Word: toscaninis
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...large, Italians conducted democracy's most vital business, in a holiday spirit tempered by dignity and humor. In Milan, Contessa Castelbarco, Toscanini's eldest daughter Wally (see Music), was the first voter at her polling place in a schoolroom. The lone Communist member of the election board unctuously escorted her out, thanked her for voting. "Thank you," she replied sweetly. "But are you the host...
...rehearsal was over; the guest conductor stepped down from the podium. Said Maestro Toscanini, who had been sitting quietly in a back seat scrutinizing the score: "Now! That man really knows how to play that music ... I play it like a pig!" The little knot of courtiers around Toscanini hastened to assure him that it wasn't so. The old man turned on them with one of his sudden, unpredictable thunderclaps: "Oh, so you think I don't know music?" As he marched off he sputtered: "The trouble with all of you is-you have all been poisoned...
...years now, the "poison" of Arturo Toscanini has been seeping out into the world. Drugged by it, millions of music lovers (and not a few critics) have come to regard all of the Maestro's music with dumb and unquestioning adoration. Certainly he has brought the music of Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner and Verdi to life as no other man has. He is now a white-haired little man of 81, and when a human being reaches that age, his critics, remembering his finer hours, are apt to temper their judgments with mercy...
...need make that kind of apology for Toscanini-and no one ever has. The "poison" that he spreads has only grown more potent and magical with the years. Today, the crowds that choke Manhattan's Radio City on Saturday nights for the Maestro's broadcast concerts hear the music of a man who is without question the greatest living conductor. They also look upon-and this is Toscanini's secret -an incorruptible man in a corruptible world...
...Toscanini, having sweated through his first telecast (TIME, March 29), decided to call off the second one. It was too hot under those lights, he complained. Howls of dismay from disappointed televiewers (and NBC's promise to turn up the studio cooling system) changed the old maestro's mind. At concert time, he appeared with no vest, breezed through Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for a fitting finish to his tenth season with...