Today must be a bit abbreviated due to my Spokane Symphony duties. I can't believe my stupid job is getting in the way of my blogging! Gee whiz!
Wagner: Siegfried's Rhine Journey from Götterdämmerung - December 22nd, 1949
Toscanini performed this quite frequently, and released three commercial recordings of his own arrangement of the excerpt (though retaining the standard concert ending by Humperdinck). This one is my favorite of the official recordings. It has both great, spacious grandeur and exuberant vitality.
Wagner: Prelude and Good Friday Spell from Parsifal - December 22nd, 1949
Parsifal was an opera Toscanini took very, very seriously. He took special pains to attend performances of it at Bayreuth as a young man, and when he was at last invited to conduct at the Wagner temple he led what is still the slowest Parsifal ever given at the theater. Toscanini's performance clocked in at four hours, forty-two minutes.
Toscanini regularly performed the Prelude and Good Friday Spell in the concert hall, but these are his only recordings of the excerpts. Toscanini was reported to have entered a state of almost meditative concentration when performing this music, and I can believe it from the extraordinary beauty of these performances. There is a stunning, religioso serenity to these readings, a rapt homage of obeisance to a master composer Toscanini revered.
Cherubini: Medea Overture - February 18th, 1950
This piece is a bit like a poor-man's Der Freischütz Overture. It has similar melodic contours and sonorities, but is, to use the technical term, more crappier. Toscanini still manages to make this into compelling listening, and the NBC Symphony maintains a high energy level throughout.
Cherubini: Requiem - February 18th, 1950
If you can believe it, the Cherubini Requiem was once widely considered to be one of the greatest pieces ever written. Berlioz and Schumann both considered this work to be an immortal masterpiece, and you would think they know something about such things. You would think.
Toscanini sang in a performance of this work as a boy, but this 1950 recording is evidently the only time he ever conducted it. It is certainly well-performed, but I would need to spend more time with this piece to form more of a firm opinion on Toscanini's interpretation. To my ears this work just sounds very non-descript and frankly a bit dull. But I'd like to think Berlioz and Schumann knew what they were talking about, so I may give it another chance at some point.
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That's it for Day 52!
Check back tomorrow for some Viennese classics and a Spanish dance by a composer who was probably more familiar with Troikas.
Happy Saturday!
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