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| Toscanini by David Levine |
It wasn't very long ago that our friend 8H Haggis was packing the comments section of this blog with limited-time uploads from his vast storeroom of fine musical goods. I am pleased that he has returned tonight with a splendid concert for us all - Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony with a program of American music, as heard on February 7, 1943 from NBC's Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center.
As perhaps you have inferred from the dual "8H" appellations in the preceding paragraph, 8H Haggis has adopted his name from the studio that Toscanini used for most of his famous broadcasts. (The "Haggis" is a play on the name of critic B.H. Haggin - another Toscanini admirer.) And so one of 8H's principal interests is in rescuing the Toscanini legacy from the sludge pit of awful sound in which it is often mired.
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| Griffes by Levine |
The concert for today is one that should interest all who fancy 20th century American music. It starts with Henry Gilbert's anachronistic "Comedy Overture on Negro Themes" (1910), then picks up considerably with two superb works - Kent Kennan's "Night Soliloquy" (1936), which has appeared on
this blog before, and Charles Tomlinson Griffes' "White Peacock" (1915). As 8H says in his characteristically pungent and informative notes (included in the download), the Griffes and Kennan receive "magical, rapt interpretations."
The program concludes with a remarkable performance of Ferde Grofé's technicolor masterpiece, the "Grand Canyon" Suite. 8H tells us that this 1943 line-check recording of the work is not only "a far better and more expressive performance than Toscanini's famous (and quite popular) commercial RCA Victor records of 1945," but that it "presents vastly more realistic fidelity than the RCA Victor RECORD engineers were willing to give Toscanini!" I concur, and can only add that the concluding "Cloudburst" section is more vivid than the real thing!
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| Grofé |
This is one of Toscanini's most memorable achievements in the American repertoire - and I say that even though I am not much of an admirer of the Maestro, who has only appeared on this blog once before, and that as an accompanist.
Thanks, 8H, for this new favor.
