Day 66: Transfigured Nocturne

Hey everyone! Welcome to Day 66!

Today's listening featured a tone poem about death, a justly ignored symphony, and an impressionist depiction of nocturnal activities.


Strauss: Death and Transfiguration - March 8th and 10th, 1952

This recording is a magnificent document of a score Arturo Toscanini loved dearly - not that many of the conductor's biographers feel the same way about the piece. Robert C. Marsh, for example, feels that "Death and Transfiguration is dangerously close to banality in its simplest form, and its treatment is frequently obvious and pretentious." He then broadly insults those who do enjoy this piece by stating that "the person who is fond of this score presumably admires some of its defects and, if record sales are any guide, enjoys a broad, rhetorical performance in which the melodrama is played for all it's worth."

Well, Toscanini was obviously quite "fond of this score," and yet does not (in this recording, or in any of his live performances) play the melodrama for all it's worth. He gave this work all the same honesty and respect he gave all the music he loved. It was not like Toscanini to admire any work strictly for its emotional extravagance, and the conductor uses the structural elements of this score on their own merits to create a performance of towering beauty.

Cherubini: Symphony in D - March 10th, 1952

I always enjoy encountering forgotten masterpieces that deserve to be performed more often, but this piece ain't one of them. Some works are forgotten for a very good reason, and this Cherubini symphony ought to find a nice music library to hole itself up in and never be seen again.

Toscanini still gives his all to this dud, and there are moments that are actually compelling in this recording. The conductor leads the work with a charm that suggests an enormous, easy-going Rossini overture, and there are even moments of thrilling sweep to be found. The Minuet is played with a ferocious energy that belies its prosaic components, and the Finale sparkles with edgy momentum. The symphony doesn't deserve this treatment, but if I have to listen to it, I want to listen to it played like this.

Debussy: Nuages and Fêtes from Nocturnes - March 27th, 1948 and March 15th, 1952

Oh dear, dear, dear. I'd rather not comment on this rigid, lifeless waste of a performance, but I suppose that if you've taken the time to click on this blog I should write something about it.

Both movements released by RCA were taken from live broadcasts (Toscanini never conducted the Sirènes movement), recorded nearly four years apart. Fêtes was the first to be recorded, and is the slightly more acceptable of the two; there is genuine, if misplaced, drive and energy to this music. The utterly dreadful Nuages is a different matter, moving forward steely with an iron fist and with no regard for the work's inherent atmosphere.

I know these pieces are nocturnes, but in Toscanini's hands they become nightmares.

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That's it for Day 66!

Check back tomorrow for two Beethoven symphonies, neither of which are in a major key. See if you can figure out which ones they'll be, by process of elimination.

Happy Saturday!