Word: toscaninis
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...Golden West (Carla Gavazzi, soprano; Ugo Savarese, baritone; Vasco Campagnano, tenor, and others; chorus and orchestra of Radio Italiana, Arturo Basile conducting; Cetra-Soria, 6 sides LP). Puccini's "western" may have been rip-roaring stuff at its premiere at the Met in 1910, with Caruso singing and Toscanini conducting, but it sounds pretty flat now. Performance and recording: good...
...mother switched him from piano to flute ("so I would stand out"), Willson has just about run the musical gamut. At 17, he was playing flute and piccolo in Sousa's band; at 21 he was tootling the same instruments in the New York Philharmonic-Symphony under Toscanini. He started conducting when a bandleader friend offered to perform his Parade Fantastique, but told him he would have to lead it himself...
...sacrifices objectivity for color ("Chausson . . . is furniture of chromium and pigskin"), sometimes for a personal prejudice ("Roy Harris' concerto has all the virtues of Brahms and none of the faults"). But most of his evaluations are well-reasoned, well-illustrated, and well-founded, whether they are on a Toscanini concert or a ragtime revival...
...final concert of the season, members of the small, invited Carnegie Hall audience wanted to break this year's Toscanini-broadcast rule against applause. Toscanini anticipated the thought, saw to it that the audience was given a special warning to stick to the rule. After the hour-long program of Debussy, Respighi and Elgar, he walked in silence, head bowed as usual, to his dressing room...
Friends had suggested to Toscanini that he might continue conducting from a chair, but his reply was a flat no. Instead, he is following his doctor's advice: a course of treatments for his knee in Philadelphia, then a recuperative rest, probably in Italy. His intention: to be back at work next fall...