RODZINSKI NBC 1938 Broadcasts Complete (1938) - PABX049

Artur Rodziński was engaged by NBC to recruit, rehearse and generally prepare the NBC Symphony Orchestra for the eventual arrival of Toscanini as its primary conductor in the autumn of 1937. Although he had conducted a ‘pilot’ broadcast on 2 November 1937, the first official broadcasts were taken by Pierre Monteux, beginning 13 November 1937. Thereafter Rodziński conducted a further three broadcasts immediately prior to Toscanini’s debut on Christmas Day, 1937.

After Toscanini’s NBC first concert season was completed, on 5 March 1938, the orchestral concerts continued to be broadcast with a series of guest conductors, including Monteux, Boult, Mitropoulos, Molinari, Howard Hanson and, for three further engagements, Rodziński. In total, Rodziński conducted the orchestra for seven concerts in 1938 – four more were scheduled in December of that year during the orchestra’s second season, culminating in his final performance of the year on New Year’s Eve.

This release brings you the first two Rodziński NBC concerts of 1938, broadcast live on 2 and 9 April 1938 from NBC’s Studio 8H, each scheduled to run for 90 minutes, and each offering a pretty packed programme – so much so that you may just make out the words of Milton Cross at the beginning of the final item on disc two, excerpts from Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, which were still being announced when the orchestra began playing, no doubt starting to a carefully worked-out timing schedule.

Rodziński’s second broadcast of the year brought with it a real coup – for the conductor, the orchestra, the NBC and indeed the nation: Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. Premièred in Leningrad in November 1937 and played elsewhere within the Soviet Union, and after the debacle of the composer’s Fourth Symphony, withdrawn at the last minute under intense political pressure, there was no shortage of orchestras and conductors wishing to take up and première the new work outside of the country.

As Halina Rodziński, the conductor’s wife, would later recall in her memoirs: “Artur, thanks to his good connections with the composer, was awarded the prize. NBC's John Royal, through the American ambassador in Moscow, made the arrangements - at a huge price. The Soviet government demanded the then unheard of sum of $5,000 for the premiere. Since introducing the piece would be as much of a coup for the radio network as for Artur, NBC's management did not object to the cost.

After all the expense and effort in acquiring the score and parts, Artur was a bit concerned the piece might not be all that was expected of it. His reactions when he first examined it were far from favorable. There was a coarseness to the sound of the scoring. The piece seemed overlong. Indeed, Artur was not altogether sure he cared for it. In discussion with NBC, it was decided to perform the work just as it had been delivered - without cuts, without reservations. If the critics did not care for it, no one could blame Rodziński.

Gradually, in rehearsals, the work began to take Artur's imagination, and soon enough he even was in love with it. The piece entered his repertoire and became one of his specialties.”

Mrs. Rodziński’s memory here fails her somewhat. The version heard on 9 April, 1938, as revealed in this recording, was far from the complete work, with substantial cuts that reduced the symphony from about fifty minutes in duration to a little over thirty. Nevertheless, the new work made a favourable impression, and would go on to become one of Shostakovich’s most played symphonies.

Whilst the present Shostakovich performance has been referred to in various texts and discussions over the years, we believe this is the first time any of these recordings have been made publicly available (it is interesting to note that the recordings reveal several errors in Mortimer H. Frank’s reference work charting the Toscanini’s career with the NBC orchestra, suggesting he had not had access to them). Because of the length of the broadcasts, once again I have been forced to cut announcements and other speech content in order to fit each one onto a single Compact Disc. Sound quality of these exceptionally rare discs, although generally good for their age, is not uniformly perfect; at times the listener will have to make some accommodations for slightly damaged sections, though I’m relieved to report that the concerts themselves survive intact.

Andrew Rose

Artur Rodzinski, one of the best program makers who has conducted this season at the symphony concerts in Radio City, led the NBC Symphony Orchestra last night in a program of which the principal feature was the tone poem of Richard Strauss, after Nietzsche, “Also sprach Zarathustra”.

The performance was one of exceptional brilliancy and one that displayed to very marked advantage the virtuosity of the orchestra. Aside from its interpretive merits, it may be said that a presentation of this music which displays so much certainty and such high technical quality is rare. Add to this the authority and the fire of the reading.

“Zarathustra” is anything but a simple score to interpret. The conductor’s handicap from the aspect of concert effect is the faint and enigmatical conclusion. This can so easily become anti-climax, to say nothing of the mystifying effect of the strange harmonic scheme. But the audience responded last night to a work which formerly baffled the public with unstinted enthusiasm.

And this is noteworthy: the music triumphed in the complete absence of any programmatic explanation. Explanatory paragraphs would have been wholly in order. Strauss himself affixed lines from Nietzsche's poem to his score. The audience deserves a program note when this work is played.

