Understanding Toscanini: A Social History of American Concert Life

Book Description

As America's symbol of Great Music, Arturo Toscanini and the "masterpieces" he served were regarded with religious awe. As a celebrity personality, he was heralded for everything from his unwavering stance against Hitler and Mussolini and his cataclysmic tantrums, to his "democratic" penchants for television wrestling and soup for dinner. During his years with the Metropolitan Opera (1908-15) and the New York Philharmonic (1926-36) he was regularly proclaimed the "world's greatest conductor ." And with the NBC Symphony (1937-54), created for him by RCA's David Sarnoff, he became the beneficiary of a voracious multimedia promotional apparatus that spread Toscanini madness nationwide. According to Life, he was as well-known as Joe Dimaggio; Time twice put him on its cover; and the New York Herald Tribune attributed Toscanini's fame to simple recognition of his unique "greatness."
In this boldly conceived and superbly realized study, Joseph Horowitz reveals how and why Toscanini became the object of unparalleled veneration in the United States. Combining biography, cultural history, and music criticism, Horowitz explores the cultural and commercial mechanisms that created America's Toscanini cult and fostered, in turn, a Eurocentric, anachronistic new audience for old music.

Customer Reviews:

The integrity made legend!.......2005-12-20

The power of myth is supported by the unexpected appearance of a hero who has nothing to do with the values of the city to conquer. He simply is absent of pacts or any kind of hidden compromises.

In the Thirties USA lived possibly the most important flow of immigrants the history has known about, different origins and ideologies; beliefs and nationalities; the hope of a promissory future fed the imagination and inflamed still more the unquestionable capacities and skills of undeniable talents of all order and knowledge 's discipline.

Toscanini represented by himself one of the maximum Ambassadors of the musical Art, but also he meant the irreverence and purity of convictions; his fame nourished by his well know political attitude that influenced to many musicians around the world. So he was the perfect sample of the individualism in search of the perfection and continuous discipline.

There were many others (like Fritz Reiner for instance), but Toscanini challenged Mussolini `s Italy and his brave act of deny to conduct in a fascist Italy earned him his seal of immortality, indispensable element at the moment to build a myth.

This is a book of fundamental historical relevance; not only surmounts the barriers of the musical world , but inscribes itself in a true sociological analysis of North America in those difficult and stormy years

Second-Guessing Toscanini.......2004-08-10

Joseph Horowitz writes a well-researched tome. However, he spends too much time in his book delving into post-modernist head-scratching about why Toscanini was so loved among the American people. Most of this, Horowitz chalks up to the P.R. machine NBC and RCA used to propel Toscanini into the living rooms of millions of Americans via radio and phonograph records.

Horowitz credits Toscanini's 'over'-popularity with stifling creativity and diversity among the ranks of classical musicians. Bosh! The man's been dead for 41 years, and no-one has come along since who made classical music such a household name. If there's anything America needs now, more than ever, it's a shot in the arm from someone such as Toscanini. All the NEA and PBS tax dollars in the world won't make the American people turn on to great music. Toscanini was popular because of his extraordinary talent for delineation and his perfectionism.

He made classical music not only enjoyable, but infused millions of Americans with the passion he himself had for the music. Do you see James Levine or anyone else making 'La Boheme' as exciting as Toscanini? Was Toscanini perfect? I would say not. However, if I as a four year old could grasp that there was something akin to superhumanism about Toscanini's conducting, that I just didn't pick up in Lenny Bernstein's wretched performances, then I don't see why it slips by Horowitz.

To be fair, Horowitz acknowledges Toscanini's abilities, but implies all throughout this book that something had been 'put over' on the American people. Horowitz seems to have confused Toscanini with Bernstein. But then, again, Horowitz recounts a quote from a Russian who told the author that if Leonard Bernstein had been a Russian that he would have been an unassailable superstar. Apparently, the Russian thought Bernstein was underappreciated over here.

This book gives a great history of Toscanini and the NBC, but reading it through Horowitz' cynical lenses makes one itch for someone who can laud a true American treasure, instead of prospecting for clay.

Misunderstanding Toscanini.......2002-10-23

Mr. Horowitz's thesis is that American concert life was governed by profit and not art. That's fine and probably quite accurate. To prove his thesis he completely maligns a great conductor. When he discusses Toscanini, he makes errors of both facts and judgment, which are well-documented with erudition and grace in Harvey Sachs's Reflections on Toscanini. Mr. Sachs's biography of Toscanini is the standard; he knows whereof he speaks.
If it weren't for the thesis, I would completely downgrade this book. As it is, the thesis is well-stated.

