Hey everyone! Welcome to Day 62!
Today's listening session was a particular pleasure. By this late time in Toscanini's life, the overall energy level of his performances was beginning to sag, and the control coming from the podium was becoming less secure. All three recordings I listened to today are completely different: filled with fire and intelligence, they represent musicianship of powerful brilliance.
Brahms: Symphony No. 4 - December 3rd, 1951
I told you yesterday that today would feature a recording that has a direct connection with Brad Pitt, and that was no joke. This very recording of the Brahms E Minor was used in director Terrence Malick's sublime film The Tree of Life, in a scene in which Pitt (playing a frustrated musician) waves the album cover towards his children while conducting to the last movement of the symphony with wild gesticulations.
The Tree of Life is a film of indescribable beauty, meditating with quiet contemplation on the life cycle and the mysteries of the universe and God. Toscanini is mentioned twice during the film; first in the scene cited above, and later when Pitt tells his children about a time when Toscanini recorded sixty-two takes of a piece, and then said "It could be better." I have been trying to find the origin of that story, and have yet to find it. I cannot therefore be sure if this story is true or an invention of the film, but this is certainly the kind of thing Toscanini would have said, or at least felt.
There is so much I could say about this beautiful film. But I would be moving pretty far off-topic, and a film such as this deserves a full blog of its own. I should, however, note one quibble I have with The Tree of Life, and this does relate directly to this blog.
In the scene in which Brad Pitt is playing the Brahms recording while conducting to it, the album cover he is waving is indeed that of the Toscanini recording (in its 1950s LP incarnation), but the actual recording playing over the soundtrack was conducted by (wait for it…) Herbert von Karajan! I am baffled at this decision. If there was no remaining source for the Toscanini recording that existed in listenable sound, I could begin to understand. But sixty years later the sound quality of this recording is still fabulous. I would be thrilled to some day get the chance to have a drink with Mr. Malick and discuss his work, but as an avid student of Toscanini I would have to get an explanation for this switch.
There is further irony to this, as Toscanini consistently led excellent performances of Brahms's Symphony No. 4 (considerably superior to Karajan's, in my view). There are live recordings that are a bit more vivid than this 1951 studio account, but in its interpretive details this is an excellent example of the maestro's powerful way with this score.
Toscanini keeps the tempo steadier than most (especially in the last movement), and a superficial listening might lead one to think that there is no ebb and flow to his interpretation. Listen more closely, and you'll hear subtle stretchings and pressings that lovingly accentuate the contours of Brahms's phrase structures without pulling them apart. By keeping the tempo of the last movement passacaglia at a more-or-less consistent tempo, Toscanini allows the complex architecture of the ground bass to take shape.
This Brahms recording represents musicianship of the very highest level, and is one of the finest of Toscanini's surviving performances. This recording is too good for the auditory sense alone, and would work beautifully in a film someday. If only someone would think to do that...
Elgar: Enigma Variations - December 10th, 1951
Aside from one NBC performance of the Introduction and Allegro for Strings, the Enigma Variations was the only Elgar work that Toscanini ever conducted, and he did so relatively frequently. The maestro led the Enigma Variations on tour in England with the New York Philharmonic, with the BBC Symphony in 1935, and five times with the NBC Symphony.
Some London critics complained about Toscanini's conception as being "un-English," which I find to be an odd description. For one thing, by any measure the official recording is utterly outstanding. It is filled with powerful drama and lovingly rendered in rich detail. It is also very close in interpretation to both recordings conducted by the composer, with similar tempos and details of balance. The difference lies in the overall control coming from the podium. Elgar may have been the composer, but he was not a conductor of genius. British conductor Sir Landon Ronald once noted that Elgar's "idiom was obviously no secret for Toscanini. Some of the best performances I have heard were from the composer himself, but Toscanini excelled because he has a genius for conducting Elgar has not." True enough.
Toscanini may not have been the slightest bit British in temperament, but the Enigma Variations is too good to belong to only one nation. The work belongs to the world, and Toscanini was a musician who knew no national boundaries when it came to music.
Respighi: Fountains of Rome - December 17th, 1951
I'm a big fan of the Dan Brown novel Angels and Demons, which is set in Rome and includes a scene in which a murder takes place at the Fountain of the Four Rivers. I'm sure you can understand why I was so upset at this scene. There was a murder scene at a fountain in Rome, and Dan Brown didn't have the decency to set it at one of the fountains Respighi depicted in Fountains of Rome? The intransigence of that one! Just imagine how much fun it would be to listen to Respighi's tone poem while imagining murder!
Okay, maybe not. For the sake of civility let's just say it's for the best that Respighi's fountains stay safe. Moving right along…
Arturo Toscanini led the first successful performance of Fountains of Rome in 1918, one year after the catastrophic premiere conducted by Antonio Guarnieri. The acclaim given the score in Toscanini's hands has never abated, and the work has proven to be an enduring classic thanks in large part to the conductor's rescue. One wonders how many more unjustly forgotten scores there are that are lying in the dustbin because they did not receive the right kind of performance.
Thirty-one years after his first performance of the work, Toscanini still conducted Fountains of Rome with brilliant pictorial spark. I have never been to Rome, but a fine performance of this work makes my feel as though I have. Toscanini's recording succeeds brilliantly in this regard. The conductor was known as a man of the theatre for the majority of his career, and that experience clearly carried over into the finest of his work in the concert hall. When all the pieces were correctly set, no other musician could produce such drama.
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Thats's it for Day 62!
Check back tomorrow for a ride, a funeral, and a symphony.
Happy Tuesday!
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