Word: toscanini
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...cleanly trained, 185-voice Collegiate Chorale. Their recorded performances of Bach rank with the best in Europe. About the only time he gets all his 185 singers together is when the Chorale puts on its own concerts in Carnegie Hall or does Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with Toscanini...
...rehearsal, he is temperamental: his moods vary from the fire-&-ice meticulosity of Toscanini to the feverish, flop-haired semaphoring and exuberance of a college cheerleader. Says he: "I'm ashamed of myself after every rehearsal. I think you can only inspire a group when you have their respect, and they only respect dignity-but their slowness sometimes disgusts me and I forget myself...
...appreciative words seemed quite adequate to the task. But the New York Times's Critic' Olin Downes tried. Toscanini's radio performance of Otello, he wrote,'was "a performance literally unsurpassable, or indeed to be equaled in the hearing of this generation. . . . Mr. Toscanini achieved a reading of this great score which represented the summit of his own interpretive powers...
Like all broadcasts, when it was over, it had vanished with the wind. NBC had recorded the program for its files, but Toscanini was not likely to let such a version-with studio coughs and occasional minor imperfections of playing-be released to the public. Toscanini, who is now 80, had agreed to record full-length operas for RCA Victor, but had still to make the first one, La Traviata. And with the Petrillo recording ban only ten days away, it was likely to be some time before he got around...
Once, in rehearsal, Toscanini directed his scorn at big-voiced Chilean Tenor Ramon Vinay, who has done the role of Otello at the Met. Said Toscanini: "Haven't you ever been in love? You have to be persuasive and gentle in love-even if she is your wife...