A prejudiced view of Toscanini?.......2002-07-07

You'll have to decide for yourself, so don't skip this one.

Horowitz portrays the beloved and tempestuous conductor as a carefully packaged and sold cultural superstar. I wonder if he's not a little ahead of himself on that one -- we're talking pre- during and post WWII here. Of course Toscanini's association with the NBC Orchestra paid off in a variety of ways but Horowitz seems to have forgotten the great conductor's incredible sensitivity to the music and the composers that he interpreted.

I enjoyed this book immensely but can't agree with the author in a number of respects. Toscanini's fame was, quite obviously, a direct result of his talent, drive and the love audiences had for his interpretation of the music. Those are the facts, pure and simple.

The book, however, deserves an unprejudiced and thoughtful reading.

MISunderstanding Toscanini.......2001-07-29

The basic stipulation of Understadnding Toscanini is that the conductor was an unwitting link between "high-art" and "midlevel-art." He also tries to draw a line between Toscanini and the music appreciation craze of the early 1950s. One could conceivably continue the line to the "music makes you smarter" boom of the 1990s, using Horowitz' tortured reasoning.

The most ridiculous charge Joseph Horowitz makes in this book, that Toscanini was somehow manpilated by RCA/NBC's public relations departments is simply ludicrous. Toscanini was RCA's best selling conductor, for the simple reason that he raised artistic standards to hitherto unrealized levels. Horowitz is certainly right in the assertion that his recordings with the NBC Symphony were some of the most bizarre recordings in history, sonically. (Digital remastering has improved the situation, somewhat.) Yet, by limiting himself to the NBC years, Horowitz ignores his previous associations with the New York Philharmonic, not to mention the La Scala Orchestra. (It is worth noting that Toscanini's first recordings, made in 1920 during the La Scala Orchestra's North American tour, took place at precisely the midpoint of Toscanini's career.) So, he's basing his opinion of Toscanini's art on the last 17 years of a 58 year career! Imagine basing one's opinion of Toscanini's son-in-law, Vladimir Horowitz (no relation to the author) only on recordings made after 1972, or Arthur Rubinstein on recordings made only after 1959!

Horowitz' descriptions of Toscanini's conducting (ten of Toscanini's concerts withe the NBC Symhpony were telecast) are amateurish, and betray scant knowledge of the art of conducting.

Customer Reviews:

Misguided attack.......2004-12-13

Mr. Horowitz has a valid thesis -- that classical music in the United States was taken over by commercial interests -- but he subverts that thesis in an attack, misguided, misinformed, and mean-spirited, on a great conductor who tried to conduct music as it was written. If it were not for the thesis, this would get no stars.

Does it have to be 'true' to be 'right?'.......2002-09-26

Horowitz's book started an highly interesting and vital argument within the world music community: what is the 'selling' of superstar musicians doing to the music as consumers come to experience it? In his analysis of Toscanini's repackaging as a sort of cold warrior cultural hero and 'correct' conductor by NBC in the years after WWII, Horowitz shows us the start of the commodification of serious music as a palliative for the masses. If "Mozart makes you smarter" is a trade gimmick today, it owes its inception to the selling of Toscanini as the 'only conductor to faithfully follow the score'--which he was billed as, and which he assuredly did not.

Amazon.com

In this book Mortimer Frank, former curator of the Toscanini archive, traces the maestro's extraordinary 68-year career, then focuses on his 17 years leading the NBC Symphony Orchestra, created for him in 1937--when he was already 70 years old--by David Sarnoff, president of NBC and RCA. Along the way, Frank describes Toscanini's often troubled relationship with NBC, his interaction with the musicians, and the impact on him of the European war.

Many great artists generate controversy, but few have inspired as much adulation and animosity as Toscanini. Battling recent criticism, Frank, a devoted partisan, uses as his weapon the maestro's entire recorded legacy, from the official discography, including RCA's 82-CD Toscanini Collection, to unreleased archival tapes and reference discs of all his NBC broadcasts and rehearsals, as well as his recordings with other groups, especially the New York Philharmonic. To refute the familiar allegation that Toscanini made everything sound alike and to demonstrate his open-minded interpretive flexibility, Frank compares different performances of the same works, and also refers to many other conductors' recordings to prove that the maestro's tempos did not simply get faster as he got older. This must have required listening to a positively staggering number of records.

