Variations on a Theme

...He also does not hesitate to tell us that the idea for the book came from a friend (Mel Evans), or to admit his doubt about how interesting and coherent such a work would be...

...These were hard enough on devotees a third the Maestro's age, who discovered that to get his 1949 performance of Haydn's "Number 99" on rca Victor's 5-record commemorative album {A Toscanini Treasury of Immortal Broadcasts, LM 6711), they would also have to take three sides, or 71 minutes and 20 seconds worth, of Shostakovich's aptly named Leningrad Symphony (which Toscanini, years after his one and only performance in 1942, said he was a fool to have ever learned...

...What hellish mesmerizing did he work on the musicians, whose privileged viewpoint we shared for a few moments...

...he betrayed listeners by tolerating the rackety acoustics of rca's infamous Studio 8-H (faithfully preserved on the Toscanini Treasury...

...The musicians hate it...

...But what I liked about Toscanini...

...Technical discussion is kept to a minimum (technique is like a skeleton: indispensable yet, by itself, grisly) so the book can affect a reader as great music does a listener, in a rush to the heart and brain...

...He never gives in to that urge to strew bright adjectives that seems to sweep over most magazine writers whenever they profile some contemporary immortal (and he must be immortal, else why is he on our cover...

...Neither does Haggin cease to fight the good fight to shame rca Victor into releasing or re-issuing those matchless Toscanini recordings that it has kept locked in its "treasury of immortal performances...

...Genius was present, of course, but did it take genius to give this instruction at a rehearsal of the Eroica funeral march: "Is written Marcia junebre...

...For all his fury, he never fired a musician...

...To him, words are to be parceled out (a Haggin review could fit nicely on a postcard...

...Everything else about The Toscanini Musicians Knew is free of the "reproduction" curse...

...He retains the personal, quirky flavor of each...

...but they weren't 'You are crucifying me...

...and 17 years (1937-54) with the nbc Symphony...

...They should be treated as a public trust, like the California redwoods, instead of being treated like????well, the California redwoods...

...and Toscanini got furious and said: 'He doesn't let them play!' With Toscanini it was 'Watch my stick!' and he let you play...

...Now we have this book that captures not only the genius but the humanity that leavened that genius and made it all the more valuable for residing in a man so touching in his simplicity that he would rush out to greet a group of Christmas carollers (drawn from the Robert Shaw Chorale), his eyes brimming with tears????and entertain them till 4:00 a.m...

...You play funebre...

...There is complete respect shown for those interviewed, even when they differ with him...

...but when it comes to Brahms, he doesn't stop talking...

...As for Tantrums, there was always more to them than perfectionism outraged: "They were childish...

...appearances with the great orchestras of Vienna, Philadelphia, and New York during their peak years...

...Samuel Antek's This Was Toscanini (Vanguard...

...Reviewed by HARRIS GREEN Editor, Prentice-Hall Had Toscanini lived to celebrate his centenary on March 25, some of the festivities might well have killed him...

...Or Bruno Walter: he always talked...

...It was 'You're being cruel to Beethoven.'" And they were not all that frequent: "They provided colorful stories...

...How little the Old Man seemed to do...

...There was also much more to a Toscanini rehearsal than those awesome demonstrations of the photographic memory, the all-hearing ear, the unflagging energy and the devotion to the printed score????virtues not exclusively Toscanini's...

...Toscanini's features were as expressive and as variable as Michelangelo's treatment of the human figure...

...It is crystal clear that B. H. Haggin has made a Toscanini bicentenary not only possible but mandatory...

...Made without Toscanini's knowledge when he was at his freest, rehearsing his orchestra, the photos were assembled here to more or less match a recording of the Barbiere overture (clever????though one wonders if he was conducting Rossini at the time...

...Certainly Haggin has been true to some very Toscanini-like ideals in editing this project...

...Covered are the festivals at Salzburg and Bayreuth in the '30s...

...The attitude of those in charge of The Telephone Hour was the same as ever: Dip into nbc-tv's precious store of Toscanini concerts on kinescope but, for God's sake, don't lose the audience with too much uncut stuff...

...Since Haggin wishes to pass along all he can about the "insider's Toscanini," he cannot avoid pulling out of the file those inescapable journalistic banalities, Tantrums and Tempi...

...Toscanini, after revolutionizing performing traditions, fought just as hard to keep standards high, to make musicians play as written, to sweat at rehearsals, to be intelligent and honest????and to sing...

...I say "almost all...

...This ingenious substitute served to underline the hypnotic, even addictive, quality of the live shots...

...An nbc musician tells why: "He felt [recording] never did justice to his tonal palette and balances...

...Some of those interviewed still smart from the experience: "That was 30 years ago...

...Toscanini may well be the ideal Haggin subject (though I hope he can do similar works on Lincoln Center's only genius-in-residence, George Balanchine, and the one conductor most frequently mentioned in the same breath as the Maestro, the late Guido Cantelli...

