Arturo Toscanini

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Arturo Toscanini (March 25, 1867, Parma, Emilia-Romagna – January 16, 1957, New York City) was an Italian musician. He was considered by many of his contemporaries — critics, fellow musicians, and the public alike — as the greatest conductor of his era. He was renowned for his brilliant intensity, his restless perfectionism, his phenomenal ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory which gave him extraordinary command over a vast repertoire of orchestral and operatic works, and allowed him to correct errors in orchestral parts unnoticed for decades by his colleagues.

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Biography

Toscanini was born in Parma, Italy and won a scholarship to the local music conservatory, where he studied cello. He joined the orchestra of an opera company, with which he toured South America in 1886. While presenting Aida in Rio de Janeiro, the orchestra's conductor was booed by the audience and forced to leave the podium. Although he had no conducting experience Toscanini was persuaded to take up the baton, and led a magnificent performance completely by memory. Thus began his career as a conductor at age 19.

Upon returning to Italy, Toscanini participated, as a cellist, in the world premiere of Verdi's Otello (La Scala, 1887) under the composer's supervision. (Verdi, who habitually complained that conductors never seemed interested in directing his scores the way he had written them, was impressed by reports from Boito about Toscanini's ability to interpret his scores; and was also impressed, when Toscanini consulted him personally, by Toscanini's indicating a ritardando where it was not set out in the score, saying that only a true musician would have felt the need to make that ritardando. Verdi apparently never heard Toscanini conduct.) Gradually the young musician's reputation, as an operatic conductor of unusual authority and skill, supplanted the cello; and in the following decade he solidified his career in Italy, entrusted with the world premieres of Puccini's La Boheme and Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci. In 1896 he conducted his first symphonic concert (works by Schubert, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Wagner), in Turin. By 1898 he was resident conductor at La Scala, Milan. He remained there until 1908 and returned during the 1920s. He also had conductorial duties at the Metropolitan Opera, New York (1908–1915) and Bayreuth (1930–1931; he was the first non-German conductor there) as well as with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra (1926–1936) and at the Salzburg Festival (1934–1937). In 1936, he conducted the inaugural concert of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra (now the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra) in Tel Aviv and also performed with this orchestra in Jerusalem, Haifa, Cairo and Alexandria. Strongly opposed to Italian and German fascism, he left Europe for the United States, where in 1937 the NBC Symphony Orchestra was created for him, and with which he performed and toured regularly until 1954 on national radio and television, thus becoming the first conducting superstar of modern mass media. He retired at age 87. On his passing in 1957 in New York at the age of 89, his body was returned to Italy and was interred in the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan.

Toscanini conducted the world premieres of many operas, four of which have become part of the standard operatic repertoire: I Pagliacci, La Bohème, La Fanciulla del West and Turandot. He also conducted the first Italian performances of Siegfried, Die Götterdammerung, Salome, Pelléas et Mélisande, as well as the South American premieres of Tristan und Isolde and Madama Butterfly and the North American premiere of Boris Godunov.

At La Scala, Toscanini pushed through reforms in the performance of opera, having what was then the most modern stage lightning system installed in 1901 and an orchestral pit installed in 1907. He insisted on darkening the lights during performances. As his biographer Harvey Sachs wrote: "He believed that a performance could not be artistically successful unless unity of intention was first established among all the components: singers, orchestra, chorus, staging, sets, and costumes."

In 1933, Toscanini's daughter Wanda married the Russian pianist Vladimir Horowitz.

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Quotes

  • "The conduct of my life has been, is, and will always be the echo and reflection of my conscience."
  • "Gentlemen, be democrats in life but aristocrats in art."
  • (Of the first movement of the Eroica:) "To some it is Napoleon, to some it is a philosophical struggle. To me it is allegro con brio."
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Recorded legacy

Toscanini was especially famous for his magnificent performances of Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Strauss, Debussy and his compatriots Rossini, Verdi, Boito and Puccini. He made many recordings, especially towards the end of his career, many of which are still in print. In addition, there are many recordings available of his broadcast performances, as well as his remarkable rehearsals with the NBC Symphony.

By most accounts, among his greatest recordings are the following:

There are many pieces which Toscanini never recorded commercially; among these, some of the most interesting surviving recordings (off-the-air) include:

  • Mendelssohn, Symphony No. 3 "Scottish" - NBC Symphony Orchestra, 1941
  • Schumann, Symphony No. 2 - NBC Symphony Orchestra, 1946
  • Mussorgsky, Prelude to Khovanschina - NBC Symphony Orchestra, 1953
  • Boito, scenes from Mefistofele and Nerone, La Scala, Milan, 1948 - Boito Memorial Concert.

Many hundreds of hours of rehearsal recordings exist; some of these have circulated in limited edition recordings. Broadcast recordings with other orchestras have also survived, including New York Philharmonic broadcasts from 1932-36, 1942, and 1945; Numerous BBC Symphony Orchestra performances from 1935-1939, Pre-war Lucerne Festival Orchestra concerts, and multiple concerts from appearances with the La Scala orchestra from 1946-1952, including Verdi's Requiem with a young Renata Tebaldi. Moreover, his ten NBC Symphony telecasts survive. They were issued on home video in the 1990s and have been reissued on DVD. They further establish the passionate yet restrained podium manner for which he was acclaimed. A guide to Toscanini's recording career can be found in Mortimer H. Frank, 'From the Pit to the Podium: Toscanini in America' in International Classical Record Collector (1998) 15 8-21 and Christopher Dyment, 'Toscanini's European Inheritance' in International Classical Record Collector (1988) 15 22-8.

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Books about Toscanini

  • Toscanini, Harvey Sachs (Da Capo Press, 1978), the best biography by far
  • Contemporary Recollections of the Maestro, BH Haggin (Da Capo Press, 1989), a reprint of Conversations with Toscanini and The Toscanini Musicians Knew
  • Reflections on Toscanini, Harvey Sachs (Prima Publishing, 1993)
  • The Letters of Arturo Toscanini, ed. Harvey Sachs (Knopf, 2003)
  • This Was Toscanini, Samuel Antek, musician, and Robert Hupka, photographer (Vanguard Press, 1963, o.p.)
  • Arturo Toscanini: The NBC Years, Mortimer H. Frank (Amadeus Press, 2002)
  • Understanding Toscanini, Joseph Horowitz, (Knopf, 1987) - a *highly* slanted polemic.
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External links

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See also

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