Toscanini: A Collapsed Reputation?

[umslopogaas]

Thinking about the original post, I dont think his reputation has "collapsed", indeed, I think it is still very high, but I do think he has gone out of fashion. The tyrannical, fire-breathing style doesnt suit our more democratic times and I dont think modern musicians would put up with it. And when he was in the ascendant there was much less choice than we have now and he was very heavily promoted. These days he has sort of stepped back to become just one of the great among many others.

RCA certainly did him proud: I dont know how big the complete 1990s 'Artur Toscanini Collection' was, but I've got volume 60 (1946 broadcast of La Traviata): that's a lot of recordings!

[Flosshilde]

Thinking about the original post, I dont think his reputation has "collapsed", indeed, I think it is still very high, but I do think he has gone out of fashion.

& there's a big difference between 'reputation' & 'fashion' - perhaps Mandryka was conflating the two. Did Toscanini appeare in the '100 greatest conductors' piece in the BBC MM?

[Auferstehen2]

Did Toscanini appeare in the '100 greatest conductors' piece in the BBC MM?

Hi Flosshilde!

Yes he did, at a lowly No 8! Above him were, in order, Fürtwangler, Rattle, Harnoncourt, Karajan, Abbado, Bernstein and at number one, Carlos Kleiber.

Mario

[Flosshilde]

Which shows that among his fellow conductors his reputation is still pretty high.

[Roehre]

& there's a big difference between 'reputation' & 'fashion' - perhaps Mandryka was conflating the two. Did Toscanini appeare in the '100 greatest conductors' piece in the BBC MM?

Mengelberg, to name but one other big name, didn't

[Petrushka]

I'm not sure about a collapsed reputation but, as others have said, I do think Toscanini is out of fashion. As time has gone by there are gradually less people around who heard him live. The basis of his present day reputation therefore lies principally with recordings many in compromised sound. Furtwangler has, by contrast seen little, if any, lessening of his own reputation. His great good fortune where posterity is concerned has been the large number of recordings, many of them live, in reasonable even good sound. Couple that with orchestras of the calibre of the VPO and BPO and I think that Furtwangler's reputation is assured.

[tom_960]

It's true that Toscanini's name never springs to my mind when asked about great conductors, but I have his recording of the Missa Solemnis on LP - it's incandescent! By the way, has this piece fallen out of favour in recent years? I seem to recall that it was programmed more frequently in the 70s and maybe 80s than it is now.

[johnb]

Just listening to Toscanini's recording of Saint-Saen's Symphony No 3 on CD. I first got to know this work through a second hand Spanish LP pressing of his recording with the cover almost falling apart, bought in a second hand shop in Tib St, Manchester when I was a teenager.

Boult gave an interval talk during the broadcast of one of Toscanini's performances the Brahms symphonies at the RFH in 1952. It shows both Boult's humility and his high regard for AT:

I expect there are few of you listening to me now who missed the first Toscanini broadcast on Monday. You will have been thrilled by the intense power of performances, by the way they pressed forward relentlessly to their climax and, above all, by the way they sang. I remember his calling out at a rehearsal....'Sing, sing, always sing, even when you are counting your rests.' Those of us who were lucky enough to be present in the Festival Hall for Monday's concert will, I'm sure, never forget it. As Toscanini came onto the platform the entire audience rose to its feet in homage to the great conductor - a homage, needless to say, without a trace of hysteria which came from our hearts and our minds.

After each work, as the applause broke out, Toscanini at once had the Philharmonia Orchestra on its feet and so it was each time he came back. It was indeed only because the orchestra at the end resolutely refused to rise, that we were able, with them, to express our deep appreciation to the Maestro himself.

Tonight we have already heard wonderful performances of the Brahms' Variations on a Chorale of St Anthony and the 3rd Symphony. And, as last Monday, we heard the music bathed in a brilliant light with every detail crystal clear and eloquent in a way we hadn't heard before.

