Word: maestro
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...skill, won the world's reverent respect. Last week admirers by the thousands were gathering to honor him at the annual Casals Festival, this year being held in San Juan, Puerto Rico. But for the first time since the festivals began in Prades, France in 1950, El Maestro was not on hand to greet them...
...less, to British Cartoonist Gerard Hoffnung, who for years has been satirizing the music business. In his cartoons, tubby Artist Hoffnung has created a wonderfully zany world-the bass fiddler peers from behind his instrument through a periscope; an old huge-wheeled bicycle becomes a harp; the phrenetic maestro sharpens his baton with a pencil sharpener. Purpose of the Hoffnung concert (recorded at London's Royal Festival Hall with a full symphony orchestra and some of Britain's leading musicians) was to translate the cartoons into sound. The result is spectacular, in a sort of highbrow Spike Jones...
...Maestro's last word on Aïda ranks with his recording of Verdi's Otello and Falstaff as his operatic testament. The NBC Symphony plays with brilliant coloring and syllable-sharp instrumental detail ; the singers-some less than top drawer-are whipped almost beyond their powers to high moments of musical exaltation. The Met's Tucker, singing the full dramatic tenor role of Radames for the first time, has big, ringing power when he needs it, joined to a fervent, melting lyricism. Titian-haired Herva Nelli, Toscanini's favorite soprano, sings perhaps the finest...
...estimates that there are some 30 other approved recordings in Riverdale, among them the complete Romeo and Juliet music of Berlioz and the Second and Fourth symphonies of Sibelius. The recordings are the fruits of a plan RCA Victor worked out with Walter Toscanini in 1954 to get the Maestro to approve or disapprove every scrap of his music recorded since 1937, when the NBC Symphony was formed...
...performances had to be altered, either by making electronic changes in the sound or by splicing several tapes together. Walter Toscanini collected up to a dozen tapes of each Toscanini-conducted piece, some of them taken at rehearsal, some at the performance, some over the radio by fans. The Maestro listened to every taped version, gave qualified approval to the most acceptable, and indicated what passages from other versions he wanted substituted. In some cases he demanded only one or two inserts. But before he would approve a performance of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto in F, engineers...