Hey everyone! Welcome to Day 50!
For today I listened to something Masonic, something exotic, and something heroic. That's a lot of ics.
Mozart: The Magic Flute Overture - November 26th, 1949
Like most of Toscanini's Mozart performances, this recording of the Magic Flute Overture is a bit tight and driven, but fortunately it never descends into maddening impatience as do his worst performances of 18th century music. The spacious sonority he gave the Masonic portions of the overture were perfectly realized in Toscanini's 1938 recording with the BBC Symphony. This later performance is more earthbound and lacks that dignified ambience, but it does have a bright energy to its faster sections that make this NBC recording a perfectly acceptable alternative.
Cherubini: Ali Baba Overture - December 3rd, 1949
This overture is no masterpiece, but it shows good craftsmanship and is resplendent with well-calculated entertainment. Toscanini makes the most of this music, and exploits the Janissary effects superbly. Now if only I could find a cave where saying "Open Sesame" would lead to a land where a musician can get rich.
Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 - November 28th, and December 5th, 1949
I first quoted this text during Day 9, which was the last time I listened to a Toscanini recording of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony:
"We would do well at this point to remember that we are not likely to find it 'unusual and fantastic' either - which, if so, is very much our loss. When it comes to maintaining a sense of the 'unusual and fantastic' or just of freshness, we are not much helped by conductors, particularly the ones whose attitude of reverence and awe before A Great Classic leads them into 'monumental' tempi at which the length of the work easily becomes 'inordinate', if not 'unendurable'. Of course the rare conductor of genius like Furtwängler or Klemperer can make a convincing case for a 'monumental' Eroica. More valuable by far is the fiery performance - at Beethoven's tempi or something close to them - that can give us an experience like the one the audience in the Theater an der Wien in 1805 must have had, that of an electrifying, frightening encounter with revolution, with a force sufficient to blast doors and windows out of the room. Once in a while that happens, but it is rare. Too rare."
These are the words of the late MIchael Steinberg, former program annotator for the New York Philharmonic and Boston Symphony. He brilliantly puts into words what I have desperately tried to paraphrase since first reading his wonderful The Symphony.
Steinberg was writing about Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, a work that was described by its contemporary reviewers as "unusual and fantastic," "glaring and bizarre," and showing "undesirable originality." It's not played like that very often. All too often this masterpiece is treated like a holy relic that must be kept behind bulletproof glass and worshiped from afar. Steinberg correctly notes that there are conductors of genius that can make a convincing case for this "monumental" conception of the Eroica. But with all due respect to Wilhelm Furtwängler and Otto Klemperer, the greatest and most moving readings of this work are the ones that recreate the startling, revolutionary impact of its first performance.
Arturo Toscanini performed the Eroica more than any other Beethoven Symphony, and in it he consistently induced the wrenching, emotional energy the work so richly deserves. As far as I am aware, Toscanini's earliest surviving recording of the Eroica is his stunning 1939 broadcast with the NBC Symphony. To my ears this first recording is the finest recording ever made of the work, and one of the greatest recordings ever made of any work. Toscanini led a total of seven broadcasts of the Eroica at NBC, and two of these were approved for commercial release by the maestro. This 1949 recording was his only studio effort with this music.
There are two striking things about how the studio recording measures up to the sublime 1939 broadcast: A) When you compare the two recordings, the studio set is a monumental disappointment. B) It is still one of the greatest recordings ever made of the Eroica.
Toscanini was oftentimes more spontaneous and energetic in front of an audience than he was when conducting only for the microphone. This studio Eroica does not have the frightening intensity of the 1939 broadcast, but it is so richly detailed in its interpretive substance (and close enough in its visceral energy) that any sense of let-down is short-lived. The tempo had become a bit steadier in the years between these two performances, suggesting that he had come to see this work in a more classical light. But he never allows the studio recording to become rigid or overly driven. It retains all of power and intelligence of Toscanini's broadcasts, and is only relaxed somewhat in intensity by the lack of an audience.
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That's it for Day 50!
Check back tomorrow for an unnumbered symphony from Russia, and an even less-numbered tone poem from Rome. It'll be a real festival.
Happy Thursday!
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