Word: barbirollis
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...group which could not view the return of Toscanini with unmixed emotions was the orchestra he made great. Without him, the Philharmonic-Symphony has managed to maintain its U. S. supremacy under the vigorous baton of young John Barbirolli and assorted guest conductors like Georges Enesco and Igor Stravinsky. With Toscanini back, in command of the first-desk orchestral talent which rich NBC already has and can add to, there will be in the land another competitor for symphonic supremacy, with the continent instead of Carnegie Hall for its auditorium...
...successor, Georges Enesco, more to their taste. They clapped warmly when the burly, bigheaded Rumanian walked awkwardly onto the stage of Carnegie Hall to lead the Philharmonic for the first time in his life. Stoop-shouldered and serious, Georges Enesco showed in his conducting neither the agility of Barbirolli nor the machine regularity of Stravinsky. But nobody could doubt Enesco's knowledge of the orchestra, his anxious and humble devotion to the scores...
...piano concertos. He looked unimpressive, shy as a rabbit. But before he had got through many bars everyone realized his extraordinary talent. When he finished the first concerto the audience clapped and cheered wildly. Toscanini stepped back among the musicians and applauded with them. Last week young John Barbirolli, 37, brought back young Bohemian-born Rudolf Serkin, 33, for a second New York performance that all but eclipsed his first...
Well aware how much on trial he was, Conductor Barbirolli led off with an ornamental curtain-raiser, Berlioz's Roman Carnival Overture. The audience, at once soothed by his meticulous phrasing, his insistence on broad, full tones, was no less impressed by his physical resource. Planting his feet widely, chin down, Conductor Barbirolli swayed his shoulders delicately through the lyrical passages, hunched forward to demand a pianissimo, twitched his kinetic torso and wagged his flying tails to call for quickened tempi. He guided the orchestra carefully through the tenebrous but imitative twilights of a symphonic poem by Arnold...
Conductor Barbirolli earned better marks, and easily passed his New York entrance examination with a suave Mozart symphony and a heroic Brahms Fourth, wherein New York Times Critic Olin Downes discovered "virility, grip, lyrical opulence, and on occasion the impact of the bear's paw." Said the New York Herald Tribune's, Lawrence Oilman: "He has disclosed himself as a musician of taste and fire and intensity, electric, vital, sensitive, dynamic, experienced; as an artist who knows his way among the scores he elects to set before us, who has mastered not only his temperament but his trade...