Unfortunately the book is dominated by lists: of broadcasts, programs, dates, names, etc., which leads to a lot of repetition and redundancy. The most interesting chapter is "The NBC Repertory," which reveals that along with acknowledged masterpieces, Toscanini programmed much music of doubtful value, and offers frank, illuminating comments on the relative quality of his performances. One learns that despite Toscanini's famous faithfulness to the score, he had no qualms about undertaking radical alterations, from changing orchestrations to cutting, transcribing, combining pieces, and adding original material; that in a small way he anticipated the "authentic" style movement; and that he was relentlessly, obsessively critical not only of others, but himself.

The book omits some important information: no credit is given for the photographs, and no mention made of the orchestra's Japanese tour, on which the maestro unexpectedly laid himself open to the musicians' cameras, resulting in some stunning Toscanini portraits. Frank treats Toscanini's retirement, whether voluntary or enforced, and its aftermath for the players surprisingly casually. It was widely felt that the National Broadcasting Corporation showed unpardonable callousness in disbanding its Symphony, especially since it collected the royalties on the orchestra's RCA records, while the musicians who had them got nothing. --Edith Eisler

Book Description

Arturo Toscanini: The NBC Years details Toscanini's magnificent and heroic 17 years (1937-1954) conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The archival broadcast recordings documented and reassessed in this lively account comprise the most complete recorded legacy of Toscanini's orchestral conducting career. The broadcast recordings include his readings of many scores for which he left no approved recording, and his NBC career included performances of works he never conducted before coming to the network. The concerts and the broadcasts were immensely popular, and for generations Toscanini's name became synonymous with conducting. His legendary art and fiery personality also engendered controversy that has yet to subside, but this account takes on the challengers, accepting neither hero worship nor criticism that ignores the evidence.

Customer Reviews:

Wonderful book - lousy editorial review.......2005-07-23

Wonderful book which gives superb documentation about the Toscanini NBC Symphony broadcasts and the Maestros years at NBC. However if someone is going to give an editorial review they should get their facts straight (whoever Edith Eisler is) - there was no NBC Symphony tour of Japan under Toscanini.

A Wonderful Addition.......2005-02-24

This book may initially appeal to the specialist or the buff, but it is so well done that anyone interested in performance practice (or, of course, in Toscanini) should read it. An extremely sophisticated analysis of the maestro's NBC years and one that rounds out our understanding of Toscanini. Add it to your Haggin, the Sachs bio, and the old Spike Hughes book.

Meticulous book about meticulous conductor.......2003-03-13

It's true that this book is really only for fans of Arturo Toscanini, but there are many of us. It provides information not otherwise available. (And with due respect to the review above by Edith Eisler, I am certain that there never was a tour of Japan by the NBC Symphony Orchestra, and I am virtually certain that Toscanini never went to Japan to conduct any orchestra.) Mr. Frank is fair, musical, knowledgeable, and informative.

John.......2002-03-06

Most of what we know of the conducting of Arturo Toscanini comes from his recordings with the NBC Symphony, an orchestra formed by RCA for radio broadcasts and recordings from 1937-1954. As Frank points out in this excellent book, most of these recordings were made when Toscanini was in his 80's, and therefore perhaps not representative of his best work. This book tries to put these recordings in perspective by detailing and describing the NBC Broadcasts season by season. As Frank points out, some of Toscanini's best performances occured when the conductor was in front of an audience, where he was more relaxed. Frank gives a detailed season by season description of the NBC years, as well as complete program information. Also included is a complete (as possible) discography of both official and unoffical recordings. There is also a balanced discussion of the criticism and "hero worship" of the conductor in the intervening years. Other goodies: A complete list of NBC Symphony Personnel, a list of guest conductors and broadcasts, and a very interesting discussion about the "deconstructing" of the Toscanini image. After reading this book, I wanted to hear more of Toscanini's broadcast performances (and how about some of Guido Cantelli's broadcasts, also)!

Average customer rating:

Another 'Reflections' tome but well worth the read considering the source!

