Word: toscanini
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Over drinks in the Carnegie Hall bar it is still possible to stir a lively argument as to whether Toscanini was really as great as all that. Now a fascinating new record titled Memorial Tribute to Arturo Toscanini proves once again that he was. His critics often maintain that he was off base in the German classical repertory, and that he tried to turn Beethoven into Verdi...
Throughout the rehearsal sessions, Toscanini's voice can be heard explaining, correcting, cajoling, scolding. Sometimes, when he attempts to convey his feelings for the music, language fails him. "Mozart," he cries, "must be allegro. It must smile! Allegro not only with the tempo but with this!"-and he resoundingly slaps his face. At times he speaks like a counseling father: "I don't believe that to be a great man one needs to play only Wagner or Beethoven. Play also Traviata as you are best able to play. I like this music as I like Mozart...
...Toscanini's absorption in the music is nowhere better demonstrated than when he raises his cracked old voice in song. During the Traviata rehearsals he is sometimes the ardent young Alfredo, singing the aria De' miei bollenti spiriti, sometimes the gravely dignified Germont, making his moving plea to Violetta-Pura sic-come un angelo. In the most fascinating section of all, the old man launches into Violetta's famed Sempre libera, sounding hoarse, wildly off key, but somehow convincing in the aria's feverish abandon...
...Hitler Germany, who fled to London in 1933, taking with him a 7-ft. by 6-ft. candelabrum whose gracefully weaving branches support a group of Biblical characters, a piece that eventually won him acclaim in England and the chance to do powerful busts of such notables as Arturo Toscanini and Winston Churchill; in London...
...album cover is a red sticker emblazoned with the record pitchman's call: "30 Complete Selections on 2 LPs, Regularly $9.98, Special Only $3.98." Inside is a strange mixture of musical candies: Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy singing Indian Love Call, Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony playing the Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin. Perez Prado, Tommy Dorsey and Perry Como rub grooves with Enrico Caruso, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Leopold Stokowski...