Hey everyone! Welcome to Day 38!
For today I continued with the recordings of Toscanini's tenth season with the NBC Symphony.
Haydn: Symphony No. 101 - November 6th, 1946 and June 12th, 1947
Toscanini was never the most distinguished of conductors of 18th century repertoire. His Mozart ranged from misguidedly aggressive (Symphony No. 40) to seemingly indifferent (the Bassoon Concerto and Divertimento No. 15) to borderline perverse (Symphonies 39 and 41). Of the Mozart works Toscanini conducted with the NBC Symphony that saw commercial release, only the Haffner Symphony and Marriage of Figaro Overture were relatively satisfying. Although none of Toscanini's Haydn recordings are in the same dubious category as the dreadful readings of Mozart's Symphonies 39 and 41, they are rarely in splendid form, usually settling into a dull monotony that is somehow at the same time overly spiky.
The exception is this magnificent recording of the Clock Symphony, which has all the strength and tensile energy of Toscanini's finest work, without becoming overly driven or relentless. The first movement is particularly invigorating, with Haydn's punchy 6/8 rhythms perfectly accentuated by the NBC Symphony's sharp attacks and expressive contours. The slow movement could have benefited from some tastefully applied rubato (perhaps Toscanini was taking the Clock designation a touch too literally) but the lines flow with a graceful elegance that never cloys. The last two movements are as invigorating and masterfully shaped as one would expect from Toscanini's best work.
How a conductor of Toscanini's off-the-charts talent and discipline could be so erratic in 18th century music has never been fully clear to me. This superb Haydn recording proves he could be every bit as brilliant in this repertoire as he was in the music of Beethoven or Verdi. Toscanini may have been inconsistent, but his best work is of such extraordinary quality that his occasional miscues seem quite unimportant.
Schumann: Manfred Overture - November 11th, 1946
This piece has always seemed a bit shapeless and nondescript to me, and Toscanini's recording (despite some wonderful moments) doesn't do much to dissuade me of this. Hugo Wolf said of this work that it "brought the essence, the focal point of the drama to plastic expression with the simplest strokes", and I would like to believe him. Someday I hope to hear a performance of this piece that will convince me of its great worth, but this one doesn't do it for me.
To my ears the problem with this recording is its obsession with details. The lines are all admirably clear and distinct, but come at the cost of depth of sonority. This music should sound frightening and diabolical, but instead it comes across as clinical and deliberate. There are some genuinely powerful moments from the NBC brass, but these are shocking in the wrong way in the context of a performance that is otherwise a bit pedestrian. Mortimer H. Frank praises this recording for its "freedom from sentimentality", but I find that is precisely the problem. What could be more sentimental by its very nature than a work by Schumann that had been inspired by a Byron poem?
Wagner: Faust Overture - November 11th, 1946
Wagner's Faust Overture is quite similar to Schumann's Manfred Overture in many ways (the Wagner overture was actually composed ten years before the Schumann) but for some reason Toscanini gave the Faust overture a gripping, diabolical intensity the Manfred conspicuously lacked. Both pieces were recorded on the same day, and I wonder if the Faust overture was taken down at a time of higher energy for the NBC Symphony. Whatever the case, Toscanini showed the same dedicated devotion to this early Wagner work as he did to the composer's late music dramas, and the result in this case was breathtaking in its dramatic intensity.
Smetana: Bartered Bride Overture - November 17th, 1946
In his weaker moments Toscanini could be overly driven and humorless in music like the Bartered Bride, but in this fine performance the scurrying string lines unfold with perfectly-contoured vigor and grace.
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That's it for Day 38!
Check back tomorrow for Toscanini's first NBC recording of a complete Verdi opera, La Travisomething.
Happy Saturday!
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