Arturo Toscanini

The Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) was the most famous and influential conductor of the first half of the 20th century.

Arturo Toscanini was born on March 25, 1867, in Parma, Italy, the son of a tailor. When Arturo showed musical tendencies, he was sent to the local conservatory, where he spent the next 9 years, devoting himself entirely to music. He graduated in 1885 with a first prize in cello and was immediately engaged to play in the orchestra at the Reggia, Parma's famous opera house. During the following summer he joined an orchestra that went to Brazil to play a season of Italian opera. At one performance the regular conductor was unable to appear. The 19-year-old cellist took over and, without a rehearsal, conducted Aida from memory, thus beginning one of the musical world's most illustrious careers.

On returning to Italy, Toscanini was in great demand as an opera conductor. He conducted the first performances of Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci and Puccini's La Bohème. By the time he was 30, he was acknowledged to be the best opera conductor in Italy, and he was appointed principal conductor at La Scala in Milan, Italy's leading opera house. There, with his notorious temper and keen musicianship, he imposed a high performance standard on both singers and orchestra. He also disciplined the audience by refusing to allow the traditional encores that destroyed the musical continuity of the operas. He conducted at La Scala from 1898 to 1903 and again from 1906 to 1908, when he resigned to become a conductor with the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York City.

Toscanini returned to Italy in 1915 and to La Scala when it reopened after World War I. The growth of fascism and Mussolini's dictatorship made it impossible for Toscanini to remain; in 1928 he became conductor of the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, a post he held until 1936. His harsh discipline and uncompromising musical standards made the Philharmonic one of the world's greatest orchestras.

During these years Toscanini also conducted opera at the famous European music festivals at Salzburg and Bayreuth. In 1937 he became conductor of the National Broadcasting Company Orchestra. This orchestra's broadcast concerts and recordings brought his performances to millions of listeners. He died in New York City on Jan. 16, 1957.

At the time Toscanini started to conduct, late-19th-century performance ideals were prevalent and conductors and performers thought it was their right and duty to "express themselves" in the music they played. Great liberties in tempi and dynamics were taken, and the score indications were often ignored. Toscanini vigorously opposed this approach, believing that performers should meticulously follow the scores and play every note exactly as written at the precise degree of loudness called for by the composer. He expected his musicians to show as much devotion toward the score and energy in carrying out its directions as he did. If they failed, he was merciless in his criticism.

Toscanini was one of the first to conduct without a score. His visual memory was phenomenal, and he could make minute corrections, referring to exact measures, without looking at the score. This skill was developed partly as a matter of necessity, because he was so nearsighted that he could not read a score at normal distance. He also had a marvelously acute ear, and there are many instances of his hearing a false note in a single instrument, even with the full orchestra playing.

Further Reading

Among the best books on Toscanini are David Ewen, The Story of Arturo Toscanini (1951; rev. ed. 1966); Howard Taubman, The Maestro: The Life of Arturo Toscanini (1951); and Samuel Chotzinoff, Toscanini: An Intimate Portrait (1956). Two books that contain analyses of his interpretations and comparisons of his recordings are Robert C. Marsh, Toscanini and the Art of Orchestral Performance (1956), and Spike Hughes, The Toscanini Legacy (1959). □

ARTURO TOSCANINI'S FAREWELL

The Maestro

In the early 1950s "Maestro" referred to only one conductor: Arturo Toscanini, the fiery sym-phony conductor whose pursuit of perfection without compromise, unparalleled musical intelligence, and mastery of scores astonished professional musicians throughout his long career. When he retired in 1954 at the age of eighty-seven he had been a professional musician and conductor for seventy-eight years and a key figure in the American music world since 1908, when he became conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

The NBC Symphony Orchestra

American audiences were so enamored of Toscanini that when he resigned as conductor of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra in 1937 at the age of seventy to return to his native city of Milan, NBC made him an irresistible offer. He was already the highest-paid symphony conductor in the world, and his records on the RCA Victor label sold more than those of any other classical musician. So NBC offered him the largest live audience a performer of serious music had ever known. They formed specifically for him an orchestra of internationally acclaimed musicians who performed weekly concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York City under the direction of the Maestro for live national radio broadcast. The broadcast reached two hundred stations, and Toscanini had absolute, unquestioned musical control. The cost over the seventeen years of the NBC Symphony's existence was more than fifteen million dollars.

Genius

At age eighty-seven Toscanini still managed to astonish musicians with his talent and intimidate them with his demanding standards. He tirelessly conducted three-and-a-half hour rehearsals without missing a note, and when the music did not please him, he yelled savagely, it was reported, "They play like that in hell—not in paradise." When soprano Herva Nelli came to rehearsals for a recording of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Un Ballo in Maschera with the NBC Symphony, she was confident, having performed the piece for years. Midway through the last act Toscanini stopped the music and scoldes the soprano for singing a B when she should have sung B-flat. She argued, pointing to her score, which clearly signified a B; the Maestro must be wrong, she insisted. In fact, the score was wrong, and no other conductor over the years had noticed the error.

The Farewell Concert

The most dramatic moment in Toscanini's career came on Sunday, 4 April 1954. It was the final broadcast of the NBC Symphony for the 1953-1954 season, and it took place less than two weeks after the Maestro's eighty-seventh birthday. Few in the audience knew that he had resigned and that this was his last broadcast with the NBC Symphony. The program was Tannhäuser, by Toscanini's favorite composer, Richard Wagner. At the beginning of the performancr he looked frail as he was assisted onto the Carnegie Hall stage, but he shook off his helpers and walked unassisted to the podium. He began brilliantly as ever; then, perhaps overcome by emotion, he and the orchestra faltered. He clutched the baton fiercely with his right hand and pressed his forehead with his left: Toscanini had forgotten the score. His protégé directed the radio engineers to cut the broadcast, and for thirty-eight seconds radio listeners heard only silence. Then Toscanini composed himself, organized the orchestra, and resumed the performance brilliantly enough to earn a standing ovation. But he would have none of it. He was in tears when he left the stage. He dropped his baton beside the podium and never returned.

Toscanini died in New York City on 16 January 1957, two months before his ninetieth birthday.

Sources:

"After Toscanini" Time, 63 (5 April 1954): 71;

George Marek, "87 Candles," Good Housekeeping, 138 (March 1954): 138;

"The Podium Stood Bare," Time, 43 (12 April 1954): 68;

Winthrop Sargeant, "The Maestro," New Yorker, (15 May 1954): 127-129.