Search - Schubert, Toscanini, Phl :: Symphony 9

The Greatest Toscanin Version of the "Great C Major"

07/18/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Critics agree: this is "the" version by Arturo Toscanini of the Schubert "Great C-Major" Symphony (formerly known as the 'Ninth'; sometimes called the Seventh or even the Eight.) There is also a "little C Major" (the Sixth) which Toscanini didn't play, perhaps feeling that the work was too episodic. When this recording was made in a series taken down in 1941-2 in Philadelphia, the original metal "mothers" were apparently damaged by bad chemical processing, so that resultant test pressings had severe hiss as well as innumerable ticks and pops. During Toscanini's lifetime the powerful Philadelphia recordings were not issued, but remakes of the Schubert, done in 1947 and 1953, were issued on 78's, 45's, and LP's. In the early sixties, test pressings were "cleaned up" electronically by John Corbett (who painstakingly spliced out the ticks, one by one, with a razor blade); in the seventies, the disks were reprocessed with a device known as the "Packburn Noise Suppressor" for issue as a multi-disk RCA boxed set. It is that tape which supplies the source for the present BMG CD release. The ticks and pops are mostly gone, and the sound is not seriously deficient, being equal to many well regarded recordings of the 78 rpm era. The performance is, however, better than most: at least one critic has opined that 'listening to it will make a better man of you'; we might update that to say 'person', but we do find indeed that the visceral excitement of Toscanini's powerful conducting style tends to be appreciated more by male listeners than females, in our considerable experience as a broadcaster of Toscanini's recordings. Mengelberg, Furtwaengler, Klemperer, and Bruno Walter offer differing views of this universal piece, and each conductor has his strong advocates. If you are not immune to Toscanini's forceful, aggressive, clipped, severe style, you will certainly be moved and inspired by this towering interpretation."