Today's listening took me to two fabulous Beethoven symphonies, the theme from a classic Western, an operatic strip-tease, and the realm of The Possimpible. Let's get started!
Strauss: Dance of the Seven Veils from Salome - January 14th, 1939
Toscanini first conducted Salome in a bizarre competing premiere situation in 1906. Toscanini was originally to conduct the opera in Turin, during a brief period of estrangement from La Scala. When he returned to Milan he tried to bring the Salome premiere with him, but Strauss saw the opportunity to make more money out of the situation and agreed to conduct the Turin production himself. Salome ended up opening in Turin and Milan on the same night, with the Turin production being the "official" premiere. Strauss was initially very dismissive of Toscanini's work (based on the reports others had given him), but he evidently changed his mind when he finally saw Toscanini conduct. George Szell reported that Strauss had this to say about Toscanini: "When you see that man conduct, you feel that there is only one thing to do: take your baton, break it in pieces, and never conduct again."
This performance of the Dance of the Seven Veils is the only surviving record we have of Toscanini conducting a Strauss opera excerpt, and the only broadcast he gave of it at NBC. At turns exciting and languorous, Toscanini's performance builds with a deliberate sensuality that reflects a staged performance more than most of his concert performances of operatic excerpts. Unfortunately there are only so many veils Salome can legally remove in a staged public performance, and Toscanini ends with an orgiastic abandon that can only be effective in a concert hall. I'm sure Strauss would approve.
Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 - February 27th and March 29th, 1939
Wow, this performance is outstanding. Beethoven 5 is a piece I have never really heard played the way I would like to hear it done. Conductors of the old German school tended to make it too monumental and weighty, lacking in the electrifying spirit of Beethoven's revolutionary impulses. Other conductors have taken a very different path, arriving at extremes of dispassionate objectivity that somehow still manage to ignore Beethoven's markings in the pursuit of "textual fidelity".
Very, very few conductors really get it right. Probably the closest I have ever heard is the recording Cristoph von Dohnányi made with the Cleveland Orchestra in the mid-1980s. It combines like no other performance I have heard the crackling energy inherent to Beethoven with great beauty of phrasing and powerful orchestral sonority. Carlos Kleiber's 1970s recording with the Vienna Philharmonic also comes very close, but ultimately its tempos are a bit too slow to really let the music flow with the same intensity.
This Toscanini recording is not perfect, but it is probably the finest I have heard from his era. It has all the power of the great Furtwängler Beethoven recordings with a good deal more vitality and precision. The energy level is astounding. There are some problems of balance: the trombones can barely be heard in the last movement and the woodwind solos are not always played with adequate presence. Some of the aggressively short articulations Toscanini asks for are also suspect. But the overall potency of his conception is remarkable, and the orchestra responds with superb empathy. This is the first great recording Toscanini made with the NBC Symphony - for the first time orchestra and conductor really speak with the same voice.
Rossini: William Tell Overture - March 1st and 29th, 1939
Toscanini could get very defensive about the music he was playing when its artistic validity was called into question. When it was suggested that Rossini's William Tell overture was "cheap" Toscanini immediately snapped back "YOU try to write something so good."
William Tell may or may not be a masterpiece, but this story shows how important it was for Toscanini to play every piece in his repertoire as though it was - and this is a masterful performance. The introduction is superbly nuanced by the NBC cello section (Leonard Rose was still playing with NBC at this time) in a manner that is both emotive and delicate. This storm is a bit on the slow side, but the finale is astonishing in its energetic intensity. My generation no longer associates this music with The Lone Ranger and I admit I have never seen the show, but it is not difficult to see why William Tell would appeal so much to fans of westerns. I would saddle up right now, but I'm afraid I've got a martini party to attend.
Beethoven: Symphony No. 8 - April 17th, 1939
Rather like the Mozart symphony I listened to yesterday, this recording of Beethoven 8 is very different from what you usually hear. Unlike that Mozart recording, I find Toscanini's take on Beethoven 8 to be quite an acceptable alternative to what one usually hears. In fact, in some ways I prefer it to the norm.
I seem to be in the minority in that opinion. Even the author of the liner notes for the RCA CD notes the "coarse sonority" of this performance and writes that it "suggests less of the music's tongue-in-cheek wit, playful (at times even affectionate) mocking of 18th-century style and exploitation of orchestral color." This is true to some extent, but Toscanini's full-blooded symphonic take on this symphony could also be taken as a "missing link" between Beethoven's seventh and ninth symphonies. I can't say I can completely look past the lack of humor in this performance, but Toscanini's conception makes it possible to see this symphony in the context of Beethoven's work in ways I have not heard elsewhere.
Paganini: Moto Perpetuo - April 17th, 1939
This performance is The Possimpible.
For those of you who aren't fans of How I Met Your Mother, I should probably explain that The Possimpible is the place where the possible and the impossible meet.
There is no better way to describe this performance. What the NBC violin section does is impossible, and yet…there it is. Toscanini arranged this notorious showpiece so that the whole darned 1st violin section plays every note in unison: more than four minutes straight of sixteenth-note sawing away! You'll forget all about wanting to hear any of that solo violin crap!
Ultimately this recording must be considered a novelty and not much else. It is utterly astounding what Toscanini's brash young violinists were able to do with this piece, and it quite literally must be heard to be believed. Nonetheless I don't think I will ever feel any need to listen to this again unless I happen to get lock-jaw, for this recording will surely make a your jaw drop. Drop, that is, into the realm of The Possimpible.
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That does it for Day 8. Tomorrow we move on to the first of Toscanini's recordings from his third season with NBC. The next two days will be all Beethoven, starting with maybe the greatest of all recordings of the Eroica Symphony.
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