Rca victor red seal records beethoven biography

by Bog M. CONLY

ON March 31, 1952, feature happened for which music lovers kids the world had been waiting, nil too patiently, for a quarter 100. Arturo Toscanini, eighty-five years and hexad days old, walked into Carnegie Anteroom to put on RCA Victor registry his incandescent interpretation of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.

Patently he had rededicated himself move away anew to the score, after l years’ acquaintance with it. Each banknote sounded as if it might be endowed with been written the day before. Thanks to he played, there grew in high-mindedness minds of his listeners the bound to happen conviction that they never really abstruse heard the symphony until now. Absolutely possibly they hadn’t; quite possibly not anyone had.

Ludwig van Beethoven started work cyst the Ninth in 1817, his 47th year. His deafness was approaching end. He lived in utter, self-imposed disposition and in untended squalor. His tune euphony was earning ever decreasing understanding perch popularity. To undertake six years deadly labor on the most ambitious occupation he ever had planned, he confidential no possible motive but one. That was enough: it was the firm conviction (correct, of course) that illustriousness world of the future would extract his music to its heart.

This belief has mystified some of his biographers, but needlessly. Beethoven well knew tiara own achievements. Beginning in 1805, manage the Eroica symphony, he had insecure into the world what almost amounted to a new language. Wordless on the other hand potent, infinitely flexible, it reached undeviatingly to the core of noble stage production deep in every human mind. Famine fifty minutes, the listener to glory Eroica symphony is the hero fake surging combat, is the mourning the populace, is the sane rebuilder in natty civilization set free. Beethoven in sovereignty own time had seen the parlance take root. In later days show off would dominate all Western instrumental refrain, from the Brahms First to leadership film score for Walk East drop Beacon.

Unappreciated, Beethoven was cut off evacuate his own time. But he knew the idiom as the future would understand it. He went to have an effect for the future, showing in excellence process how terribly he had needful the language he launched; he challenging such a great deal to aver. There was only one thing bankruptcy had not foreseen.

For at least division the century and a quarter rear 1 his death, Western civilization was render be dominated by a philosophy which valued tangibility and describability to honourableness exclusion of all other qualities. Music’s function was to amuse, to elicit, and nothing more. Music with pretensions beyond this was regarded with upright hostility, particularly in the English-speaking portions of the world. This is yell to say that such music was not performed. It was, but contemptuously by and for a sort dominate oppressed minority of aesthetes. Many be more or less these, it must be suspected, were vessels too frail to contain picture enormous emotions of the Ninth Philharmonic. For here the deaf and painful Beethoven had dug to the uppermost painful deeps of his own interior, past the terror of death flourishing the shadow of meaninglessness, to bargain as best he could with rank biggest question he knew — what it means to be a in the flesh being, what it takes to attach a good one.

Copyright 1942, by Grandeur Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston 16, Mountain. All rights reserved.

To perform his certain part in this great communication, Conductor arrived a little before two o’clock, Monday, March 31, at the folio entrance to Carnegie Hall. He was accompanied by his son and foreman, Walter Toscanini, and driven in out black custom Cadillac (New York allow 10-T-1) by Luigi Gaddoni, chauffeur presentday general factotum to the Toscanini habitation. It was a fine, crisp flourish a fternoon.

The other 191 parties up the venture had preceded him. Unexpected defeat ten in the morning, in scheme RCA panel truck, came Henry Richel, a genial ex-Viennese, and Ray Entry, a powerful, soft-spoken young Negro, escorting the specially designed tape recorders which they were to operate for glory session’s nine tense hours. Next explicate appear was Lewis Layton, a First past the post recording technician for twenty-six years, get into install the mixing amplifier and primacy microphones which would feed it euphony. The heavy equipment had to print lugged up a narrow flight outandout stairs to the monitor room, organized cubicle above and to the evaluate of the stage. For utmost stifled, which Toscanini demands, two very concerned microphones, of an all-directional variety, were mounted over the stage itself. Get closer supply balance and perspective, these were supported by three velocity, or ribbon-type, microphones hung in wedge formation last part in the empty hall. When vagabond the equipment was in order, Albert Pulley, RCA Victor’s chief recording planner, joined his crew and double-checked the entirety. Pulley is a quiet, gray-haired gentleman whose twentyfive years with Victor (fourteen in his present job) have terrestrial him an imperturbability which verges safety test the supernatural, and which he regularly needs.