Reflections on Toscanini
Harvey Sachs
Manufacturer: Prima Lifestyles
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1559583150
Release Date: 1993-05-17

Customer Reviews:

Another 'Reflections' tome but well worth the read considering the source! .......2007-05-16

These 'reflection' books are generally additional musings that were left out for one reason or another in the original Toscanini biography undertaking [1978] but they often can act as the capstone of the original work. Dr. Alan Walker comes immediately to mind with his magnificent 25 year research effort in the Franz Liszt trilogy subsequently getting its own 'reflections' tome, as it were, in the 2005 book 'Reflections on Liszt.' Well worth the read for these two capstones both in the Liszt and Toscanini efforts not to mention that when the name Franz Liszt is mentioned, one almost immediately thinks of Alan Walker and ditto for Harvey Sachs when it comes to Arturo Toscanini!

So too, Toscanini makes for some very interesting reading as his talent and of course his equally famous temperament were both legendary. There is the famous ditty about the Maestro hearing a grumble about his tempi and Toscanini asks by what 'authority' is his tempi being 'challenged' whereupon the person who made the comment says with some indignance, "I believe I reserve that right, Maestro, since I am the composer!" There follows a silence as literally everyone within hearing distance waits for what appears to be a veritable checkmate of the Maestro but then comes the classic of classics where Toscanini says without batting an eye, "You, sir, do not understand your own music!"

But then remember this comes from the same man who said to a member of the orchestra whose playing finally brought on the famous Toscanini wrath, "I am communicating with God and you stand in my way!" Or as Norman Lebrecht reports in "The Book of Musical Anecdotes" [1985 -- p. 277], "The soprano Geraldine Farrar, with whom he had a passionate affair, deviated from the score in the rehearsal of a Puccini aria, and objected when Toscanini interrupted and rebuked her. 'Maestro', she retorted, 'please remember I am a star!' -- 'The place for stars is in heaven!', shouted Toscanini."

I've often pondered what would have happened if Toscanini had been the conductor instead of Bernstein that famous evening when 'GG' [Glenn Gould] had 'creative differences' with Bernstein prompting Bernstein to address the audience and voice his 'concerns.' Had that been Toscanini, one can only ponder the result when it comes to the old conductor vs interpreter thing and just who makes the call! My take is that Toscanini, especially if sufficiently worked-up, might have told Gould to place his famous folding chair where the sun doesn't shine! And GG? Dunno! He might have been so flustered at such a Toscanini response that GG would quite possibly have reverted forthwith to his Theodore Slutz NYC cabbie persona and/or a sort of English/German Sir Nigel/Klopweisser/von Hochmeister combo accent mix in a lame effort to make like the whole thing was actually a well planned shtick of sorts!

Ahhh! Half the 'fun' with the musical personalities are their collective egos! Talent and seriousness of purpose issues notwithstanding.

Doc Tony

Average customer rating:

Entertaining and informative
Great Man -- Great Book
Most readable and absorbing
Humanizing and scary
Perhaps the hype was too great

The Letters of Arturo Toscanini

Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0375404058
Release Date: 2002-04-23

Book Description

A major event in the literature of music—the first significant collection of the letters of Arturo Toscanini.

Toscanini (1867–1957) was one of the most celebrated and influential symphonic and operatic conductors in history. With his amazing ear and photographic memory, his sense of moral imperative and iron will, he raised the standards of orchestras and opera companies to previously undreamed-of heights. He conducted the world premieres of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and Puccini’s La bohème, The Girl of the Golden West, and Turandot. His sixty-eight-year conducting career began before Verdi had completed Otello and lasted into the era of televised concerts and stereophonic sound. He headed such ensembles as La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, and the NBC Symphony Orchestra.

Yet he never wrote a memoir, or even essays for publication, or granted interviews. Now we are brought closer to him than we have ever been—in seven hundred letters, well over ninety percent of them previously unpublished in any language.

The letters are vivid and impassioned. They reveal a complicated man, often angry and unhappy, who was also capable of great generosity of spirit, self-irony, and humor. They show the depth of his musical knowledge and insight, and shed much light on the musical life of his time in Europe, in New York, and throughout the world. There is fascinating correspondence with his wife and children, and with colleagues and friends, and he writes, as well, about his affairs and erotic adventures. He expresses particular vehemence when talking about his active opposition to fascism and Nazism. Of Mussolini, for instance, he says: “Open all the prisons—you won’t find a delinquent or a criminal who is more of a delinquent, more of a criminal, than that ignoble animal!”

The Letters of Arturo Toscanini is a revelation of both the maestro and the man.

With 7 photographs.

Customer Reviews:

Entertaining and informative.......2003-08-29

Sachs' editorial comments provide fascinating insights into the world of opera and Toscanini's role in it. Beyond the minutiae of the Maestro's life and passions, however, this book provides an intriguing perspective of world events during the first half of the 20th century.

