Search - Arturo Toscanini :: Arturo Toscanini: The Complete RCA Collection

Back by popular demand, The Toscanini Collection is a reissue of RCA's 1992 compendium that encompassed all of the recordings Toscanini made with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and NBC Symphony. A new addition to this amazing collection is his approved recordings with the BBC Symphony from the 1930s that were not included in the 1992 edition. This limited-edition package is the complete RCA Toscanini Collection on 84 CDs plus a bonus DVD, "The Maestro." The deluxe hardcover book contains liner notes by Toscanini biographers Mortimer F. Frank and Michael Stegemann. From the Maestro's acoustic recordings of 1920-21 with La Scala orchestra, to his 1954 retirement, The Toscanini Collection spans all the years in which Toscanini's career veered away from the opera house as it moved exclusively to the concert hall. As with his NBC broadcasts and recordings, the BBC and Philadelphia accounts disprove the specious notion that Arturo Toscanini was always the same from one performance of a given work to the next.
The BBC recordings have special value for occurring in Queen's Hall, acoustically London's finest concert venue. Particularly interesting are three NBC performances of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, two from broadcasts (October 28, 1939 and December 6, 1953), and the third from a 1949 Carnegie Hall recording session. With each performance being somewhat different from the other, they serve as a reminder of how Toscanini was invariably rethinking his approach to a particular work.