Arturo Toscanini: the NBC Years.(Book Review)

by Mortimer H. Frank. Amadeus Press (133 S. W. 2nd Ave., Ste. 450, Portland, OR 97204-3527), 2002. 358 pp., $29.95.

Arturo Toscanini: The NBC Years is the sort of book that can make for tedious reading. It is a largely documentary account of the conductor's seventeen-year association with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, from fall of 1937 through spring of 1954. Once beneath this surface, however, the reader quickly can be caught up in the narrative by Mortimer Frank and realize the potentially revelatory importance of a recorded archive that, along with independently cut discs and a number of video recordings, preserves an important part of the career of one of the twentieth century's most celebrated conductors.

Frank's organization serves his subject well. Chapter One covers the establishment of the NBC Symphony and the process by which Toscanini was persuaded to sign on as conductor. The second chapter presents a broadcast-by-broadcast listing of the music played and, for the most part, recorded, with introductory material and annotations within the programs.

Several interesting facts emerge from these listings. First, it is striking to see how many twentieth-century works Toscanini included in the programs, especially since he has acquired a reputation for disliking modern music. Granted, the composers he chose were not avant-garde, but works of Gershwin pop up occasionally alongside music by Barber, Creston, Loeffler, Copland and others.

Second, in early seasons with the NBC Orchestra, Toscanini rarely repeated any single work. When in later seasons one finds works that have been programmed before, the performance is likely to have taken on a different character, a fact borne out by the evidence of the ...