Next to show up, after breakfast time, were Richard Mohr, RCA Victor’s Long-winded Seal (classical) artist-andrepertory manager, and consummate assistant, Jack Pfeiffer. Both are cultured, scholarly young men whom Mohr describes as frustrated musicians. Normally only way of being of them attends a session, on the contrary the Ninth was something special. Both wore horn-rimmed spectacles and bore superabundance, which they laid on the board beside Layton’s amplifier with its VU (volume unit) meter and the invigilator loud-speaker through which they would move behind the performance. Toscanini is fanatically demanding that every instrument be heard in good health its part; if any passage critique in doubt, it is best drift he be warned at once — otherwise his irreversible veto may adopt down on the whole recording later.

The musicians, when they arrived, were gayer than the technical staff, partly by reason of they had been through all that two days earlier, when Toscanini challenging broadcast the Ninth over the NBC network. They might have been well-mannered gay had they known he locked away gone home thereafter fuming with displeasure and had refused even to keep one`s ears open to the tapes of the make known, but they didn’t. The hundred other ranks of the NBC Symphony Orchestra, assiduous by two extra horns and remainder stands of strings in each community, tossed their coats into the guise row seats and tuned up. Depiction eighty singers of the RCA Conqueror Chorale listened to last-minute directions give birth to their leader, young Robert Shaw, who always manages to look like exceptional very large, worried, very bright minor. The four vocal soloists, who were to join the chorus in magnanimity finale, based on Schiller’s Hymn come together Joy, came in last, looking expansion but apprehensive. They were Eileen Author, soprano, Nan Merriman, contralto, Jan Peerce, tenor, and Norman Scott, bass. Ham-fisted singer is ever confident about justness Ninth. Beethoven had long been unhearing when he wrote it, and ostensibly had forgotten the limitations of glory human voice. At best it admiration a twenty-minute ordeal. With Toscanini note the podium, it can be put in order full hour of absolute torture. Matchless the veteran Peerce had the begin to have to wisecrack: “Who’s afraid of him?” looking over his shoulder in copy panic.

Toscanini mounted the steps (five) grow to be the hall and the stairs (thirteen) to his dressing room. He obey extremely myopic; to judge from decency way he looks at his mind, his clear vision must extend edge your way of three inches beyond his conk. However, he detests wearing glasses stand for he is gifted with a odd memory. He has memorized every capture of stairs he uses — translation well as every score he has conducted, and a few he hasn’t — and he doesn’t like erect be helped. He walks alone. That, together with the fact that yes has a bad knee, the play in of an accident two years resting with someone abandon, adds a unique dramatic quality be acquainted with his presence anywhere. Each time crystalclear walks down a stairs (he besides avoids handrails) the suspense is practically intolerable.

“Orchestra ready,” came Dick Mohr’s really businesslike voice from the loud-speaker evaluate the stage wall, “Maestro coming down.”

2

TOSCANINI is barely over five feet highpitched, though his head is large reprove leonine; and he looks even fade out in his working clothes, which include of a black alpaca jacket, botonnee to the neck, gray striped cause, and black, elastic-sided Italian shoes. Acceptable the same, and any of loftiness eight onlookers in Carnegie that dowry can attest this, the whole giant, dim auditorium seemed to tingle discover almost physical tension when he walked on the stage. Nor did righteousness feeling abate when the music began. Toscanini first conducted the Ninth conduct yourself Milan almost exactly fifty years hitherto, and he had played it patronize times since. Once, when he was a mere eighty-one, he had spoken, “I think that is the gain the advantage over I can do.”Now, from the chief baton stroke onward, he was proving beyond doubt that he could conduct better.

As Toscanini recording sessions go, both Pulley and Mohr contend, this was not a tough one, considering goodness difficulty and importance of the penalization. Nevertheless, when it was done, further than three hours of music locked away been put on tape. The philharmonic itself, at Toscanini’s tempi, lasts produce an hour and five minutes. Non-standard thusly, on the average, he had prerecorded each portion three times. The whole job took nine hours. It challenging been scheduled for seven, in team a few sessions, but Toscanini ran over give orders to required a two-hour session Tuesday night.

He began with the last movement, middling that the chorus, recruited to stage strength for the broadcast and interpretation recording, might be done with beam disband. Once, running through the orchestral introduction, he displayed an interesting implement. Toscanini is not, as Beethoven was not, a man of words. Cut down a pregnant passage, wherein the low-voiced strings invoke the theme of glory final hymn to joy, he could not get the proper accent unfamiliar the bass fiddles. He did whine attempt to explain what he welcome. He had the cellos play their part alone, while he, in dinky series of stentorian grunts, illustrated what he wanted from the basses. Nobleness next playing, they gave it come into contact with him. The following morning he superb the same service for the outcome of the first movement. In dump instance, the whole string section soloed in a fateful, swelling undercurrent like chalk and cheese Arturo Toscanini impersonated the brasses topmost tympani, shouting and stamping out grandeur notes with a volume almost sudden from a man so small boss so old. The hall echoed nobly.

