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Toscanini's Final Thoughts About Brahms First

07/18/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"As I said in my review of the complete cycle of commercial Brahms recordings on BMG by Toscanini, this version of the First Symphony, recorded Nov. 6, 1951, is a very famous performance which by now must have sold in the millions of copies. It is slower and more grave than the intense live broadcast of 1943, in very wiry and distorted sound on Music & Arts set No. CD-995. I slightly prefer the 1941 Toscanini 78-rpm recording contained in Vol. 26 of the BMG Toscanini Collection (60277-2-RG) but the fidelity of those old shellac disks is not nearly as fine as the 30 ips high quality taped source for this '51 performance. Toscanini played the piece live on television about the same time, and the video transfer of the old kinescope film is available from BMG home video: the live performance is a bit "warmer".It is a curious fact of history that when Toscanini faultered during his final NBC broadcast of April 4, 1954, the producer and engineer "panicked" in the control room, and switched from the flawed live Wagner performance into the opening movement of this very recording; then after a few seconds (when the Wagner seemed to be going well again) cross-faded back to the live pickup in Carnegie Hall! BOTH Wagner and Brahms must have turned over in their graves!The Hungarian Dances: Nos. 1, 17, 20, and 21 are played in the orchestrations of Brahms and Dvorak, and recorded in super high fidelity sound on tape at Carnegie Hal on February 17, 1953: here is the frisson of the Hungarian element, emphasizing the paprika and not the Central-European schmaltz. Bracing! The Tragic Overture is a live performance from one of the finest of the Maestro's last season of broadcasts, on Nov. 22, 1953 in Carnegie Hall: in very realistic sound, superbly registering the clarity of Toscanini's orchestral sonority, the NBC Symphony members dig very deeply into the heart and soul of this magnificent work. The Academic Festival Overture: from a live NBC radio concert at Studio 8H on November 6, 1948, comes this good-sounding rendition, somewhat lacking in the lyricism and warmth we have come to expect from the piece, but bristling with vigor."