Conductors: Salute from the Ranks

• Share

As any gourmet knows, the place to learn a chef's secrets is in his kitchen rather than at the table. Similarly, the place to understand a conductor's skills is at his rehearsals rather than at a concert. In the case of Arturo Toscanini, not only the keys to his greatness but also some of his finest performances were to be heard at rehearsals. "Any body who missed them, missed Toscanini," says Violist Nicolas Moldavan, who played under the maestro in the NBC Symphony. "That was where there were the moments of beauty and intensity that only Toscanini could achieve."

To bring back some of those moments on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Toscanini's birth, Music Critic B. H. Haggin put together a book of tape-recorded reminiscences by musicians who worked with him during the last three decades of his career. Called The Toscanini Musicians Knew,* it is one of the most fitting of this year's series of centennial tributes, which has also included memorial concerts around the world, the opening of a museum of Toscanini mementos at his birthplace in Parma, and RCA Victor's new five-LP set of historic broadcasts by Toscanini arid the NBC Symphony, never before available on records.

Ripping Pockets. As seen from the orchestra ranks, Toscanini awesomely lived up to the nicknames he earned as a young student at the Parma Conservatory: "Napoleon" and "il genietto" (the little genius). Many of the musicians quoted by Haggin still quake at the memory of his fierce glare, which took in the whole orchestra but made each player feel that it was focused on him—usually in reproach. And then there were the tantrums. When a piece was not played as Toscanini wanted it, "his irritation used to start at his feet and rise," recalls Bassoonist Sol Schoen-bach. "By the time it reached his mouth, it was like a volcano erupting." Toscanini cursed, kicked over music stands, broke or bit into his batons, jammed his hands into his jacket so hard that the pockets ripped off.

Nobody was spared his wrath, not even he. Sometimes he denounced his own conducting and violently slapped his own face. Once, dissatisfied with the NBC Orchestra's performance of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, he cried, "I was stupid! You were stupid! Only Beethoven was not stupid." Indeed, the music itself was what mattered most to him. All of his talents—his firm beat, fantastic ear, uncanny sense of style and structure, and even his rages—were marshaled toward a faithful re-creation of the composer's intention. During a rehearsal of Tchaikovsky's Pathetique Symphony, the NBC musicians made a ritard that was not marked in the score but was traditional. Toscanini blew up. "This is my tradizione," he said, pointing to the score. "So play like this!"