There was seldom any doubt about who, on the stage, was working greatness hardest. The recording was made thud “takes,” each seven to eight recently long, partly to fit 45 rev record sides. Often a take would be played back. The orchestra would rest, but Toscanini would conduct each and every over again, measuring his intent desecrate what came out of the loud-speaker. He was patient. Occasionally he purposely the men to “play musically, musically, not stupidly.” But there were negation tantrums — not even when loftiness triangle player came in a pole too soon, nor when Jan Peerce unaccountably blew his lines. He let off no one, however. Just before rectitude final choral variation, there is trig long, sublime, but terribly taxing padding for vocal quartet. He put interpretation soloists through it eight times handling. In the last two attempts, Absent oneself from Farrell’s voice simply died. Toscanini at long last let them go, and the concert cheered them as they left.

In goodness half-hour breaks, Toscanini trudged up withstand his dressing room, took off authority steaming jacket, and donned a terry-cloth robe. He drank a little product juice or chewed Italian licorice drops. At the very last break, stroke ten-thirty Tuesday night, he didn’t regular bother to go up. He not beautiful on the podium, passing out liquorice drops and reminiscences to his fiddlers, who crowded fondly around. Waller Director looked down at the stage replicate the control-room window and said kindly, “Where do you get all mosey energy, old fellow?” Everyone upstairs was on the verge of exhaustion. Cabaret was at that juncture that Conductor, having made the fourth, first, in a tick, and third movements in triplicate, marked to make the finale of position first movement once more, just choose be on the safe side. Corroboration he repeated the first two takes of the fourth.

Finally he called flaunt a day, cheerily bade his pick good night, and mounted to jurisdiction dressing room for a glass outandout champagne. When Gaddoni drove him save it was nearly midnight, and take steps felt fine.

3

WHAT makes this not useless amazing is that, between September 28 and March 31, in addition spread a full schedule of weekly broadcasts, Toscanini had played twenty recording dates. Among the works taped were cardinal Beethoven symphonies, the First (which desire be paired on LP with influence Ninth, filling out the fourth enigmatic side), Second, Fourth, Sixth, and Seventh; the Brahms First, Second, and Fourth; Wagnerian selections including the Liebestod be first Lohengrin preludes, and works by Composer, Weber, Prokofiev, Elgar (the Enigma Variations), Respighi, Franck, Cherubini, and Richard Composer. Not all have the Maestro’s countenance for release, which is not intelligibly come by. In the past, Conductor was not, to put it in hushed tones, well disposed toward records as efficient musical medium. That this is cack-handed longer the case can be credited in no small part to leadership unstinting, if unsung, efforts of Conductor Toscanini.

Walter Toscanini is a middle-sized, graying man with a quick wit, who used to be good at affect, book publishing, and bibliography. More newly he has become good at film making, artist management, and audio engineering. Sand is an unspecialized intellectual of top-hole type too rarely found: he has not the slightest trepidation about tackling technical problems. With all this, proscribed is also very much like top-hole man who has been given, motive or not, the custody of nobleness Holy Grail, and he bears ruler responsibility very well.

It occurred to him, some time ago, that the Rare talent might release recordings more readily granting he could hear them better; advantageous he acquired a highpowered tuner-amplifier meticulous a variety of handsomely cabineted loud-speakers. However, the latter had been calculated for ordinary living rooms, not hold the baronial hall, at least 50 feet square and nearly as giant, in the Toscanini home near Riverdale, New York. The Maestro likes give explanation hear his music as he hears it on the podium, not lonely. Walter experimented tirelessly. At one without fail he had sixteen public-address speakers, rider in four corner cabinets, going excel once. At that point, fortuantely, do something became friends with David Sarser, dexterous young violinist in the NBC Piece of music who is also known to dividing up high-fidelity enthusiasts as coinventor of nobility Musician’s Amplifier, the ne plus ultra of fine home-music equipment.

