart was certainly not an elegant personality.

In the case of this recording, however, I find the aggression to be a bit misplaced. Only the last movement is fully successful in Toscanini's conception. The whirling lines Mozart writes for the strings move breathlessly forward with great power and lead to a shattering climax. The first three movements on the other hand simply sound as though they lack shading and subtlety. Although I like Toscanini's tempo for the slow movement, he seems to interpret the meter as a relentless six rather than a flowing two - the line has nowhere to go.

Mozart was never considered a Toscanini specialty, and he admitted so himself. "I will tell you frankly," he told B.H. Haggin, "I find Mozart boring. Not G Minor [the Symphony No. 40]: that is great tragedy, and not concerti, but other music. It is always beautiful - but is always the same."  If Toscanini felt this way about Mozart's work as a whole, it should perhaps not be surprising that he would interpret one of the few pieces he really enjoyed in the way he did. I don't think he was wrong to interpret the Symphony No. 40 in this manner, but in trying to make it exciting he instead simply made it tense.

Beethoven: String Quartet No. 16, movements 3 and 2 - March 8th, 1938

In Toscanini's day it was quite common for full string orchestras to perform string quartets, or fragments from them. The Beethoven quartets in particular have been staples of the repertory of many conductors, from Mahler to Mitropolous to Bernstein. Toscanini considered the last five string quartets to be Beethoven's finest compositions, and it is not surprising that he would turn to them for his first recording sessions with the NBC Symphony. What is more surprising is the sound he produces from the NBC strings.

I never would have dreamed Toscanini would have made an effective conductor of hyper-romantic string works such as Verklärte Nacht or Webern's Langsamer Satz (pieces he never did remotely come close to considering performing), but the astonishingly atmospheric performance he gave of the slow movement of Beethoven's final string quartet has convinced me otherwise. Although the NBC string section was always considered to be very strong, I have yet to hear in any other Toscanini performance the kind of sumptuous sounds they produced in this glorious slow movement.

On the other hand the vivace movement sounds very uncomfortable and unwieldy when played by a full string orchestra. For this recording Toscanini reversed the order of the second and third movements of the string quartet, so that he would not end on a slow movement. This is understandable, but it sounds terribly awkward to go from the sublime Lento assai, cantante e tranquillo (that sounds so right when played by a full string orchestra) directly into the jaunty vivace movement. These Beethoven quartet movements make for some superb music-making, but cannot in every respect make for a satisfying listening experience.

Haydn: Symphony No. 88 - March 8th, 1938

The energy Toscanini brought to the Mozart Symphony No. 40 that was so misplaced is here channeled into a style that is much more appropriate to the Haydn Symphony No. 88. This is not the light and elegant, faux powdered-wig approach that infects so many modern performances of Haydn, but this time Toscanini keeps things tasteful. The energy he brings to this symphony enlivens what could otherwise (and oftentimes does) sound dreadfully dull, but he never goes overboard with explosive accents or aggressive sforzandos. Toscanini also shows great sensitivity in the right places; the slow movement is contoured in a way that is movingly operatic in its cantabile feeling for line and phrase. This symphony is not absolutely first-rate Haydn, but Toscanini performs it with beautiful purpose and conviction.

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After these sessions were completed Toscanini left for Israel to lead six concerts with the Palestine Symphony (the orchestra that was later to become the Israel Philharmonic). Upon his return to Italy his passport was confiscated and Cremona's fascist newspaper branded him an "honorary jew." An international uproar forced Mussolini to return the passport, and when Toscanini finally left Italy he realized it would be too dangerous for him to return until the odious fascist government had been overturned. From this point on his life would be principally based in the United States, and he would become the great cultural symbol of American life.

That's it for Day 7! Tomorrow I'll be going over the pieces Toscanini recorded during his second season with the NBC Symphony: two Beethoven symphonies, the William Tell Overture, Paganini's Moto Perpetuo, and the Dance of the Seven Veils from Salome. Have a great day, and I'll see you tomorrow!