Hey everyone welcome to Day 77!
Today's listening comprised the first three recordings to come from the final season of Toscanini's career.
Strauss: Don Quixote - November 21st and 22nd, 1953
I find it interesting that most of Toscanini's biographers feel that there is no doubt that Don Quixote is Strauss's finest tone poem, while Death and Transfiguration is banal and subpar. I don't remotely agree with either view, and in any case I think there is a reason why Death and Transfiguration is performed much more frequently. Yet there must also be a reason why Toscanini's admirers are seemingly unanimous in their somewhat unorthodox opinion.
Although there is certainly drama and tone-painting in this work (muted brass portraying braying sheep, etc.), I don't think it's that much of a reach to say that of Strauss's tone poems Don Quixote is the most concerned with formal structures. The audibility of the program is rather downplayed in comparison with a work like Till Eulenspiegel, and I wonder if that is what appeals to Toscanini's admirers. Perhaps a devotee of Pierre Monteux or Carlos Kleiber would have a different view? Or are any apparent patterns just coincidence?
In any case, Toscanini's performance is certainly a strong, highly competent one. The playing of cellist Frank Miller is especially fine. The main source for the recording is the broadcast of November 22nd, which had to be patched with portions from the preceding day's rehearsal due to a number of technical lapses at the concert. The edits are unobtrusive, and the recording holds together remarkably well.
Brahms: Tragic Overture - November 22nd, 1953
This is a short-form equivalent to the dreadful recording of the Brahms Third from the previous year. The tempo is slow, but there is no weight of sonority. There is only a slack, limp noodle feeling that keeps the phrases from having any rhythmic backbone. The only tragedy here is the lackluster execution.
Berlioz: Harold in Italy - November 28th and 29th, 1953
Toscanini took "correctness" very seriously with this work, and this performance is successful enough that I don't think any negative connotations can come with that.
Harold in Italy was still a novelty in 1939 when Toscanini first asked his then-principal violist William Primrose to learn the work for an NBC broadcast. Several years later (after leaving the NBC Symphony) Primrose recorded the work commercially with Serge Koussevitsky and the Boston Symphony. Upon hearing that recording, Toscanini became quite agitated and was heard to say "Poor Primrose! Next year he come to play this piece with me again, and he must play correct! This is not correct!"
The problem seemed to be Koussevitsky's nonchalant attitude towards the metronome markings, which in some cases considerably altered Berlioz's tempo relationships. Toscanini took those relationships extremely seriously, and produced in this work a very different kind of effect from that of Koussevitsky. B.H. Haggin was a fervent admirer of Toscanini's conception of Harold in Italy, and noted that the maestro "produced tempos which integrated not only the section of a movement (notably the third) but the movements within the entire work - making the recurring viola melody, for example, move at the same pace in each movement."
True enough. A great deal of expression is contained in tempo relationships, and I think that is an undervalued aspect of taking metronome markings seriously. That is a big part of the wonderful success of this performance.
This 1953 recording was made not with Primrose but with Carlton Cooley, who became principal violist of the NBC Symphony upon Primrose's departure. Cooley was a less polished performer than Primrose, but his understated playing is still quite effective. Harold in Italy is not really a soloist's piece, and the manner of Cooley's performance is suggestive more of an orchestral obligato than as a solo line. Although the work was commissioned to be a concerto (Paganini wanted to show off his viola chops), I think the obligato conception was really more of what Berlioz had in mind. The effect works brilliantly in this performance.
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That's it for Day 77!
Check back tomorrow for some heroic Lutheranism.
Happy Wednesday!
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