Some people have felt it a pity that the programmes are restricted to Brahms, and some of us might perhaps have preferred the splendid series of mixed programmes that were planned for the opening of the Festival Hall when the Maestro's illness prevented us the pleasure of welcoming him. But I am sure this is part of a definite plan. When Toscanini came to the BBC in 1939, he said he wished to put, as it were, a seal on his previous visits with a complete cycle of Beethoven Symphonies with the Great Mass. Now he goes on to Brahms, a composer for whom he has shown a special sympathy, unusual among his countrymen, for whom he has done much.

The Latin countries were slower than Austria, Germany or England in their reception of Brahms' works as they came out. And Toscanini, both in Italy and elsewhere, did much to further them. When he was still a young man, I remember hearing of his great powers from Alberto Randiger, an Italian who was then one of the leading teachers of singing in London. He said, "He is great, even in the Brahms symphonies".

I've told elsewhere how he interrupted me when I called him great: "No, no, no not that at all, just an honest musician." Well, we have heard how honest and how great besides. And now we are to hear the finest of Brahms' symphonies - the Fourth. I am looking forward with the keenest anticipation to Toscanini's interpretation of this great work; above all to the slow movement and the passcaglia - the final movement. Au revoir, dear Maestro, we want to see and hear you again soon.

[LHC]

Just listening to Toscanini's recording of Saint-Saen's Symphony No 3 on CD. I first got to know this work through a second hand Spanish LP pressing of his recording with the cover almost falling apart, bought in a second hand shop in Tib St, Manchester when I was a teenager.

Boult gave an interval talk during the broadcast of one of Toscanini's performances the Brahms symphonies at the RFH in 1952. It shows both Boult's humility and his high regard for AT:

What an eloquent talk and how marked the contrast with what we can expect during the coming Proms season:

Presenter (as soon as the piece of music ends): Cor that was brilliant. Send us your texts and emails if you loved it too.

[salymap]

Thank you, how wonderful to read Sir Adrian's words about Toscanini. One great man praising another. I have also just learned that when I queued in 1951 for Toscanini tickets for his concerts at the RFH and they ran out just before I got to the box-office it wasn't the disaster I thought it was, as Sir Adrian says Toscanini was ill and didn't appear. I wish I had seen him though.

[Roslynmuse]

What an eloquent talk and how marked the contrast with what we can expect during the coming Proms season:

Presenter (as soon as the piece of music ends): Cor that was brilliant. Send us your texts and emails if you loved it too.

Brilliant. I'm so glad someone else is as irritated by this sort of inanity as I am!

It's even worse when we're being asked to send in texts and emails AS THE MUSIC IS PLAYING to say how much we're loving it......

[Dave2002]

Mengelberg, to name but one other big name, didn't

That BBC MM article was flawed. Look closely at it and you'll discover that it wasn't about the greatest conductors (as it was promoted to be)' but about the conductors who'd had the most influence/impact on present day conductors. Such influence/impact is a diffent thing altogether, and coud also have come from non-musical sources, other kinds of people, religious, political beliefs, looking at beautiful landscapes, or even eating egg and chips,

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

It's even worse when we're being asked to send in texts and emails AS THE MUSIC IS PLAYING to say how much we're loving it......

Absolutely. When my car was being serviced last week, the loan car's radio was one of those that displayed text. As I listened to Afternoon on 3, there was no helpful information, such as what was being played, but a demand that I should e-mail the BBC. They wouldn't like it if I did.

[Barbirollians]

I strongly recommend those Toscanini Brahms symphonies on Testament . As for collapsed reputation - I think that is just nonsense.

[verismissimo]

What a pity it is that Toscanini could not be tempted into the studio so much earlier. As a young man, from 1898, he was principal conductor at La Scala, then of the Met in New York. All his important singers were recorded (Caruso, Alda etc), but he wouldn't go near it. There was so much that was brilliant and new being performed at that time with Toscanini at the centre of much of it - and maybe we would have a different impression of what became a crusty and inflexible older man.