Hey everyone! Welcome to Day 75!
It's getting late, so I'll get right to it.
Debussy: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun - February 13th and 14th, 1953
This is the ultimate music of otherworldly sensuality, but Toscanini treats Faun with a rather earthbound intensity. This has its own kind of beauty, but it lacks that quietly sublime sonority that makes this music so unspeakably beautiful.
Brahms: Hungarian Dances Nos. 1, 17, 20 and 21 - February 17th, 1953
There is a lot of sparkle to these performances, but not much gypsy feeling. I get the impression from listening to these dances that there was a bit of an interpretive war going on between Toscanini and the NBC Symphony. The orchestra seems to be trying to pull things back and to play these dances with traditional tempo give and take, while Toscanini relentlessly pushes things forward. In an odd way, you actually kind of get the best of both worlds with these performances.
No one alive in 2011 can be absolutely certain what Brahms wanted in terms of tempo consistency (there is a recording dating from 1889 of Brahms playing the first Hungarian Dance, but the sound quality is too poor to infer much about his performance), but the surviving recordings of the dances played Brahms's friend Joseph Joachim at least suggest that the tradition of generous rubato in this music is nothing new. Gypsy violinists still play that way today, and fine performers such as Roby Lakatos and Sándor Járóka keep alive a remarkable musical tradition that has likely existed for a very long time. Brahms took the tunes for his Hungarian Dances from the gypsy tradition, and I see no reason to think that he didn't want them performed as a gypsy would have played them.
At the same time, it is easy to carry this too far, and to unthinkingly apply extreme tempo modifications to this music simply because they seem "authentic." Some continuity of time is required for these pieces to have a danceable character. Toscanini certainly does provide that consistency - too much so, in my view. But the attempts of the NBC Symphony to pull the dances back into line with tradition are audible, and in fact almost give the impression of rubato in places where there is none. Between the will of the conductor and that of the ensemble, an ideal middle ground is paradoxically reached.
Toscanini did not perform in the Hungarian Dances in an "authentic" way, but he had a very compelling way with them that became something wonderful when carried out by the right orchestra. At least on this occasion, the NBC Symphony was the right orchestra.
Schubert: Symphony No. 5 - March 17th, 1953
This symphony was the last work to enter Toscanini's repertory. The eighty-five year old conductor programmed it for the first and only time on March 14th, 1953. This recording comes from a studio session held three days after that broadcast.
This performance has a very trim and focused sonority that looks forward to the more stylistically aware days of a later era. Yet there is warmth to accompany the precision, and Toscanini never allows the rhythmic momentum to overflow the musical line.
Respighi: Pines of Rome - March 17th, 1953
My parents owned a copy of the old RCA LP of this recording, and I remember being very disappointed by it when I was younger. The NBC Symphony was simply not as polished an ensemble as most of the orchestras that have recorded Pines of Rome over the last twenty years or so, and I had a hard time looking past that.
It is still not entirely easy for me to listen to this recording without wincing at some of grittier moments (the brass intonation is spotty throughout, and there is a dreadfully exposed oboe splat in the third movement), but this time around I was able to concentrate on Toscanini's remarkable pacing. His performance of the final movement in particular perfectly realizes the extraordinary transition from darkness to blinding light that makes this work so iconic as an example of the sheer splendor of symphonic sonority.
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That's it for Day 75!
Check back tomorrow for something solemn, and something anacreonistic.
Happy Monday!
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