Day 43: Wolfgang Knows Art

Hey everyone! Welcome to Day 43!

For today I listened to an all-Mozart program. I'm still waiting for the Mozart Effect.


Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro Overture - November 8th, 1947

Here at last we have a really satisfying Mozart recording by Toscanini. It is fast yet supple, without ever becoming steel-edged or overly driven. The sharp edges to this performance are never misplaced, and add an energetic luster to the forward momentum of the musical line.

Toscanini sadly never conducted The Marriage of Figaro in the theatre. He liked the opera very much, but admitted to not understanding it. At one point he told the composer Adriano Lualdi about an excellent performance of The Marriage of Figaro he once attended that had been conducted by Richard Strauss: "I was exalted by it. But I thought…there's something that I don't understand, that I'm not able to find, and that I miss."

It is unfortunate that Toscanini did not feel he understood this work. There is sometimes no accounting for taste, even coming from a musician of the stature of Arturo Toscanini. Based on his brilliant account of the overture, I am willing to hazard a guess that a performance of the complete opera coming from him would have been truly magical.

Mozart: Bassoon Concerto - November 18th, 1947

The soloist for this performance was the NBC Symphony's principal bassoonist, Leonard Sharrow. I had the good fortune of meeting Sharrow at the Marrowstone Music Festival in the summer of 1996 (along with NBC bassist David Walter, for whom I played in a masterclass), and I can report that he was a truly lovely human being. His playing days were long past at that point, but he was still a fountain of musical knowledge, and he loved to entertain us young students with stories from the old days.

Sharrow's performance is very spirited, with superb rhythmic verve and bite. Toscanini puts his trademark verve into this performance, and even wrote the cadenzas that were played by Sharrow. These cadenzas are a bit bizarre. To call them "unstylish" would be a charitable way to put it; a more accurate description would be "uh, what??"

Although this concerto is very much a soloist's piece, and is played brilliantly by its soloist, it is still clearly a Toscanini recording - warts and all, but still Toscanini.

Mozart: Divertimento No. 15 - November 18th, 1947

The main thing I took from this recording was "Wha?! He made the violins do that?!"

If the Mendelssohn Octet was a bit strange coming from a full string orchestra, this Mozart Divertimento sounds like a cruel joke when performed with full strings.  In some respects this work is actually quite well performed and interpreted, but the 1st violin part frequently lies in such a high register that to hear it played by a full section makes your jaw drop in completely the wrong way. There was no hope that the NBC Symphony (or any other orchestra that is remotely following union regulations) violins could have possibly made this music sound idiomatic. It's all a bit strange and makes you just want to turn your head away in embarrassment.

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That's it for Day 43!

Check back tomorrow for some recordings conducted by Bruno Walter.
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Ha ha! Just kidding! There'll be some more Toscanini. Presumably.

Happy Thursday!