Hey everyone! Welcome to Day 64!
Today's listening featured two love stories and a tale of supernatural bullets. I'm not going there.
Weber: Der Freischütz Overture - January 3rd, 1952
Those magic bullets rarely sound as magical as they do in this ferociously energetic recording from 1952. Toscanini's 1945 recording of the Der Freischütz overture was very good from an interpretive point of view, but it had bizarre balances resulting from incompetent engineering. Seven years later RCA seems to have figured out how to produce good-sounding recordings with more consistency. The important horn chorale from the slow introduction was virtually inaudible in the 1945 recording - this time it is clear and distinct, with quality of performance to match.
My only quibble with the 1952 recording is in the length of the grand pauses. These pauses should sound tensely dramatic, but Toscanini slams through them before any tension has a chance to build up. A pity, as there can be just as much drama in silence as there is in sound.
Franck: Psyche and Eros - January 7th, 1952
I was not familiar with this particular myth before listening to this Franck recording. But I'm glad to have read about it, if only to discover what a heartless bitch Venus could be. Not that I'm surprised at all.
If it's possible for harmony to be erotic (and I certainly think it is), this work has it all. Toscanini does not exactly luxuriate in these voluptuous progressions, but his typically muscular approach does not seem out of place either. It is a notably clear-headed approach that contrasts considerably with Kurt Masur's description of this piece as being "like taking drugs." I can see the beauty to both points of view with this music.
I'm not ready to call Psyche and Eros a masterpiece, but it is brilliant (and yes, maybe just a bit mind-blowing in its chromaticism) music, and it should be performed more often than it is. Toscanini did not have the only correct view for how to perform it, but his conception is both powerful and compelling.
Wagner: Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde - January 7th, 1952
Toscanini recorded the Liebestod in 1942, and good lord was that performance monumentally, off-the-charts, egregiously awful. Considering that Toscanini's 1901 production of Tristan at La Scala had been enthusiastically received by the composer's son, Siegfried Wagner, that is no mean feat. There is just no indication from that dreadful 1942 recording of what could possibly have been compelling enough in Toscanini's direction to elicit the kudos of the Wagner family. This later and vastly improved 1952 recording begins to make things more clear.
What this reading has that the 1942 one did not is a sense of direction and purpose. The earlier recording was rigid and lifeless, and ten years later these negative qualities had vanished. This later recording possesses grand, spacious sonorities that Toscanini never allows to slacken into stagnation. The line never breaks, and the harmonies are never pressed.
I would be willing to bet that the Toscanini of 1901 probably conducted this music with more sensual vitality, and this quality was probably beyond the elder statesman maestro of 1952. But what is audible in this performance is great intelligence and exquisite interpretive detail. We will never know what Toscanini was really capable of producing in his prime, but his finest recordings of the LP age give us a tantalizing taste.
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That's it for Day 64!
Check back tomorrow for some pastoral relaxation, and maybe even a few variations.
Happy Thursday!
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