Search - Mozart, Toscanini, NBC :: Symphonies 39-41

Ascetic, Driven 39 & 41; Better 40th Symphony

10/04/1998

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The gem in this recording is the famous Toscanini interpretation of the G-Minor Symphony, taken down at Studio 8H on 78s in March of 1938 and February of 1939: not in the creamy quality of sound supplied for the postwar 1950 taping on Vol. 29 of the same BMG Toscanini Collection, it has the colder harshness evident on many Toscanini 78 disks that were later re-recorded in high fidelity. The performance benefits from the first movement exposition repeat, which Bruno Walter eschewed (if memory serves, as he did in the Walter broadcast with the NBC in 1940.) The ensemble is smoother and more secure than in the historic first Toscanini concert of 1937, and there is considerable expression of feeling, along with interpretative touches that seem old-fashioned today: heavy, legato phrasing of the main subject of the Allegro Molto opening movement, tempo rubato, and italicizing of certain lyrical phrases. My own favorite Toscanini performance is the 1946 broadcast, not generally issued on LP or CD, followed at some distance by the last reading, done in Carnegie Hall on March 21, 1953 (for which one must pay for the two-disk set of the complete Salzburg "Magic Flute", a terrible recording.) But this 1938/9 composite is very successful in its own right, if the crudeness of sound does not put off the modern listener (IM distortion in the upper midrange is very evident, for example, in the first and fourth movements.)The March 6, 1948 broadcast of the E-Flat Symphony No. 39 is to my ears a near-failure: Toscanini is utterly unyielding in his forward drive, plays as few repeats as possible, and is in one of his "ascetic" moods. The sound is much cleaner than the earlier G-Minor, but not more spacious. Compare the acoustical La Scala Orchestra disk of the delightfully relaxed and swaggering account of the Minuet and Trio with the "forced march" of Caesar's legions as heard in this '48 broadcast, and you will hear how the earlier, central European influenced conducting style of the Maestro has been smoothed and streamlined into his later rigid manner. It is a pity that he did not play this work in one of the last NBC broadcasts in 1953-4, when many of his readings had again broadened.The Jupiter symphony is completely inferior to the 1940 NBC broadcast (on Music & Arts CD-833 in somewhat bassy audio quality), being a reading that presses the tempi of the work about as far to the fastest possible articulation in the final movement as can be achieved by an orchestra of human players (or perhaps even beyond it!) In 1940, Maestro seemed to be enjoying the grand work, revelling in its pomp and elegance; in 1945, he is plowing his way inexorably toward the finish line. The sound of this Carnegie Hall original 78 rpm recording is much more natural than the fifties LP pressing, resembling more the vinyl 45 rpm edition I once owned: yet one might wish to boost the lows and reduce the mid-range during playback. Severe audio peak compression has been applied during the engineering of the masters, diminishing the conductor's discrimination of musical dynamics. In that regard, the 1938/9 G-minor symphony recording is more natural."

Plenty of Problems, to be sure - But What Moments!

Doug - Haydn Fan | California | 08/29/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Toscanini has never received his due as a Mozart conductor. Things got so bad even the good maestro himself doubted his ability. In his lifetime it was always someone else who people turned to for the finest Mozart conducting, Bruno Walter, or Fritz Busch, or even Thomas Beecham.

Now that time has passed instead of playing meaningless ratings games we can concentrate on what Toscanini brought that was special and unique to Mozart performance.

One thing immediately leaps out - Toscanini had an incredible sense for the dance, and the folk rhythms always an intergral part of the dance. A perfect example of this remarkable skill in leadership can be heard quite clearly in the rightness of his opening of The Moldau, where following the great prelude Toscanini instantly finds just the right accents for the opening stepping out of Smetana's slavonic dance theme.

This often unerring feel for a musical phrase can also be heard at the beginning of the last movement of the 41st, the famous Jupiter concluding movement, Mozart's last essay in the symphony. Where excellent moderns such as MacKerras (who may be a little too old to label a modern!) carefully open with a balanced swelling of sound, starting without too much attack, Toscanini creates a sudden explosion of musical ideas - I've never heard anyone achieve anything quite like the huge dance-like swaggering kick he lifts up from beneath the very busy sounds of the frantic string-playing. No one else captures to this extent the rollicking fun of this moment - fun and Toscanini in Mozart? Well, maybe I'm streching it a bit there - but certainly great enthusiasm as well as Toscanini's signature energy!

Touches like this abound throughout these performances. If Toscanini often sounds too driven, a disturbing problem with several performances made at this time near the end of World War II, there remain pluses to such a strong-willed and atypical approach to Mozart: a wealth of beautiful and heroic Mozartian conceptions, realized beyond what all but a few others have found in this music.

Toscanini's 40th is a perfect example of the searching attention he payed to small musical figures, the importance he gave to the tapestry of counterpoint Mozart the billard player effortlessly runs throughout his movements. And after Furtwangler's enormously scaled reading of the 40th, I find Toscanini's take fascinating - greatly concerned with the interplay of Mozart's cleverly differentiated melodies - not at the view of some that Toscanini's every Mozart performance was a rushed hurry-through by a control freak.

Toscanini was a supremely gifted conductor, who was also an extremely self-demanding person. If he fails in Mozart it is still much to our advantage not to discard his struggles; by doing so we underestimate and miss what he does achieve.

For many long time modern listners the finest versions of these symphonies will be those of Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. Szell frequently was and has been touted as Toscanini-like. In truth, Szell is a more literal conductor, one rarely given to Toscanini's excesses, but also one incapable of his real glories. In the end we listen to old recordings such as these with their 'problems' because they can at times reveal heroic scales of art not encountered in our own safer age, one uncomfortable with the epic and overreaching visions as lacking in a full human perspective. I think that is a misreading of Toscanini and his own purpose and belief in art, and his music-making."