For today I listened to Toscanini's final Eroica, and a very broad Lutheran canvas.
Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 - December 6th, 1953
Here we come to the last of Toscanini's many performances of the Eroica. At the dress rehearsal for this broadcast the maestro turned to his orchestra to ask for the Marcia funebre one more time, "just for me." It seems Toscanini had a feeling this would be his last time conducting this music. This is not my favorite Toscanini recording, or even my favorite Toscanini recording of the Eroica. But it is a moving document of a master conductor playing one of his favorite works for the final time.
What made Toscanini such an ideal conductor for the Eroica was his refusal to follow the tradition of "monumental" interpretations of the symphony that transformed it into a weighty utterance of misguided grandeur. I would like to quote Michael Steinberg one last time (as I've done for the other two Toscanini Eroicas), as he puts into words so brilliantly what I have flailingly tried to paraphrase for years now:
"We would do well at this point to remember that we are not likely to find it 'unusual and fantastic' either - which, if so, is very much our loss. When it comes to maintaining a sense of the 'unusual and fantastic' or just of freshness, we are not much helped by conductors, particularly the ones whose attitude of reverence and awe before A Great Classic leads them into 'monumental' tempi at which the length of the work easily becomes 'inordinate', if not 'unendurable'. Of course the rare conductor of genius like Furtwängler or Klemperer can make a convincing case for a 'monumental' Eroica. More valuable by far is the fiery performance - at Beethoven's tempi or something close to them - that can give us an experience like the one the audience in the Theater an der Wien in 1805 must have had, that of an electrifying, frightening encounter with revolution, with a force sufficient to blast doors and windows out of the room. Once in a while that happens, but it is rare. Too rare."
Toscanini's finest Eroica, the broadcast of 1939, is a perfect example of Steinberg's "electrifying, frightening encounter with revolution," and is for me one of the very greatest recordings ever made of any work. His subsequent Eroicas are no slouches, however, and there are still many beauties to be found in this autumnal document in Toscanini's discography. Robert C. Marsh evens calls this 1953 recording "one of the indispensable Toscanini discs." I agree to some extent, although I feel its importance lies primarily in the opportunity it affords to experience Toscanini's conception of the Eroica in high-quality sound.
Although Toscanini's electrifying take on this symphony is still evident, the tempos are now steadier than in his earlier recordings. The maestro admitted to B.H. Haggin that the ebb and flow of older performances was in part a nod to Germanic tradition, and that in his old age he no longer felt the need for that. This would likely account for the more classical proportions of the 1953 Eroica, but it still contains a great deal of charged energy - the old boy still had some life in him.
It is true that the 1939 recording had more rubato than in 1953, but the ebb and flow was never disruptive to the musical line. That is what made Toscanini such a towering giant of musical interpretation when he was at his best: his extraordinary ability to elicit a plastic flexibility to tempo that always maintained the impression of steady momentum. Whether due to sagging powers of control or by choice (as the conductor's admission to B.H. Haggin might indicate), Toscanini had moved on from that style by his last year. The result is still extremely impressive both from an intellectual and visceral standpoint. but this is not Toscanini's best work. For that we must turn to an earlier and more ancient-sounding source.
Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 5 - December 13th, 1953
I was raised a Lutheran, and I know Lutheran musical interpretation when I hear it. This is an amazingly Lutheran-sounding performance of the Reformation Symphony from the hands of an Italian Catholic.
Like Death and Transfiguration, the Reformation Symphony is a work many of Toscanini's admirers feel was an unworthy score for the maestro to lavish his attention on. Robert C. Marsh, for example, feels that "the stately thumping-out of chorales and bits of chorales and the less than flamingly inspired material that connects them rather pompous and dull." But Toscanini's interpretation was not the problem. Mortimer H. Frank notes that "Toscanini's unorthodox approach to the Reformation Symphony - characterized by a fiery opening movement, a graceful, lilting second movement, and a uniquely expansive finale in which the perorational "Ein feste Burg" is stunningly dramatic and grand - transformed a potentially second-rate score into a potent masterpiece."
That is certainly an apt description of Toscanini's recording. It is an exceptionally broad performance marked with an expansive sensibility more associated with conductors like Furtwängler. I like it very much, though I doubt that it is how Mendelssohn would have conducted it. The tempo for the last movement is objectively too slow in my view, but there is a monumental grandeur and beauty to Toscanini's interpretation that makes it extremely compelling.
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That's it for Day 78!
Check back tomorrow for an evening at a masked ball that may be located in Stockholm or Boston. Please rsvp.
Happy Thursday!
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