A thoroughly modern maestro
Record Review’s Andrew Mcgregor explores RCA’S box of essential recordings by the great Arturo Toscanini
Toscanini was for many the first modern maestro, with his piercing glare, superstar status and formidable reputation for uncompromising standards and fiery rehearsals. Right from the earliest Victor recordings in 1920 with his La Scala players on tour in America, you can hear a surprisingly contemporary orchestral sound, so it’s a pity none of those first documents appear in this anniversary compilation (RCA 88985376042). The earliest things here are from Toscanini’s 1929 sessions with the New York Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall, when he was already 62 years old, and with a more natural balance than some of his later studio sessions. Even through the hiss and clicks, Haydn’s Clock Symphony is full of life, Mozart’s Haffner full-blooded and exuberant. His Beethoven is vivid and muscular.
Toscanini’s relationship with the Philadelphia Orchestra begins with their recording sessions in 1941 and a magnificently stern reading of Schubert’s Ninth Symphony, as well as one of the great recordings of Respighi’s Roman Festivals. Toscanini conducted the premiere in 1929, and the colour, energy and authority are impressive.
Toscanini the opera conductor is well served by the set. His personal connection with Verdi is properly made, with the last act of Rigoletto from a 1944 Red Cross Concert. It’s brilliantly cast, beautifully controlled and delivering a sense of intense despair that’s rarely been equalled. Then there’s Otello: Toscanini was a cellist at the La Scala premiere in 1887, and 60 years on conducts a white-hot reading that’s very special. Toscanini conducted the premiere of Puccini’s La bohème in 1896, and the NBC broadcast 50 years later is wonderfully brisk, fresh and cleareyed. The complete Gluck Orfeo from 1952 is less compelling, but the Wagner excerpts are essential.
I still want the rest of Respighi’s Roman trilogy, more of the 1939 Beethoven cycle and Toscanini’s concerto recordings with Heifetz and Rubinstein. Some of the best transfers and radio recordings are elsewhere: Guild, Naxos and Pristine should be next on your list. But as an anniversary starter set, this will do very nicely indeed. the Ulster Orchestra (Hyperion), with the mercurially brilliant Marc-andré Hamelin. But Alsop and her colleagues are reliable guides to Bernstein the emerging, unconventional symphonist.
Toscanini’s reading of Verdi’s Otello is white-hot