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Many people regard the years 1937
through 1954, When the NBC Symphony Orchestra performed under
the direction of Arturo Toscanini, as the golden age of the symphony
orchestra in America. There were indeed many circumstances some
of them unique which made these seventeen years an era of unforgettable
musical splendor.
We had succeeded, finally, in inducing
Maestro Toscanini to return to this country for what became the
most productive period of his distinguished musical career. Although
he was seventy when he again raised his baton before an American
audience and eighty-seven when he reluctantly laid it down forever,
he seemed to he immune to the vicissitudes of time. Music conferred
on him a sort of immortality, and he, in turn, repaid it by bringing
to each orchestral work the vitality and freshness of a premiere.
The orchestra which Toscanini came
to conduct was unique among its kind, for it was created to serve
expressly as the instrument of one man's genius. No effort was
spared in combing the world for the finest instrumentalists.
Individually, they had few peers. Collectively, under the Maestro's
exacting standards, they became a legend.
A medium already existed that was
to bring the music of Toscanini and the NBC Symphony directly
to the largest audiences in the world. Radio had created a concert
hall that extended across the continent and, by means of short
wave, circled the globe. The performances of the NBC Symphony,
listened to by millions and capable of being heard in every living
room on earth, established radio as the most powerful instrument
developed up to that time for cultural extension.
But there is nothing in the world
of art more transitory than a musical performance. It exists
at the instant it is being played and thereafter only in the
memory of the listener. The final task, therefore, was to assure
the preservation of the works performed in the NBC broadcasts,
many of which Toscanini had never recorded. Thus, at the time
the music of the NBC Symphony was being transmitted over the
airwaves, it also was being transcribed on tape or discs. Most
of these transcriptions have never been made public.
If there has been such a thing as the often-mentioned "cultural explosion" in America, then there must also have been the classic components to cause such a detonation. That would include, in the very first place, a fuse to ignite the dynamic force. Insofar as music nationwide is concerned, nothing, it seems to me, more merits the analogy than the long series or events in which Arturo Toscanini took part with the NBC Symphony Orchestra between Christmas night 1937 and April 4 seventeen years later. As one who attended both-joyfully the first, regretfully the second-I can personally vouch that the spark was present, the explosive material contained, in countless masterpieces between the first Vivaldi and the last Wagner. And the chain reaction to the diffusion of force thus released was extended nationwide (even worldwide) through the air to places where no comparable poucr had ever been experienced.
Like anything of so influential a nature, it had not only a history but a prehistory-which is to sas, other memorable events to precede the most memorable. In direct precedence was the afternoon of November 2, when Artur Rodzinski, who had been summoned from Cleveland where he was then music director, showed the first result of the molding proccss to which he had subjected the personnel assembled from far and near.
The one thousand or more who attended the "dress rehearsal" in NBC's Studio 8-H heard performances of Weber's Oberon Overture and Strauss' Ein Heldenleben. The six public trial runs that followed, shared by Pierre Monteux and Rodzinski, collfirmed the impression of the first-that this was indeed a fine orchestra. But it only became a great one after the relentless taskmaster took his place in December. What others could produce by molding and shaping could be fused into a totality only by the heat generated by Toscanini through the long association that followed the first encounter in Vivaldi (D Minor Concerto Grosso, Op. 3, No. 11), Mozart (G Minor Symphony) and Brahms (Symphony No. I ) .
What it sounded like to more than one listener was summarized in a report that appeared on Monday, December 27 (Christmas fell on Saturday that year), under the by-line of Oscar Thompson in The New York Sun: "All of the Toscanini magic was in the three performances of the evening. The slakeless care, the amazing equipoise of parts, the inerrable tracing of the essential lifeline of each composition, without either sacrificing or overstressing subsidiary voices; the cumulative momentum by which the music runs its allotted course with a rhythmic surety that loses all semblance of arbitrary pace; the organic growth in the revelation of structure, as if the last measure were predestined with the first, and the ignescent inner light, whereby the instruments are given an individual glow rather than merging in a welter of sound, all these played their familiar part in performances as personal as they were universal in the power and persuasion of their appeal."
I, like dozens of writers since, Thompson was endeavoring to re-create in words the effect Upon him of the music that Toscanini had released from the printed page. Of the conviction contained in his words there could he no question, and others who confronted the same challenge might envy the eloquence he summoned. In a very thick hook that could he compiled of the sensitive, illuminating, even accurate words descriptive of the Toscanini phenomenon they merit an honored place. But the best of them would lag leagues behind the approach to actuality conveyed by the recordings-and in the many others that followed. As year succeeded year and broadcast was added to broadcast,public concert to public concert, tour to tour, the reason for this became ever more apparent.This was no casual, business-hours relationship of men and maestro as such has ennobled the literature of reproduction from many sources. It was, rather a causal interaction of forces such as had never existed before-and very likely never will again. For beyond the number of men in the ranks who qualified by excellence of ability for positions they cherished were more than a few who sought out the opportunity and were gratefully accepted though they would not have taken a chair under any other conductor in any other orchestra in the world. Among them were the peerless viola virtuoso William Primrose; the prima inter seconda Edwin Bachmann at the head of the second violins; the excellent Karl Glassman, timpanist from first to last. In the changes that followed as the years slipped by, the Orchestra became a breeding ground for such later conductors as Milton Katims, Samuel Antek, Frank Brieff, Frank Miller, Robert La Marchina. It was, in short, an elite corps, whose officers included the legendary Harry Glantz as bugler extraordinary(first trumpet). The Brothers Berv (Arthur, Jack and Harry) in the horn section,not to mention such eminent chamber music players as Daniel Guilet, Felix Galimir, Giorgio Ciompi, Bernard Robbins and Sylvan Shulman among the violins; Carlton Cooley, Nicolas Moldavan (once of the Flonzaley (Quartet) and Nathan Gordon among the violas; Benar Heifetz (Roth (Quartet), Naoum Benditzky (Gordon Quartet) and Alan Shulman (Stuyvesant Quartet) in the cello section. Their presence week after week in the file of faces before him was a compliment to Toscanini, but it was also a compliment to the pride in profession that made them willing collaborators in a lifetime opportunity to achieve together what they could not achieve individually.
The above was based on recollections by one the greatest musical critics of the 20 th century - Mr. Irving Kolodin.
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