RESPIGHI: PINES OF ROME, FOUNT

TOSCANINI COLLECTION VOL 11 -

VOCAL SERIES - JUSSI BJ?RLING

MOZART: SINFONIA CONCERTANTE,

This recording was formerly available as EMI-Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 47878.

As with Falstaff Toscanini is notable for performing what is there, insisting that detail, often overlooked, should be observed. Maintenance of a basic pulse within which there could be necessary ritardandos and accelerandos was the basis of Toscanini's approach. All interpretative points were at the service of what was to this conductor a deep spiritual experience, by turns incandescent and beseeching all adding up to a great spiritual and emotional experience, again helped here by being taken from a live occasion. Examples of Toscanini's authority and belief abound – the terrifying intensity of the Dies irae, the turmoil of "Confutatis", the expressive cellos introducing the Offertorio, the lightness of the strings at "Plent sunt coeli" in the Sanctus, the ethereal texture throughout the Lux aeterna, the exactness and raising of tension in the Libera me fugue. Nowhere in this performance, as in so many recent ones, does one question a tempo or indeed find anything that calls attention to the conductor rather than to Verdi. In that respect it matches and often surpasses those conducted by Serafin (EMI – reviewed on page 2074), Fricsay (DG) and Giulini (EMI), now all on CD.

-- Gramophone [5/1990]

The best thing about the Caruso legend is that it's more than true. If you've never heard him, whatever you have heard about him can't do justice to how good he really was: the golden bigness of the voice, the dramatic genius and generosity of spirit that he projected. Fortunately, as the first vocal superstar of the Victrola age, he made hundreds of recordings that survive to give substance to the legend.
CARUSO IN LOVE combines favorite opera arias by Verdi, Puccini, and Donizetti with popular love songs of the period, including one by Ruggiero Leoncavallo, Caruso's friend and the composer of 'I Pagliacci.' The excellent transfers of these 78 rpm sides made for Victor between 1906 and 1920 are the result of the epic remastering project RCA undertook in the early '80s to represent the entire Caruso legacy with the best possible sound.

Includes work(s) for piano by Edvard Grieg. Soloist: Gerhard Oppitz.

Along with Horowitz's famous interpretation, Van Cliburn's is one that makes every bar of the Barber Sonata really speak. Even in an excessively dry recording he manages to suggest an epic dimension, with song, dance, struggle and celebration held in admirable balance.

And it is not just the Barber which makes this an exceptionally desirable reissue. Cliburn's Mozart is beautifully shaded, scrupulously stylish and sensitive to harmonic pulls towards the dark side; and his Debussy is both supple and suavely textured, with a wonderfully judged rhapsodic abandon in ''La soiree dans Grenade''. I could understand some listeners finding the Mozart a little too well-scrubbed and toy-soldierish in places, and there is a tendency for shapes in the Debussy pieces to be too spasmodic—the Octaves Study is not helped by an exaggerated response to caesuras, and ''Jardins sous la pluie'' is too fast and marred by persistent mis-reading of B sharps as B naturals. But all that detracts very little from a truly distinguished souvenir of Cliburn's artistry.

-- Gramophone (5/1991)

LS had almost unqualified praise for the live 1953 Carnegie Hall recording of Don Quixote. "Nothing," he wrote "more clearly demonstrates Toscanini's true quality than the fact that it is possible to take one of his ordinary (one cannot use the word 'routine', for obvious reasons) broadcast performances and issue it in permanent form on record to complete satisfaction". He noted a momentary slip in the first variation; equally, one might like the two concluding chords of the work to have been re-made. But what a tour de force this is of orchestral wizardry and musical characterization in one of the repertory's most difficult works. What's more, Toscanini honours Strauss's original plan by having the orchestra's own front-desk cellist and viola player as the soloists. (Only a week later Carbon Cooley would distinguish himself as viola soloist in Toscanini's broadcast from Carnegie Hall of Berlioz's Harold in Italy—RCA 0 RD85755, 2/88.) I think it is reasonable to prefer this performance musically and sonically to Toscanini's 1938 NBC recording (Toscanini Society—nla) and to Strauss's own version with Mainardi recently reissued by DG (11/90), where the playing of the Staatskapelle Berlin is frankly not in the same league as that of the NBC musicians.

-- Gramophone [1/1991]

LISZT: PIANO CONCERTOS NOS 1 &

A passionate, superbly paced version of the Franck Symphony plus a highly expressive and atmospheric performance of Saint-Saëns.

It seems questionable to combine a 1946 performance of the Franck Symphony's first movement with a 1940 account of the remaining two, even if this arrangement was approved by the conductor. A passionate, superbly paced version of the score still emerges from the hybrid source, however. Toscanini's performance of the Saint-Saens symphony is highly expressive, full of atmosphere and very exciting.

-- Gramophone [11/1992]

Selections recorded June 1-3 and November 29, 1991.

TCHAIKOVSKY: SYMPHONY NO 6 KO

TOSCANINI COLLECTION VOL 15 -