Word: toscaninis
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Target: Toscanini. Victim of O'Connell's fiercest blast is Conductor Arturo Toscanini. The Maestro seen here is ill-natured, stubborn, suspicious, resentful. The reason for O'Connell's dislike is soon apparent: Toscanini once informed RCA Victor that he would make no records while Director O'Connell was present...
Most readers will wish that they could hear Toscanini's side of the record. Writes O'Connell: "Toscanini loves no one. On his sleeve he wears not his heart but his spleen. . . . I think Mr. Toscanini has had a baneful effect on musical beliefs and standards in America. . . . His conception [of Bach's St. Matthew Passion] revealed him as a man of exquisite, ineffable, and almost infallible vulgarity-a peculiarly Italianate and melodramatic and theatrical vulgarity, exposed in a variety of musical horrors...
...work, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, not heard in Symphony Hall since 1945, seemed almost anti-climactic. The reading was quite straightforward and warm, outside of an unnecessarily funereal second movement, and great care was spent on fine details; but the fire and urgency that sweep everything before them when Toscanini plays this favorite, were somehow lacking...
...Arturo Toscanini had broken into his vacation to conduct the première himself. At rehearsal with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, he seemed to be having the time of his life. Don Gillis' new Symphony for Fun was the kind of thing the maestro could let himself go on. On the podium, he swayed, sang, all but strutted a cakewalk. Once the Toscanini temper flared up-when the xylophonist floundered over a particularly tricky passage. In the studio control room, Composer Gillis watched the struggling xylophonist, whispered to a companion: "Poor guy. Doesn't he realize that...
...music of whimsical, young (35) Don Gillis was getting a hearing partly because of a whim of Toscanini's. For three years, Gillis had been NBC's Producer of Symphony Programs. On the side he has written 42 compositions, most of them earnest but light things. Some, out & out musical gags, bore such titles as Thoughts Provoked on Becoming a Prospective Papa. Toscanini, who sometimes likes to indulge his ability to make a 24-hour sensation out of a young musician, announced that he would play a piece...