Ludwig van Beethoven: The 9 Symphonies - Arturo Toscanini / NBC Symphony Orchestra
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Free Music Notes for Ludwig van Beethoven: The 9 Symphonies - Arturo Toscanini / NBC Symphony Orchestra
Free Music Review: Great Historical Collection
Hit: 5 Stars
Any collection of all nine Beethoven symphonies is likely to have some great recordings and some not-so-great ones, and this collection is no exception. On balance, however, if you appreciate the Toscanini style (generally fast paced), this group ranks very close to the 1963 Karajan with the Berlin SO and right there with Walter and the Columbia SO. Plus, this is the most economical way to get Toscanini's recordings of the third, seventh and ninth, so the others are a "bonus."Free Music Review: The epic phlegm!
Hit: 5 Stars
Yesterday as today, the interpretative style of Toscanini will always be uppermost in the minds of those who require and demand that mercurial energy, visceral epic and dramatic intensity in almost all he conducted.
Although the pitiful fact today nobody conducts like him and many people think mistakenly that Beethoven must be conducted educatedly (according the precepts of Mr. Karajan. for instance) to my mind this is a distorted way to approach him: always restrained, controlled and seizing up all the factors in order to give an Apollonian gaze without imbuing oneself in the spirit of the work. That objective vision is literally murdering the febrile spirit of each work, because somehow it's homogenizing the tempos, molding in unison the wide range of the human expressions, specially in Beethoven, Wagner or Bruckner, composers who require from the director an additional presence and continuous involvement around the process of conducting.
But above all these aesthetics considerations, I firmly believe Toscanini's legacy will take and hold a place in the art of conducting, in spite of the fact most of the audiences in this generation are distant to agree. The time will be in last instance, the supreme judge that will place the state of things in its fair place.
His Beethoven's approach runs parallel to that visceral urgency to make sound Beethoven wildly with his roughness and dissonances. If you pretend to conduct Beethoven according established rules, you' re wrong and securely nothing will happen on stage.
Free Music Review: Can I give it nine stars?
Hit: 5 Stars
I grew up on these performances, and it's difficult for me to hear other attempts without the cold wind of criticism blowing. Nevertheless, as an adult, I've listened to them again and again in the context of other recordings and have come to something more reasonable than pure adulation. First, the sound is definitely not as good as even the most ordinary recordings of today. That's a technical matter solely. If, and it's a mighty big if, you are capable of listening beyond the sound to the music, then there simply aren't other Beethoven symphony performances that are in the same league as these. The NBC Symphony Orchestra was the most astonishing virtuoso orchestra ever assembled. If you doubt that at all, just listen to them release a sound. Many orchestras these days (though not then) can make a unified attack, but a unified release is something you just don't hear. Balances are a constant miracle as the music progresses. Toscanini was NOT a slave to the score (compare score and recording of the 9th, for example, where Toscanini reorchestrated whole sections of the last movement in order to get a greater clarity of sound (he did the same in his performances of Debussy's La Mer), and his much touted speed is many times actually a little slower than that of other conductors--it just sounds faster because it has such astonishing clarity. One can easily disagree with Toscanini's late-in-life, slam-bang approach to most music (his Brahms leaves me cold, for example) but in these overplayed and over-recorded Beethoven symphonies, there are few conductors that approach Toscanini, and none that match him. If you are serious about these compositions, this is a set that bears up under repeated scrutiny. Oh heck, I'll give it ten stars.Free Music Review: One of the Great Beethoven Symphony Sets
Hit: 5 Stars
There are a handful of sets of the complete set of Beethoven's 9 symphonies that are truly worthy of praise. Solti, von Karajan, and Toscanini are surely among those. Toscanini's version is one of the oldest--and its sound characteristics among the most primitive. But one should not dismiss it on those grounds.
When I was an undergraduate in college, I recall the impact of this set when I first listened. I had just picked up the full 9 symphony set conducted by Toscanini and had a super cheap handmade turntable (with the mechanism set inside a cigar box) that a friend made for me (the woes of a poor college student). When I listened to the music in the solitude of my attic apartment, I got goose bumps.
Toscanini creates a tension across these symphonies. Some say that his tempos were simply fast, and that is all there is to his music. But there is much more than that. I am not a music critic, but there is a clarity to the notes that stands out from other Beethoven recordings. There is a tautness and tension to the music.
No question in my mind. Although this is a production a half century old, it is still world class as an interpretation of the Beethoven symphonies. You like Solti? You like von Karajan? You'll like Toscanini. And I can still get goose bumps listening to Toscanini's version of Beethoven's symphonies.
Free Music Review: Fidelity and Power
Hit: 5 Stars
RCA/BMG have reissued these performances numerous times since their initial LP release. To the best of my knowledge, they've never been out of print. The sound on various incarnations has varied, from the clean but compressed mono originals, fake stereo reissues in the 1960s, to at least four CD issues. In 1997, RCA totally reorganized and inventoried its massive vaults, which had been in disarray for decades. As a result, many original sources which had been declared "lost" were now "found." This new remastering is strikingly improved sonically over all earlier issues. Utilizing the best technology now available, RCA has also done the right thing by hiring a musician--conductor Ed Houser--rather than whiz-bang technicians to supervise the remastering. The NBC Symphony Orchestra now sounds better than ever before, with smoother strings, fuller winds, and less blotting out during fortissimos.
Perhaps no conductor of the 20th Century has been as misunderstood as Arturo Toscanini, as evidenced by the critical backlash with which he was assailed in the years after his death. That criticism was partly in reaction to the equally unbalanced adulation heaped upon him during his lifetime. I remember once mentioning to an acquaintance my admiration for Toscanini's Beethoven and Brahms, and he shot back, "He conducts everything too fast!" In fact, in comparison with other recordings and broadcasts of his era, Toscanini's conducting was not generally faster than average. In relation to TODAY'S phlegmatic tempos, however, Toscanini's pacing is definitely brisk. But what most people are hearing as fast is, in fact, Toscanini's characteristic rhythmic vitality and, occasionally, drive, which brings the faster movements to sparkling life. (The finale to Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is an example: the tempo is not unusually fast, but it SEEMS faster than normal because of the precise articulation and clarity.) Likewise, the slow movements are never dragged, and glow with Italianate warmth.
It is worth noting that RCA has made one major change in this reissue of Beethoven Symphonies: the 1949 studio recording of the "Eroica," heard in previous complete sets has been replaced by the 1953 live Carnegie Hall version. RCA does not credit the liner notes, but they are reprints of Mortimer H. Frank's excellent notes originally written for the early 1990s CD release.
RCA has so far only released Toscanini's core repertoire with the NBC Symphony--but they are more than welcome additions to the catalogue. The Maestro's recordings with the New Your Philharmonic, and The Philadelphia Orchestra should also be remastered, post-haste.