Day 47: Tassels and Frowns

Hey everyone! Welcome to Day 47!

For today I listened to the four works that Toscanini approved for release from the six all-Brahms broadcasts that opened his twelfth season at NBC. All of the recordings from this season were drawn from live broadcasts; a knee injury prevented Toscanini from attempting any work beyond his regularly-scheduled NBC work.

Toscanini was really at home in this music, and the overall level of these performances are extremely high. The previous summer he had conducted staged operatic scenes at La Scala for the last time, and he may well have been on an artistic high when he returned to New York for this magnificent Brahms cycle.


Brahms: Academic Festival Overture - November 6th, 1948

There is some irony in Toscanini leading this piece, considering it was written for the occasion of Brahms being granted an honorary doctorate. Toscanini consistently refused such honors; when Oxford University attempted to bestow the conductor with an honorary doctorate in 1937, Toscanini rejected the offer. Instead he agreed to "donate" a concert to the university as a benefit. More than £1000 ended up being raised for Oxford from a monster concert that included Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, Brahms's Symphony No. 1, and, of course, Haydn's Oxford Symphony. In a letter to his mistress, Toscanini wrote that he did this to "avoid being honored with investitures and Latin orations." It seems that even in the context of doing good deeds for stodgy academia, Toscanini couldn't help but be a bit of an anti-establishment malcontent.

Toscanini may not have seen the use for academic honors, but he did seem to take Brahms's ultimate ode to the world of tassels and gowns quite seriously. His performance of the Academic Festival Overture is a good deal slower than one would expect, yet still filled with tension. This slightly nervous yet dignified approach to this music is to my ears the perfect approach. Even the people I know who take academia extremely seriously get nervous about the prospect of graduation, even as they fully indulge in all of the Pomp and Circumstance of the event. It can be frightening to leave the ivory tower. Toscanini, though he never experienced this for himself, really understood how to put this into music, producing one of his most satisfying Brahms recordings.

Brahms: Double Concerto - November 13th, 1948

This is one of the most remarkable performances I have ever heard of the Brahms Double Concerto. In an effort to produce a Brahms "Symphony No. 5", most performances give this work a misguided weight that drags down its harmonic pull, and reduce the long, arching lines into segments of phrase. Not so this Toscanini recording, featuring his first-desk players Mischa Mischakoff and Frank Miller as soloists. Mischakoff and Miller are both absolutely first-rate in this music, and play with a vital rhythmic strength that is to my ears much more Brahmsian than the turgid and heavy sonority that is often favored. That particular tradition of weighty sound is especially perplexing to me in light of the preponderance of the hemiolas that are such an important part of Brahms's music. These rhythmic figures are only audible when the pacing is steady enough to allow them to be fully distinguished. Toscanini really understood this facet of Brahms, and even in his mediocre performances of the composer's music, always gave it the drive and power of pulse that keep it from sounding ordinary.

Brahms: Liebeslieder Waltzes - November 13th, 1948

Although Toscanini led this music with graceful elegance, nothing is going to convince me that this is an appropriate piece for a symphony concert. Intended for one voice to a part, Toscanini had this curious piece beefed up to a full choir, accompanied by two pianos, while his orchestra waited in the wings (the only remaining piece on this all-Brahms program was the first Hungarian Dance). I suppose Toscanini programmed this music simply because he liked it, and when you are Toscanini you can do whatever the hell you want. But I still find it strange.

Incidentally, this recording was drawn from one of the ten Toscanini broadcasts that were televised by NBC. I have not yet seen the tape of the Liebeslieder Waltzes, but Mortimer H. Frank reports that this performance is in some ways the "most revealing" one from the telecasts: "Possibly owing to the relative intimacy of conducting but a small chorus and two pianos…Toscanini displayed a range of facial expression that is astonishing both for its breadth and for its indication of an emotional involvement that he almost always concealed in front of an orchestra." Interesting - while this does make me want to watch the tape, I can't say I'm yet eager to listen to the recording again.

Brahms: Gesang der Parzen - November 27th, 1948

Brahms wrote this extraordinary work in 1882, the same year as the F Major String Quintet, and immediately before the Symphony No. 3. The text is by Goethe, from his play Iphigenia in Tauris, and even more gloomily fatalistic than you would expect. It is a mystery to me why this piece is not played more often. Though it has been recorded by the likes of Giuseppe Sinopoli and Claudio Abbado, performances are still all too rare. Toscanini showed great originality in programming the work for this 1948 broadcast, but this was in all likelihood the only time he ever performed it.

This broadcast performance of Gesang der Parzen appeared on the last of the six all-Brahms concerts that opened Toscanini's twelfth season at NBC. The only other work on the program was a stunning rendition of the Symphony No. 4 (the symphony was unfortunately not one of Toscanini's approved recordings, but it is available on EMI's Great Conductors of the Century series). The NBC Symphony was particularly fine in this concert, and play the choral work with a power that is almost frightening in its dramatic intensity. The excellent chorus was prepared by Robert Shaw, whom Toscanini eventually came to see as the finest chorus master he had ever worked with. This performance was pure brilliance from start to finish, and shows Gesang der Parzen to be one of the greatest and most underrated works Brahms ever composed.

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That's it for Day 47!

Check back tomorrow for the finest Egyptian music ever written by an Italian. Plus maybe some Haydn or some crap like that.

Happy Monday!