Giuseppe VERDI (1813-1901)
Requiem (1874) [83.50]
Te Deum (1874) [15.58]
Zinka Milanov (soprano), Bruna Castagna (mezzo), Jussi Björling
(tenor), Nicola Moscona (bass)
Westminster Choir, NBC Symphony Orchestra/Arturo Toscanini
rec. Carnegie Hall, New York, 23 November 1940
MUSIC AND ARTS CD1269(2) [56.58 + 42.51]
Toscanini would have had no truck with the modern
tendency, going back as far as Giulini, to treat the Verdi Requiem
as a spiritual work which stands apart from the composer’s operatic
catalogue. His performances had a full-blooded Italian approach with
plenty of drama and passion. Indeed the first recording of the Verdi
Requiem that I ever heard was the 1951 Toscanini version in the
RCA transfer to LP, so this earlier 1940 performance has considerable
personal attraction for me. In an extremely revealing and frank discussion
of this recording in a note written in 1986 for an earlier transfer
for this same label, Harvey Sachs draws attention to a number of faults
and errors in the performance. He also claims, rightly, that the reading
of the score we are given here is preferable to the later 1951 recording.
In this excellent new re-mastering the sound is every bit as good as
in the version made eleven years later.
Sachs lists a number of mistakes in the live performance which he suggests
may have militated against issue during Toscanini’s lifetime.
Following the performance with a score, I could identify every one of
these; but it has to be said that most of the sins are venial ones,
and would pass almost unnoticed if one were listening without such a
reference. The only two exceptions are the early entry of Zinka Milanov,
dragging some of the chorus in her wake, just nineteen bars before the
end - obviously the performers were getting tired and careless at the
end of an exhausting evening. The other problem is Milanov’s highly
suspect and rather unpleasantly strained top B flat at the end of the
unaccompanied passage in the Libera me - surprising for a singer
who was renowned for her ability to float high quiet notes. There are
other slips by both Björling and Moscona, but as observed they
could pass almost unnoticed.
Another reason, not mentioned by Sachs, why Toscanini might have been
reluctant to approve the recording for issue is that the singing of
the Westminster Choir is decidedly less assured than that of the Robert
Shaw Chorale in the 1951 performance. The tenors in particular are weak
at several key points, and when the recording itself is otherwise so
clear one cannot blame the engineers. There are some nice touches, such
as the extremely quiet singing at the return of the words Requiem
aeternam in the opening movement like an echo of the very beginning;
but by and large the later performance has more body insofar as the
choral singing is concerned. However in the earlier performance Toscanini
allows more give-and-take, more rubato, in the rhythms, and this
benefits the music and gives the singers more room to expand.
The soloists are a mixed bunch, but generally preferable to those in
the 1951 recording. Milanov, her sins in the final movement set aside,
is more secure and involved than Herva Nelli was later; and Jussi Björling
has a stronger vocal presence than Giuseppe di Stefano - and benefits
from Toscanini’s more relaxed approach to the Ingemisco.
Bruno Castagna and Nicola Moscona are both good solid singers, even
if not particularly imaginative, but their counterparts in the later
recording are no significant improvement. The NBC studio sound in 1951
was notoriously dry; here the recorded sound from the Carnegie Hall
obviously benefits from a more natural acoustic, but the close positioning
of the microphones, while it enables us to hear plenty of detail, in
places more than in 1951, robs the sound of some of the ambience of
the venue itself.
The performance runs out at just over the length of a single CD. Among
more modern recordings, Richard Hickox manages to squeeze the work onto
one disc by virtue of faster speeds. The two CDs here are offered for
the price of one, and we are given a bonus in the shape of a rather
brash performance of the Te Deum given as a curtain-raiser at
the same concert.
More modern recordings in the Toscanini tradition of all-out operatic
fervour are best exemplified by Solti’s 1968 recording made in
Vienna, which has a better-balanced and more starry team of soloists
(Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne, Luciano Pavarotti and Martti Talvela)
than either of the Toscanini recordings discussed here. Those who wish
to encounter the tradition in its original form are well served by this
performance. The sound, as Harvey Sachs observes, is “obviously
not up to present-day engineering standards” but at the same time
in the new re-mastering it sounds more recent than its original provenance
would suggest. I have heard recordings from the late 1950s which sound
no better than this. The set is best summed up by Sachs’s comment:
“We are unlikely ever to hear a more overwhelming performance
of the work than this one - ever.”
Paul Corfield Godfrey
