For today I listened to the last three works Toscanini recorded during his ninth season at NBC, all taken down during the same day in 1946.
Bach: Air from Orchestra Suite No. 3 - April 8th, 1946
It is always a tricky thing to judge baroque music played by a full modern orchestra in our era of hyper-awareness for "authenticity." Although I have played the Viola da Gamba for eleven years and am a proud proponent of historically-informed style in baroque music, I think it is all too easy to get bogged down in obsessing about what is accurate, rather than what is beautiful. A perfect case in point is the Glenn Gould recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations, which is hardly accurate from a performance-practice standpoint, yet is arguably one of the very greatest recordings ever made. It is both foolish and self-defeating to refuse to acknowledge beauty when it is there to hear, and no amount of purism can ever diminish the achievement of Gould or of any other fine performance of baroque music that has been played on modern instruments (and there have been many).
I can't say Toscanini's recording of Bach's iconic air really falls into this superlative category. It is strangely thick and slow-going while somehow still maintaining a relatively brisk tempo. The heavy, vibrato-laden, Barber Adagio-esque manner with this piece that was typical of Toscanini's day is probably not what Bach had in mind, but an awareness of textural transparency and the direction of moving lines can make a convincing case for this conception. I don't hear any of that transparency in Toscanini's recording; the lines stick together turgidly and have nowhere to move. The strings of the NBC Symphony do produce a beautiful sound, but that is about all that this performance has going for it.
Perhaps this should not be surprising. This is the only recording of a work of baroque music in all of Toscanini's official discography, and he rarely performed music written prior to the time of Mozart in concert. The explanation is probably that music of the baroque era simply wasn't a part of Toscanini, at least not in the same way that Wagner and Verdi were a part of him. This is well and good, at least to a point. Any artist of conviction will have natural biases and preferences, and these inclinations will of course play a role in how he or she performs the music they choose to perform. But it is always going to be important to bring curiosity into programming, and to step outside of one's comfort zone at least for the sake of having something new discussed. This is something that Toscanini was rarely inclined to do in the latter half of his career, and the result was that the occasions when he did perform music that was not part of his core repertoire were often quite disappointing.
Kabalevsky: Colas Breugnon Overture - April 8th, 1946
Toscanini began conducting this piece in 1943, at a time when he was turning to many previously-untouched Russian scores. The virulent anti-fascist was probably doing this out of a sense of patriotic duty to support all of the Allies of World War II, including the Soviet Union.
Colas Breugnon may not exactly be one of the titanic masterpieces of Western Civilization, but in Toscanini's hands this music achieves sharply defined character and expressive energy. The biggest disappointment is how understated the xylophone is in the overall balance. While in music school I must have heard that section practiced thousands of times by various percussionists as I walked the hallways of Regenstein Hall. After hearing so much of Colas Breugnon over the years I would have loved to have really heard what the NBC percussion section could have done with it (the xylophone is audible, but barely). Fortunately, all that practice apparently does still pay off, as one of the percussionists I was in school with at Northwestern University is now the Principal Percussionist of the Cleveland Orchestra.
Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Overture - April 8th, 1946
It is impossible for me to be completely objective about this recording, as it was the first Toscanini recording I ever listened to in great detail. My parents bought this album for me when I was maybe twelve years old, and I have intensely loved the Romeo and Juliet performance ever since.
The bristling energy of this performance is breathtaking in its sweep and power. The animosity between the Montagues and Capulets has a shattering brutality in Toscanini's conception, and the amour of the star-crossed lovers has a potency to its ardor that is both earnest and deeply honest. Nineteen years after first hearing it my view of this brilliant recording has not changed: it is one of the most gripping and passionate performances that has ever been preserved in the history of recorded sound. That may not be my objective view, but it is my honest feeling.
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That's it for Day 36!
Check back tomorrow for more...oh hell, let's make it more Toscanini.
Happy Thursday!
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