Collecting Toscanini

[Pat B]

Easiest way is go to the end of the third movement of the Eroica on CD1 and listen if you hear coughs before the finale starts. If you do, it is actually the 1953 live (incorrect version, then).

Okay, yes, I remember listening for the coughs. I just double-checked and my CD1 has the correct (1949 studio) version.

[Holden]

That Eroica, along with the Leibowitz, rank as my two top choices for this work.

[Jo498]

Is the older RCA Toscanini collection from around 1990 properly labeled? I have a 1949 Carnegie Hall Eroica coupled with a 1951 1st on RCA GD60252 from this series
What about the later remastered issue in two twofers (or whatever)?

[Holden]

Is the older RCA Toscanini collection from around 1990 properly labeled? I have a 1949 Carnegie Hall Eroica coupled with a 1951 1st on RCA GD60252 from this series
What about the later remastered issue in two twofers (or whatever)?

This is exactly what I have. It's labeled as Volume 1. I also got the complete NBC LvB cycle which you also mention which was a significant improvement sonically, but they chose the 1953 Eroica for this set.

[Pim]

Inspired by some of the posts here (I really enjoy GMG ) I checked whether I had the 'right' disc number 1 in my Toscanini collection (and indeed: no coughs). And then I listened to the 1937 Beethoven 1 recording with the BBC symphony orchestra (volume 72). It's slightly slower, with a lot more detail (no doubt because of the much better recorded sound than the 1951 NBC recording). Simply beautiful although the Andante suffers a bit at times (false notes or tape problems?). Then I noticed something that I'd like to double-check: Is it true that in the Allegro you can actually hear Mr. T humming for 2 seconds at 6.12 to 6.14? Just curious...

[Holden]

You can hear the Maestro vocalise on a number of recordings, most notably in the Tuba Mirum in his NBC recording of the Verdi Requiem

[j winter]

Shamelessly bumping, since I just acquired the big RCA box.  Do you have any particular favorite Toscanini recordings, or are there recent reissues/remasters of note since the last post (2014)?

[Jo498]

I don't know about recent remasterings and there is probably a lot I have not heard.

- Rossini and Cherubini ouvertures
- Wagner excerpts
- Beethoven symphonies, ouvertures, 3rd piano concerto with Rubinstein (I am not so sure about the violin concerto with Heifetz), Missa solemnis (I only know the 1950s)
- Brahms symphonies
- Verdi Requiem (I only know the 1950s), Te Deum from 4 pezzi sacri (IIRC Toscanini conducted the premiere of the piece! correction: it was "only" the Italian premiere a few weeks after the first performance in Paris 1898)

[Mandryka]

Shamelessly bumping, since I just acquired the big RCA box.  Do you have any particular favorite Toscanini recordings, or are there recent reissues/remasters of note since the last post (2014)?

The Missa Solemnis with Kipnis
The Otello with Vinay
The 1941 Ring with Melchior
The Mozart concerto 27 with Serkin
The 1937 Beethoven 1st symphony with BBC SO
The Debussy concert from 14 Feb 1953 (originally a Fonit Cetra LP)
The rehearsal of Falstaff where he loses his temper and calls everyone in the orchestra a bunch of wankers in Italian
The 1930s Brahms 4 with the BBC
The 1930s Beethoven 5
The Beethoven PC 3 with Rubinstein
There's a good Mozart 38 but I can't remember the details
The 1930s Beethoven 7 from New York
The 1944 Beethoven PC 4 with Serkin

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Shamelessly bumping, since I just acquired the big RCA box.  Do you have any particular favorite Toscanini recordings, or are there recent reissues/remasters of note since the last post (2014)?

I bet that his Verdi recordings would be quite special.  This is from Pristine Classical's website and you can listen to a few minutes of their handiwork on this live broadcast of Otello.  https://www.pristineclassical.com/products/paco033

"Toscanini's classic 1947 Otello newly restored & remastered

Possibly the best recording of Otello ever made - now in stunning XR sound


This recording, taken from two specially-lengthened broadcasts on 6th and 13th December, 1947, is widely regarded as perhaps the greatest ever made of Verdi's masterpiece, Otello. As NBC announcer Ben Grauer notes in his introduction to the first broadcast, it has a special link to Toscanini, who as a young cellist had played in the world première of the piece, under Verdi's baton, in La Scala, Milan on 5th February, 1887, some 60 years earlier.

