Word: maestro
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...appearance of the conductor. But no conductor appeared. The excited audience witnessed an all-but-unheard-of spectacle: the big orchestra began to play to a full house and an empty podium. The group was Arturo Toscanini's famed NBC Symphony, which NBC dropped last spring when the Maestro retired. Superbly trained, the men simply listened carefully to each other as they played, produced music that was perfect in balance, pure in articulation and movement. It sounded as if the Old Sorcerer were there on the podium. When the concert was done, the audience broke into an ovation that...
Schubert: Symphony No. 9 in C (NBC Symphony conducted by Arturo Toscanini; Victor). The dozenth LP of this masterpiece and the second by the Maestro and his men. This one has the advantages of modern recording techniques, and Toscanini, 85 when he made the recording, shows undiminished vigor (the finale whips along like 60). The fancy album leaflet includes an appreciation by Essayist André Maurois...
...opera (composed when he was 79) and his towering masterpiece. Old age robbed Verdi of none of his genius, and at times the Falstaff melodies have all the melting tenderness of Ada or Trovatore. The orchestra trills and chortles in a mischievous manner most of the time, and the Maestro sees to it that every note is dagger-sharp. Although the voices are not all of surpassing beauty, there is enough standout singing to add up to a unique recording...
Dumb Disciples. For the rest, there are serious critiques of Flaubert, Peacock, Leopardi, and personal reminiscences of James Joyce, Franz Kafka. Virginia Woolf, Tolstoy and Oscar Wilde. This section is called Glimpses of Greatness, and Connolly aptly describes it as "a carillon of memories covering a recurring situation, the Maestro in all his simplicity and wisdom garrulously confronting his treacherous dumb disciple...
...prowl as guest conductor, youthful old (79) Maestro Pierre ("Papa") Monteaux, onetime of the San Francisco Symphony (TIME, April 21, 1952), drew rave notices and the season's biggest crowd at a Chicago summer concert. "Beethoven had real prospects as a composer," said he afterwards in his dressing room. "If he had lived longer, he might have fulfilled his promise...