Great Man -- Great Book.......2003-03-13

This is an obsessively edited great book about, and by, an obsessively great man and great conductor. Of greatest interest to those also obsessed by Arturo Toscanini, but of great interest to anyone who wants to enter the mind of the greatest conductor of the 20th century. That's a lot of "greats", but they're well-deserved. Toscanini writes with passion, grace, lyricism, eroticism, and political insight. Mr. Sachs, the brilliant Toscanini biographer, has edited this book in a way that makes it an autobiography. Buy it!

Most readable and absorbing.......2003-01-30

I loved this book. Toscanini's writing style is so direct and passionate. His love of music and his worship of its icons permeates the book and his ever-present desire to do them justice (even at the expense of dealing with musicians not meeting his exacting standards) make this a fun read. As a musician I can relate to the exhaustion of rehearsals and the exaltation he felt after a great concert and in the midst of musicians in which he had respect.
The hundreds of letters to his mistress are amazing, written in the most ardent and intimate manner. (One feels that one knows her, too, from osmosis). They are speckled also with his reflections on aging and their age disparity, of his concertizing, of his passionless marriage, of his disappointment/disgust with emerging regimes of his time. I found even the most mundane details of his everyday life are somehow also interesting.
The commentary from the author is nicely formatted so that it is easy to skip over details which have no familiarity to the lay reader.

Humanizing and scary.......2002-06-11

What will floor a Toscanini fan here is the revelation that the old man's emotional life was much more intense than anybody realized. The majority of the book is taken up with love-letters to one woman, although this affair only went on for 10 years or less; the outpouring of adoration, obsession, and eventual anger is stunning. There are certain performances of his about which we've customarily said, hmm, this one is relatively expressive--it turns out Toscanini confesses to his true love that while he conducted Tchaikovsky's 6th tonight, he was thinking only of her, and wept at such-and-such a passage, and even kissed the locket with her picture during the performance...so much for "literal" music-making! Although some letters are not always interesting (in the sense that his culture was not all that broad--this is not a book from which you'll learn a lot about arts & letters, performance practice, or even about music in general), and some letters will definitely make some people squeamish, they present a quite different picture of the conductor as primarily passionate, rather than primarily angry. You come away from the book, as you do from his best performances, amazed at his honesty and phenomenal intensity.

Perhaps the hype was too great.......2002-05-12

I was prepared for true revelations which didn't come through in the letters, found precious little I didn't already know.

Tender Is Levine: A Jack Levine Mystery (Jack Levine Mysteries)

Average customer rating:

A good read

Tender Is Levine: A Jack Levine Mystery (Jack Levine Mysteries)
Andrew Bergman
Manufacturer: Thomas Dunne Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0312262051

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Don't be surprised if you find yourself thumbing through a mental Rolodex of actors as you read Tender Is LeVine, wondering who would be best suited to play Jack LeVine, Andrew Bergman's circa-1950 private eye. Chevy Chase for his good-natured goofiness? Gene Hackman for his looks and no-nonsense edge? Woody Allen for his innately sardonic Jewish New-Yorkness? Sounds like a crazy amalgam, but Bergman (a film director, screenwriter, and playwright) makes it work, and makes it work well. LeVine himself is a drolly pragmatic character; Bergman's dialogue and settings capture the essence of the era without ever stumbling into clichéd kitsch; and the novel's set pieces and pacing sparkle with admittedly cinematic verve.

And the plot itself is right out of the movies: The Case of the Missing Maestro. When Fritz Stern, second violinist with the NBC Symphony, walks into LeVine's office, declares that the great conductor Arturo Toscanini has been kidnapped and that the symphony is being led by an impostor, and asks LeVine to investigate, the PI is inclined to think his client is a few noodles short of a kugel. But LeVine is a sucker for sincerity and beautiful daughters, and Stern has both. When the violinist is found dead shortly thereafter, guilt and vengeance enter the motivational mix.

At NBC's urging (is it LeVine's imagination or do those corporate execs have something to hide?), LeVine, hot on Toscanini's trail, heads for Havana, where he finds not the maestro but the mob. Just what is Barbara, Stern's aforementioned daughter, doing with organized crime icon Meyer Lansky? In the process of finding out, LeVine is "injected with enough high- octane opiates to scramble a hippo's consciousness" and shipped off to the middle of a Nevada desert. Newly bustling Las Vegas is a place where people arrive with heads full of dreams and leave with pockets full of nothing. It's up to LeVine to figure out how corporate greed, a gifted Italian musician, and mob visions of grandeur all come together against this neon-lit backdrop, and if he can do it without taking a detour to the morgue, he'll be a happy man.

