On 4 April 1954 Arturo Toscanini gave his final public concert
with the orchestra that had been especially created for him by
the American broadcasting network NBC. He died less than three
years later on 16 January 1957. The following month saw the memorial
concert recorded on this disc, given by the Symphony of the Air
(Toscanini’s old NBC orchestra but since gone freelance and renamed).
Sharing duties on the podium were three guest conductors of the
highest profile, all Europeans who, like Toscanini himself, had
spent much of their careers conducting US orchestras.
I
imagine that it was a difficult situation for Walter, Munch
and Monteux. All were to conduct pieces that Toscanini had loved
and of which he had made acclaimed recordings. So how ought
they to approach the task? Should they to attempt to replicate
the typical Toscanini fingerprints that made his accounts of
these scores so distinctive and unforgettable? Or was the best
way of paying tribute to the late maestro to offer up
their own personal interpretations instead?
Each
was working with Toscanini’s old orchestra that he had rigorously
honed to the highest degree of virtuosity during 15 years at
the helm. And, given that the Symphony of the Air had suffered
surprisingly few personnel changes in the process of going independent,
it would be quite surprising if the guest conductors’ performances
were also not at least slightly influenced thereby. But, as
one might expect with experienced conductors of this calibre,
each still had a distinctive way of paying personal tribute
and one of the most interesting aspects of these discs lies
in seeing exactly how each man chose to do so.
It
is instructive, for instance, to compare this Eroica with
the studio recording that Bruno Walter made just two years later
with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, a pick-up band with many
members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in its ranks. The broader
differences are quite marked, with the earlier memorial account
far leaner and livelier. The 1959 studio performance is more
elegant, restrained and generally mellow and, while it is true
that Walter had suffered a major heart attack between
the two performances, his even older recorded accounts from
the 1940s are similar in approach to 1959’s. Thus the 1957 memorial
concert Eroica is clearly the odd one out. Getting down
to more specific details, in 1957 Walter was to incorporate
a number of characteristic Toscanini fingerprints along with
plenty of his own (both categories are thoroughly listed in
expert commentator Harris Goldsmith’s fascinating booklet notes).
But, once again, those Toscanini-isms are unique to 1957 and
had disappeared by 1959.
La
Mer was,
without question, a Toscanini favourite. From 1926 until his
retirement he conducted it more than any other piece of music
– 32 times with the New York Philharmonic, 18 with his NBC orchestra,
three times with the Philadelphia Orchestra, twice with the
BBC Symphony Orchestra and once with the Vienna Philharmonic.
It was therefore an obvious choice for the 1957 memorial concert.
Surviving recordings document how Toscanini’s approach to La
Mer became somewhat broader and more deliberate in his later
years. Charles Munch’s interpretation, meanwhile, was moving
in parallel, with even greater increases in timings for each
movement between, say, his sprightly Paris Conservatoire Orchestra
recording of 1942 and his well-known 1956 studio recording with
the Boston Symphony Orchestra. But, as the following statistics
make very clear, Munch’s generally slower tempi for the Toscanini
memorial concert were even more marked:
|
Toscanini,
Philadelphia Orchestra, 1942
|
Toscanini,
NBC SO, 1950
|
Munch,
Boston SO, 1956
|
Munch,
Symphony of the Air, 1957
|
1.
De l’aube à midi sur la mer
|
8:10
|
8:41
(6.3% longer than 1942)
|
8:39
|
9:18
(7.5% longer than 1956)
|
2.
Jeux des vagues
|
6:20
|
6:37
(4.4% longer than 1942)
|
6:13
|
6:50
(7.5% longer than 1956)
|
3.
Dialogue du vent et de la mer
|
7:39
|
7:48
(2% longer than 1942)
|
7:55
|
8:02
(1.5% longer than 1956)
|
The
interesting point here is that, if Munch had given the same
performance at the memorial concert that he’d given in the recording
studio the previous year, he would actually have been far closer
to the timings of Toscanini’s own La Mer in the 1950s.
It is almost as though that, by slowing down even more in 1957
than he had done in 1956, he was acknowledging the spirit of
the late maestro’s music making rather than its precise letter.
Thus, thanks again to the existence of a relatively contemporaneous
studio performance, Munch can be seen giving - like Bruno Walter
- a Toscanini memorial performance that he makes strikingly
and appropriately different from the one he was wont to give
elsewhere at the time.
That
brings us to Pierre Monteux and the Enigma Variations.
Elgar himself set down a benchmark interpretation with the London
Symphony Orchestra in 1926. It is relatively urgent, fleet of
foot and utterly unsentimental (even though the LSO violins’
portamento can misleadingly create an impression to the
contrary). Toscanini’s performance of 1953 offers a similarly
brisk account. Monteux, though, appearing to pander less to
the expectations of the 1957 memorial concert than either Walter
or Munch, offers us a distinct, individual reading of his own,
well up there in impact and memorability – though understandably
not in recording quality – with his much acclaimed Decca studio
recording with the LSO. Nimrod, appropriately enough,
clocks in at a very mournful 3:51 on this occasion, compared
with 3:16 for Toscanini in 1950 and a mere 2:53 for the composer
himself. Any similarity to Toscanini in this performance comes,
as Harris Goldsmith suggests, primarily from hearing what was
essentially still the old NBC Symphony Orchestra playing once
again in the familiar acoustic of Carnegie Hall.
Finally
we come to the extras – Tchaikovsky, Berlioz and Wagner recorded
in early (but good) stereo sound by the Symphony of the Air
after Toscanini’s retirement but while he was still alive. These
performances were set down a month before the works were repeated
at the orchestra’s inaugural public concert and were similarly
given without a conductor (concertmaster Daniel Guilet took
charge of ensuring co-ordinated tempi). I enjoyed these recordings
a great deal. Even though the conductor-less approach can understandably
lead to rather stately tempi at times, with Nuremburg’s
burghers appearing to be even more musically pompous than usual,
we are still obviously in the presence of a great and still
very capable orchestra. It is therefore sad to note that, in
spite of going on to work with many top-flight conductors and
soloists, the Symphony of the Air was pretty quickly crippled
by debt and folded within a decade of its foundation.
Many
commentators would claim that music-making in the USA was at
a peak in the 1950s. It is certainly true that there were many
other conductors – Szell, Reiner and Stokowski, to name a putative
second trio – who could have given no doubt equally commanding
performances in memory of their great peer. This very enjoyable
disc, in surprisingly good sound, thus offers an excellent commemoration
not only of the great Arturo Toscanini himself but also of a
great era of music-making.
Rob Maynard
Symphony of
the Air/Bruno Walter (Beethoven) 