Verdi is regarded by many as especially important to Toscanini, and this is among his greatest recordings - Mortimer Frank writes: "Of all the composers in Toscanini's repertory, Verdi was probably closest to him... what NBC preserved... if not necessarily representative of his staged performances or of his best work, is often compelling. Given limitations such as occasionally weak casting, they are uneven. Bet when everything more or less fell into place, as in the complete Otello, a performance of towering merit resulted."

Meanwhile we see in the notes on this work at Wikipedia: "most music-guide reviewers contend that a recording made of a 1947 radio broadcast of the opera, conducted with thrilling verve and precision by Arturo Toscanini and featuring such solid singers as Herva Nelli, Ramón Vinay and Giuseppe Valdengo, is musically (if not in terms of sound quality) the best of these versions".

For the restoration and remastering engineer tackling this recording today it is the phrase in paratheses above which is in sore need of justified removal. One discography of Toscanini lists sux separate releases of this recording, and I'm reasonably confident that there are actually more than this. Yet when I visited ardent Toscanini fan and collector Christophe Pizzutti earlier this year to take temporary charge of a large number of rare recordings for transfer and restoration, it was this recording he repeatedly pressed me to work upon, convinced that my XR remastering technique could finally reveal the full sonic magnificence of this immortal performance.

And so, with sources provided both by Christophe and by other collectors, I've endeavoured to assemble the very best quality material from which to assemble what I hope can be seen as a definitive recording of the two broadcasts (note that some recordings switch between live and rehearsal material, others include sections of severly reduced fidelity, none has had the benefit of XR re-equalisation and the latest remastering techniques associated with it).

The recording was made in the very end of the pre-tape era, and would have been preserved over a number of acetate discs. Fortunately these have been remarkably well-preserved in various incarnations, and the results of careful selections of the best possible sources and the magic of both XR remastering and Ambient Stereo processing (direct mono is of course also available) makes a huge impact on the final overall sound quality of the recording. This is one of Toscanini's greatest masterpieces, and it's never sounded better.

Andrew Rose"

Looking forward to hearing what you think of the recordings in that set.   

p.s.  I'd also love to hear his Beethoven symphonies (in particular) too.

[j winter]

Thanks, everyone!   This will definitely help to chart a path through the box.

... The rehearsal of Falstaff where he loses his temper and calls everyone in the orchestra a bunch of wankers in Italian ...

Now I have a good reason to learn a foreign language

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Thanks, everyone!   This will definitely help to chart a path through the box.


Now I have a good reason to learn a foreign language

I've wondered at times whether it's better to know if/when someone is calling you a bad name, or if ignorance is truly bliss?

 

PD

[Mandryka]

I can't find the one I was thinking of.

Here he is really getting angry with Valdengo. Not for the squeamish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npnUefYgjZ0&ab_channel=LucaChierici

This one is truly terrible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkEKZxX0p2Q&ab_channel=violim

[Holden]

Is this the box you're talking about?

[Cato]

p.s.  I'd also love to hear his Beethoven symphonies (in particular) too.

The Symphony #7 by Beethoven as conducted by Toscanini is not to be missed!

Also, if the box contains his version of Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony , even though it was cut, it is a barn-burner!

[Pohjolas Daughter]

The Symphony #7 by Beethoven as conducted by Toscanini is not to be missed!

Also, if the box contains his version of Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony , even though it was cut, it is a barn-burner!

Cool! 

PD

[staxomega]

Shamelessly bumping, since I just acquired the big RCA box.  Do you have any particular favorite Toscanini recordings, or are there recent reissues/remasters of note since the last post (2014)?

Early 50s recording of Brahms Symphony 4 is one of the best in that box, maybe one of my favorites for that symphony.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Early 50s recording of Brahms Symphony 4 is one of the best in that box, maybe one of my favorites for that symphony.

I like your quote re Chopin! 

PD

[j winter]

Is this the box you're talking about?

Yep, that's the one!

Thanks to all for your listening suggestions!

[Todd]

His LvB and Brahms cycles are superb.  The concerto recordings with Horowitz are generally considered classics.  His Verdi is among the best.  And with La Boheme, you get the definitive HIP take as Toscanini premiered the work.  I've never heard a bad or even middling Toscanini recording, though I typically prefer other conductors.  (And I prefer his 1939 LvB cycle to the NBC one.)