Word: toscanini
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...preeminence of its days under Fritz Reiner (1953-1963) The Solti sound, not the sound of trouble, is the talk of the music world. Indeed there has not been such excitement about a marriage of conductor and orchestra in the U.S. since the golden days of the 1930s when Toscanini led the New York Philharmonic, Stokowski the Philadelphia and Koussevitzky the Boston. In recent years, only George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra have approached the august virtuosity, combustible power and quartet-like intimacy that Solti has established with the Chicago Symphony The advent of Solti in Chicago, as he himself...
Solti is an orchestral architect much in the Toscanini mold. He is not one to pause sentimentally over a favorite melody or chord. The long line is everything. Such basic tools as rhythm and dynamic shading are used to sculpt breathtaking new shapes. His phrasing is at times so tight that it often seems the music is moving more quickly than it actually is. "The things that intrigue me are how to make forms clear," he says, "how to hold a movement together, or if I am conducting opera, how to build an act or a scene." These are traits...
...podium, Solti defies a current vogue: he regularly conducts from a score. That any number of young and not-so-young conductors think they must conduct from memory, he blames on Toscanini: "Why did Toscanini conduct from memory? Because he was nearsighted. Of course, he had that fabulous memory, but that wasn't really why he never used a score. Today we have an entire generation of young conductors who think they must conduct from memory-all because Toscanini was nearsighted. It is total lunacy...
After all, notes a friend, Toscanini is one of Solti's heroes-and he conducted until...
...effect as spiritual experience; as the first nighttime launching, Apollo 17 was a triumph of spectacle. It was also the last manifestation of a wonder of the world, and to see it depart was like taking the last voyage on the Queen Mary or hearing the farewell concert of Toscanini...