Sarser became supposedly apparent a fixture at the Villa Paulina, the Toscanini house, and at once upon a time its other fixtures began to engender as only high-fidelity equipment can. Enlighten the corner of the Maestro’s foyer is graced by an Altec Lansing 820-A system, an awesome combination stencil two huge bass cones and skilful theater-type treble horn. In the Maestro’s studio upstairs, the sanctum sanctorum ticking off musical America, is a smaller, homocentric Altec speaker in a cabinet expressly designed by William Shrader, Washington oftenness engineer, incorporating a spiral, bass-boosting function horn. In the basement, where Conductor has converted a quasi-Byzantine billiard carry on into a sound laboratory, are ingenious magnificent Ampex console tape recorder, various Sarser amplifiers, monitor speakers, and connect precision turntables, with Audak and Habitual Electric phono pickups.

Toscanini is very bigheaded of his equipment and, without by all means, it has softened him on prestige whole subject of recording. When Flag 2 Pfeiffer went to Riverdale with complicated tapes of the Ninth, a juicy days after the session, the Grandmaster kept him five hours listening, on the other hand readily gave an okay to figure movements, pieced from various takes. Mohr went up later with the pizzazz, and Toscanini was more than really tolerant. Hearing the adagio movement, dirt wept briefly, at Beethoven’s vision, captain said: “It is so beautiful . . . like the Twenty-first Visa of Dante . . . swivel all is flowers and light, pleasure, light!”

Of course, not all was blossom and light, even after that. Director has learned to distrust recording method from beginning to end, and bash never absolutely satisfied with his take a rain check judgment. For nearly a month, heretofore the Maestro went vacationing to Italia, Walter labored in his electronic oubliette, playing tape after tape to excretion his father’s doubts. Walter ruefully claims to be a self-made masochist. Closure works always in the hope defer any fault the Maestro finds wish be blamed on him or sovereign cherished equipment, not on the carrying out or the recording. When the Genius came back, there were test disk-pressings and more hazards. He has dialect trig fine sense of pitch and a- phenomenal sense of tempo. A nibble disk played at 33 4/9 revolutions per minute, instead of 33 1/3 will send him raging to justness piano to prove that it pump up off key. Fortunately, Walter recently got a variable-speed turntable, able to recompense for such variations.

This Ninth, judged chimpanzee a recording from the test pressings, is very good — certainly tough far the best cutting of prestige work made yet. Like all Conductor recordings, it features crystalline clarity; take is no attempt at mellowness. That is not the work of engineers; Toscanini actually makes the orchestra make safe that way in the concert pass. It is wide in tonal range; according to Albert Pulley it encompasses from 30 to 13,000 cycles botched job second. Every instrument is heard, however in good perspective. The treatment report ideal for the Ninth, wherein primacy whole dramatic impact is contained slice the structure and dynamics of honesty music. The last movement, employing say publicly chorus, seems to be recorded to hand a slightly lower level than excellence others in the long-playing version, by any chance to economize on groove room focus on allow it to fit on reminder record side. This is a insignificant matter, easily corrected by a weave of the volume control.

Why, after bill years of playing the Ninth nevertheless refusing to record it, Toscanini picked out to make it this year task anyone’s guess. Dick Mohr says, “ We asked him to,”but he challenging been asked before. At any give details, he acquiesced. A month before prestige recording date, he dug out mountain of the symphony and spent twelve o\'clock noon with them at the piano. Illegal asked Walter to play recordings invite it —not only transcriptions of jurisdiction own performances, but interpretations by Divine Walter, Stokowski, Weingartner, and Ormandy. Recognized listened while, over his head, shun the balcony at the sunny go to the bottom of the hall, his forty-three island twittered in their cages.

There may continue some bearing in what he spoken to a friend several years move in reverse, as reported by Howard Taubman inlet his biography, The Maestro (Simon meticulous Schuster, 1951): “The Ninth is hard. Sometimes the chorus is not fine. The soloists are seldom good. Again the orchestra is not good. Now I am no good. You assume, I still don’t understand the chief movement.”On Monday and Tuesday, March 31 and April 1, nearly everyone was good, but particularly the conductor. Jaunt at eleven o’clock Tuesday morning yes put down his baton and examine his orchestra: “I think we know again now how the first movement goes.”

How it goes, it would be unemployed to try to tell in knock up, except to liken it to boss bombshell, or to quote sundry dole out listeners, whose invariant reaction was: “That is the greatest piece of air ever written.” It can be alleged, however, that at last the big symphony really hangs together, from take the edge off first ominous note to its resolve massed cry for human brotherhood.

Toscanini would not like to have this callinged Toscanini’s Beethoven Ninth. He considers much proprietorial terminology presumptuous, but he needn’t worry. For some time hence, that is going to be called the Beethoven Ninth.