Almost 25 years have elapsed between LeVine's last appearance and this cross-country caper, but I'm betting that newly smitten fans won't want to wait that long again for an encore. "I'm sorry, Mr. Spielberg, but Mr. Bergman isn't taking any calls. He's working on his next LeVine novel." We can hope, can't we? --Kelly Flynn

Book Description

It is September, 1950 and P. I. Jack LeVine has just pulled himself out of a year-long depression triggered by his father's death.He has re-invigorated his life and re-decorated his Broadway office when a high-strung second violinist from the NBC symphony walks through his newly-painted door and insists that the great Maestro Arturo Toscanini has vanished and that the orchestra is being led by an imposter. From this point on we are drawn into a violent and high-stakes investigation that will lead LeVine from the executive towers of NBC to decadent Havana and then to a raw desert town called Las Vegas. Along the way he uncovers an elaborate scheme involving the fiddler's gorgeous daughter and winds up rubbing shoulders with the fabled likes of Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky. Tender is LeVine then rockets to a hair-raising conclusion with a murderous cross-country chase as LeVine and Maestro Toscanini make a desperate run for their lives.AUTHORBIO: Andrew Bergman is a novelist, film director, screenwriter, and playwright. His screen credits include The Freshman, Honeymoon in Vegas, The In-Laws, and Fletch. Five of Bergman's screenplays were nominated by the American Film Institute as among the five hundred greatest comedies of all time. He was awarded the Writer's Guild of America award in 1975 for best original screenplay for Blazing Saddles. This is his fifth book and the third featuring P. I. Jack LeVine. He lives in New York.

Customer Reviews:

A good read.......2001-01-20

In 1950 Midtown Manhattan, NBC Symphony second violin Fritz Stern visits private investigator Jack LeVine. Fritz, who has been with the symphony for over a decade, firmly believes that someone kidnapped the renowned conductor Arturo Toscanini. Stern bases his assessment on the fact that the great conductor could not remember the evening's program when the symphony performed for President and Mrs. Truman. Still a paying client is a client so Jack accepts the case.

Stern tells Jack to start with the nasty Sidney Aaron, NBC vice president for Special Programming. Following that meeting, Jack concludes something is not right at NBC. However, things turn ugly when someone kills Stern. Jack stays with the case, which takes him to Cuba and the Mafia, but not any closer to learning the truth even with his life now on the line.

TENDER IS LeVINE is a fabulous historical mystery that works because Andrew Bergman makes 1950 seem so real that it in turn anchors the mystery and Jack. The story line is fast-paced and the investigation is fun to watch, but this tale belongs to the period as history has never unfolded any better than this superb detective tale.

Book Description

Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) is the most famous operatic and symphonic conductor in history. When Harvey Sachs' Reflections on Toscanini was first published in 1978, it was acclaimed internationally as the definitive biography of the extraordinary maestro. Now Sachs has revised and expanded this classic book, further exploring the conductor's controversial musicianship, conducting, recordings, drastic rehearsal methods, and influence on repertory.

Customer Reviews:

An excellent biography of Toscanini........1998-06-17

Toscanini has been the subject of several biographies. Those that focus primarily on his life (George Marek's book, now out of print comes to mind) tended toward uncritical idolatry and provided little, if any, original research. Other books, by Charles Marsh and B.H. Haggin, are primarily studies of Toscanini performances, and not biographies per se. Sachs's book is the first to combine traditional biographical techniqes with an evaluation of Toscanini's art. What emerges is a well-written work that provides a full portrait of Toscanini, warts and all. As balanced as it is, the book nonetheless conveys the author's love of his subject. Also, the author's music background brings to life many details of Toscanini performances in a way that nonmusicians will enjoy.

Toscanini and the art of conducting (Collier books)

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Toscanini and the art of conducting (Collier books)
Robert C Marsh
Manufacturer: Collier Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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ASIN: B0006AXYCK

Portraits of Greatness: Toscanini (Portraits of greatness)

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Portraits of Greatness: Toscanini (Portraits of greatness)
John W. Freeman , and Walfredo Toscanini
Manufacturer: Treves Pub Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Toscanini Legacy
Spike Hughes
Manufacturer: Dover Publications Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0486221008

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