...Such was the span of Toscanini's career that no one was alive to tell Haggin what it was like to encounter Toscanini's will in the days when he was forging his legend in the white heat of his own ideals (though Horszowski did see him conduct as early as 1906 and Martinelli sang during his last season at the Met, 1914-15)????but no matter...

...Nor were the Tempi all that fast: "You ask about the Salzburg Meistersinger, which some musicians said was too fast...

...The Toscanini Musicians Knew is a literary equivalent of that delightful musical form, the theme and variations...

...There was no cause for worry...

...Revolutions are easier to bring off than to sustain...

...He embodied the paradox of selflessness: Anyone willing to lose himself in a noble cause will be prized above all...

...and he was right...

...and every time I play those bars I have a trauma????i hear the Old Man shouting...

...and he betrayed historians by jazzing up his valuable memoirs with wholly fictitious grace notes...

...Bernstein, for example: he can conduct anything????the 5/7 and 3/13 in the modern pieces is nothing for him...

...For bad measure, it threw in a contribution of greenish tinge from George Szell, who grinned like a death's head from the depths of Toscanini's shadow as he told us that what "we are celebrating on this occasion is not, really, a mortal man, but the immortality of an attitude...

...because when it came to balancing the orchestra I remember that Charles O'Connell, the recording director, was concerned with only one thing ????that the session didn't go overtime...

...however, when viewed from the inside, even these somehow look refreshingly different...

...and some shmo says, "That spoils it.' They don't know what inspires people...

...Hugo Burg-hauser, a marvelous old Viennese musician with none of the smugness of that insular clan, told Haggin: "He was such a moralist, and he made such a moral appeal, that you were overwhelmed...

...Haggin shows him no mercy, nor should he...

...The Saturday Review, along with touching reminiscences by Toscanini associates Nan Merriman and Milton Katims, saw fit to run a grumpy piece by Robert C. Marsh, who scolded Toscanini for not cooperating more with recording engineers, like Victor's Charles O'Connell...

...Then consider the irresistible, shaming directness of this appeal to the Vienna Philharmonic when it did not do its best for Beethoven or Schubert: "Ma, signori, e vostra musical It's your music...

...So everything was great: 'Sounds fine, Maestro.' " That Toscanini frequently did better than any recording he made is a constant assertion throughout this book, as tantalizing and as infuriating as hearing the Disciples shrug off The Sermon on the Mount...

...So, along with "The Ride of the Valkyries," we were treated to some home movies at Riverdale-on-Hudson (charming????but the fact that Toscanini was just like every other little old Italian grandfather is not, really, what endeared him to me) and a montage of some of Robert Hupka's breath-taking photos...

...Some tender souls have quailed at the remorseless treatment he has meted out to the late Samuel Chotzinoff, rca's "vice president in charge of Toscanini," who slinks across these pages as something of a triple-distilled Judas: He betrayed the Maestro by not admitting that his nbc Symphony contained house musicians on call for other broadcasts, even during rehearsals...

...It is as a moralist that B. H. Haggin has always approached criticism, paying strict attention to what was done and how he must describe it...

...In passages like that, which well up throughout The Toscanini Musicians Knew, you feel that 10 good men like Toscanini could have changed the world...

...How electric and visceral the result...

...Many of these records are, sonically, less than what they should be...

...but . . . most of the time Toscanini worked . . . with quiet and superb efficiency...

...I want martial" And note the curtness of that exchange...

...This can only be Jan Peerce discussing those stretches on' the Boheme recording where Toscanini's old voice can be heard, rasping away: "Imagine hearing Toscanini—not planning it, just naturally singing . . . ????and knowing this guy's blood is on that record...

...Still, the records are almost all we have of Toscanini's genius...

...it seemed fast because it was so lively in expression...

...It is unfortunate that the Robert Hupka photographs in Haggin's book are not as well reproduced as they were in that other invaluable sourcebook...

...In reality it lasted five whole hours...

...But, of course, Haggin will not hesitate in the Notes to correct any factual error...

...B. H. Haggin has gone a long way toward answering that question in his collection of 17 interviews with Toscanini associates which he has edited into monologues...

...Some conductors don't stop talking...

...With characteristic bluntness and honesty, Haggin gives credit for this form to Lillian Ross...

...And you play it not right...

...Those Haggin has interviewed range from Toscanini associates who became conductors (Robert Shaw, Alfred Wallenstein) and famous soloists (Tourel, Peerce, Martinelli, Kipnis, Horszowski) to those hardy pros in the ranks of the world's great orchestras whom no conductor has ever fooled for long, if at all...

...Corporations have been hailed before the Federal Trade Commission for less insidious tie-in sales, but such peculiar package deals were a constant of the Toscanini centenary...