Hey everyone! Welcome to Day 59!
For today I listened to something classical, something celestial, something noisy, and something of "groveling imbecility." Sounds like my youth orchestra concerts.
Prokofiev: Symphony No. 1 - October 11th, 1951
Toscanini's take on the Classical Symphony is much more Prokofiev than it is Haydn, and I find this to be quite effective. Performances of this symphony often suffer from a misplaced lightness that play up the classical aspects of the work without acknowledging that it is, after all, by Prokofiev. And yet Toscanini never lets this performance get bogged down in symphonic weight; it still has that tensile verve that is inherent in the work's running lines and skipping intervals.
Sadly, this is the only work of Prokofiev that Toscanini ever conducted. A recording of this quality suggests he would have made an ideal interpreter of other of the Russian composer's pieces. We will never know.
Wagner: Preludes to Acts I and III from Lohengrin - October 22nd, 1951
As noted way back in Day 3 (you've been been keeping up, haven't you?), the Prelude to Act I from Lohengrin was the work that first attracted a young opera orchestra cellist named Arturo Toscanini to the music of Richard Wagner. Toscanini was to lead the work throughout his career, and produced three official recordings of it over the course of fifteen years. This 1951 recording is the last of those.
What this performance lacks is the ethereal tone quality of Toscanini's 1936 account with the New York Philharmonic, his finest recording of the work. The 1951 recording does, however, have a much more sustained approach to the line than the 1941 version. Overall, this 1951 recording is not fully of the class of the Philharmonic. But it is beautifully phrased, and is a considerable improvement on the overly earthbound recording from ten years earlier.
The Prelude to Act III is very enthusiastically rendered, and fully the equal of earlier performances right up until the end, when it becomes a bit rigid and lacking in weight.
Wagner: Forest Murmurs from Siegfried - October 29th, 1951
I have always loved this excerpt, and was quite surprised to read this commentary on the present Toscanini recording from Robert C. Marsh: "Of all the raw and bleeding fragments of Wagner which reach the concert room, this one reaches the level of "groveling imbecility" according to Tovey, whose judgment I second with a lusty aye!"
While I agree that the concert ending to this excerpt is not exactly first-rate, I think it is monumentally ridiculous to apply to it the term "groveling imbecility." The nature sounds of this excerpt are beautifully atmospheric, and perfectly evocative of the feelings of the opera's title character. Fortunately, Toscanini felt the same way, and this is one of his finest performances of excerpts from The Ring. The wind playing of the NBC Symphony is especially fine in this recording, rendering the bird calls with luminous clarity of execution. This is a fine performance of a fine excerpt. Anyone who thinks differently might just be a groveling imbecile - or at least a murmur in the forest.
Weber: Euryanthe Overture - October 29th, 1951
Toscanini led the Italian premiere of Euryanthe (nearly eighty years after the fact) at La Scala in 1902. The Milanese evidently felt that Weber was beneath them, and the opera ended up seeing only three performances. The first of these was cut short by the audience's enthusiastic clamoring for an encore of the overture, which Toscanini refused to give. After repeated attempts to begin the first act were drowned out by shouting from the audience, Toscanini stormed out and refused to go on. The management's assurance that the conductor had suddenly felt ill were understandably met with skepticism, and the production failed shortly afterwards.
Forty-nine years later, Toscanini returned to the very overture that caused him so much trouble in the theatre. If the La Scala performance was anything like this later NBC recording, it would not be hard to understand the enthusiasm of the Milanese audience. The NBC recording is outstanding, and filled with brilliant orchestral wizardry. The moments of repose in the middle of the score have a remarkable stasis that continues to move forward almost imperceptibly, leading to an extraordinary build-up to the work's furious conclusion. This recording is proof that Toscanini could still lead performances of extraordinary energy well into his 80s.
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That's it for Day 59!
Check back tomorrow for the seventh and tenth symphonies of Beethoven, at least one of which was written by Brahms.
Happy Saturday!
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