Search - Arturo Toscanini :: Conducts the Music of France

Technically Flawed Transfers of Great Performances

09/17/1998

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Buy this set ONLY if you have your CD player connected to a preamplifier that has a mono/stereo mode switch. For so much extra ambient delay and echo has been added to disks 1, 2, and 3 by an engineer who tries to simulate "stereo" that in some passages, notes are "doubled" by repeating them rapidly between the two audio channels! This defaces the actual clarity and precision of Toscanini's original performances at worst, and at best, adds nothing helpful to the original recordings, which do not need the enhancement to be analyzed and enjoyed. Yet, for all the efforts of the engineer, the audio equalization and spectral balances of some of the broadcast sessions are dreadfully unpleasant and shrill, which is EASILY corrected with a graphic equalizer and a competent ear for making fine adjustments: the Massenet suite is particularly nasty and tinny, and without correction is hard to listen to; with correction is can be much more natural, if not really good.The final disk is in genuine undoctored mono, and has the best sound. It had been issued separately some years before the compilation of this complete set, and was NOT stereophonically reprocessed by the same engineer responsible for the hash and jumble of disks one, two, and three. I might add that a number of critical Toscanini auditors and enthusiasts have commented in agreement about this processing on Internet music enthusiasts' newsgroups, corroborating my opinion (I have heard better archival copies of all these recordings.)With a summed L+R mono playback of the first 3 disks, one can enjoy at least SOME of the tracks of this set, particularly the outstanding and personalized "Bolero", the fascinating Meyerbeer Overture to "Dinorah" (in better sound on a Dell'Arte CD transfer, and also once recorded in the early fifties by George Sebastian for Urania), and the Roger-Ducasse "Sarabande". The Debussy "La Mer" and "Iberia" are taken from some very bad, noisy, and distorted aircheck disk recordings (with some missed sections) which are of interest only to the "Compleat Toscanini" collector, as the sound of the 1936 NYP concert broadcast is almost unlistenably bad. The readings are, however, slower and more intensely expressive than the Maestro's commercial RCA recordings.The Meyerbeer "L'Etoile du Nord" (North Star) opera overture is an interesting Toscanini oddity. This is the only extant recording of a performance by the Maestro, which is not a real concert reading but instead the dress rehearsal for an intended 1951 broadcast. Maestro is heard shouting and urging the players on during some of the dramatic passages. One guesses that he was unhappy with the results, since the piece was not included in any NBC broadcast. The overture includes at least one theme that may be familiar: it was used as a section of the ballet "Les Patineurs" (The Skaters), compiled many decades later. It is a pity that someone like Beecham had not taken up this delightful overture; there are no other current recordings save those in the few complete opera sets that have been released. Sadly, the acetate disks that were used by RCA engineers to preserve this rehearsal have significant and disturbing wow during many passages of the music: one surmises that it MIGHT be possible to derive a software algorithm to activate a digital pitch-shifter to un-do this artifact, but -- of course -- it has not been done in this release (I doubt that even the archivist for the Rodgers & Hammerstein Toscanini collection, Seth Winner, has accomplished this, either.)The Debussy "Prelude" and "Nocturnes" excerpts are available in much better sound in the authorized RCA / BMG Toscanini Collection; I have always found his "Nocturnes" reading (included in a Toscanini video on BMG laserdisk or VHS from the 1952 television simulcast) to be lacking in atmosphere and poise. The Franck readings on Disk 4 are absolutely and uniformly magnificent: here is the most heartfelt, grave, and moving Symphony you might ever hear, taken down in rich but somewhat dull sound with slight surface noise intrusions (the RCA / BMG edition is a composite performance using this 1940 first movement, and the second and third movements from the 1946 broadcast. RCA apparently had a much better and cleaner copy of the first movement than the noisier disks used by Music & Arts; this is always tantalizing, as the "unauthorized" record issues are generally made from inferior sources.) Music & Arts got the date of the "Psyche" excerpt quite wrong: they claim Jan. 5, 1942, but it was actually 1952! This broadcast reading was prepared from the rehearsals that led to the commercial recording session that produced the taping released on RCA Victor Red Seal LP and RCA / BMG CD. Would that the Maestro had given us more of this magical score!The "Redemption" is also in the 1952 video that includes the Debussy mentioned above; it is a rather literal and straightforward performance, but a powerful one. Finally, the reading of "Les Eolides" is taken from the broadcast of Nov. 12, 1938: the in-house source disks sound ALMOST high fidelity, and the interpretation is absolutely breathtaking, one of the most moving I have ever heard, and the best of any currently in-print edition, beating Ansermet, Cluytens, or any other version I have audited, for its perfect balance of controlled precision and spontaneous fantasy. With technical reservations, I rate this with 3 stars; had a real expert and Toscanini enthusiast with true appreciation for recording techniques prepared this production, it would have merited 5."