Word: toscaninis
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Special Tribute to Toscanini (Thurs...
...Maestro è morto!" shouted the newsboys in Milan. Everyone understood. To Milan, and to much of the world, there was only one Maestro-Arturo Toscanini. At La Scala, long Toscanini's artistic home, scene of some of his greatest triumphs, a rehearsal for a new opera (by French Composer Francis Poulenc) was hastily called off.. As the musicians went home quietly, one violinist said: "He has gone on golden wings." In Milan's Casa di Riposo, which was founded by Verdi and to which Toscanini contributed, aged singers and musicians started a fast. And at Toscanini...
...Toscanini was dead after a stroke at 89. The short, precisely garbed body lay for two days in the coldly impersonal dignity of a Manhattan funeral parlor on Madison Avenue, and thousands filed past for a look. Along with friends and true admirers came a miscellaneous crowd who might never have heard a note Toscanini played, or who might not be able to tell one note from another, but who were sure that the little man had been a genius. And they were right...
...Toscanini left the mark of his honesty and passion on the conscience of his musical generation, particularly on every artist who ever worked with him-at La Scala, the Metropolitan (1908-15), in the New York Philharmonic-Symphony (1928-36), at Salzburg, at Bayreuth and the NBC Symphony Orchestra (1937-54). Few could define exactly how the little tyrant worked his magic with them. As he hoarsely, ardently sang along with the orchestra, or exhorted, bullied and implored, he could make performers redden with shame, burn with rage, or soften with sympathy for him. And with uncanny and unerring instinct...
Eternal Secrets. Listening to a Toscanini performance contained the same element of surprise as looking at the original of a painting after knowing it only in copies and prints. Faded colors suddenly leaped to life; obscured details became plain; disjointed lines and phrases connected up. No contemporary could match his subtlety of nuance-the exquisite tenderness, the sweetness, the purity; nor could anyone equal his passion and force. Somehow, when the score demanded it, he seemed to coax a bigger volume of sound from a given number of instruments; he could also reduce the same number to a greater degree...