This does not lessen the music, but it can greatly conduce to a listener’s appreciation of the composer’s intention, if he knows, for example, that the magnificent introduction, which made Philip Hale think of “the portals of eternity swinging slowly asunder,” is Strauss’s evocation of the sunrise; that the pathetic and mystical passages immediately following, and the great hymn passionately intoned by organ and orchestra, is reference to religion upon which man pinned his faith; that the climax of frantic rejoicing while the great bell tolls in the orchestra is the song of Nietzsche’s victorious Over-man; and that the ending, in two keys, with the theme of Nature heard in the plucked basses, and the theme of the Ideal, like receding stars, soaring aloft, is Strauss’s comment upon the unsolvable riddle of the universe.

But the music made its mark and greatly moved the audience. It would have been still more imposing for those personally present if the performance had taken place in an auditorium with better acoustics than those of Studio H-8, which deadens sound and lessens the sonority of an orchestra. The effect of breadth as well as sheer body and brilliancy of sound in this place is thus modified, and blazing sonorities are part of the very conception of this score. But the effect was on the whole so adequate and eloquent that it would be captious to fuss over details. “Zarathustra” has waited longest of all Strauss’s tone-poems to come into its own. The sum of this occasion was a performances which carried it convincingly and in a very exciting way to the public.

The concert opened with the excellent Wertheim’s version of the Bach D minor Toccata and Fugue, a sonorous and effective performance of a masterpiece of universal meaning. After Strauss came the charming concert suite that Schrecker arranged from his ballet, “The Birthday of the Infanta.” It is not wildly modern music, nor highly original, but it is pleasing and admirably orchestrated material, put together with skill and taste by an expert craftsman.

Other delightful music, more original than Schrecker’s, and destined to live much longer, completed the program and delighted the audience. The reference is to the overture to “Fledermaus” and the waltz “Tales From the Vienna Woods,” by Johann Strauss. He also could write music.

Olin Downes, The New York Times, 17 April 1938

By the late 1930s the National Broadcasting Company had created something unprecedented in American musical life: a full-time symphony orchestra assembled specifically for radio. The NBC Symphony Orchestra was formed in 1937 primarily for the broadcasts of Arturo Toscanini, but before Toscanini’s first appearance on Christmas Day of that year the orchestra needed to be tested, disciplined and moulded into a working ensemble. That crucial preparatory work fell largely to the Polish conductor Artur Rodziński.

Rodziński had already established a formidable reputation in the United States through his transformative leadership of the Cleveland Orchestra. NBC engaged him first for a trial broadcast in November 1937, followed by three concerts in December that effectively served as the orchestra’s public dress rehearsal before Toscanini assumed the podium. Rodziński returned to conduct further NBC Symphony broadcasts in April 1938 and again in December of the same year. The present recordings preserve the last two of four concerts he conducted on consecutive weekends that December.

These broadcasts therefore represent the closing chapter of Rodziński’s brief but significant association with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The New Year’s Eve programme heard here would prove to be the final concert he conducted with the ensemble.

The Christmas Eve broadcast opens atmospherically with the Prelude to Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel, music whose luminous orchestral writing made it a favourite seasonal curtain-raiser. From there Rodziński turns to Johann Sebastian Bach as orchestrated by Ottorino Respighi. Respighi’s Bach transcriptions were widely admired in the early twentieth century for their rich orchestral palette, and here two chorales from the set of Three Chorales were performed: Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland and Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme.

The central work of the programme is Beethoven’s First Symphony, music that bridges the Classical world of Haydn and Mozart with the emerging individuality that would soon transform the symphonic form. Rodziński follows it with one of the most striking orchestral transformations of the twentieth century: Arnold Schoenberg’s orchestration of Brahms’s Piano Quartet in G minor. Schoenberg explained that one reason for making the arrangement was that he wanted to hear everything in Brahms’s densely written score more clearly than was possible in the original chamber version. The result is a dazzling re-imagining of the work in which Brahmsian architecture is expanded into a vibrant orchestral showpiece.

The New Year’s Eve broadcast presents an equally colourful programme. It begins with Alexander Siloti’s orchestral arrangement of a concerto from Antonio Vivaldi’s L’estro armonico. Siloti’s late-Romantic treatment of the Baroque original reflects the era’s fascination with adapting earlier music to the modern symphony orchestra.

From there Rodziński launches into Alexander Scriabin’s Third Symphony, Le Divin Poème, a vast mystical canvas whose ecstatic climaxes and shimmering orchestration stand at the threshold of musical modernism. Scriabin’s ecstatic vision is followed by a sequence of orchestral miniatures: Ravel’s nostalgic Pavane pour une infante défunte and two movements from Debussy’s Nocturnes, Nuages and the exuberant Fêtes.

The concert concludes in celebratory fashion with the first waltz sequence from Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, music whose swirling Viennese rhythms provided a fitting close to a New Year’s Eve broadcast.

The original transmissions were introduced by NBC announcer Gene Hamilton. His commentary survives in full on the source recordings, but because the complete broadcasts run slightly longer than a standard compact disc allows, much of this material has been edited here in order to accommodate the music within a single CD. Short excerpts of Hamilton’s introductions to the Christmas Eve concert and his closing remarks at the end of the New Year’s Eve broadcast have been retained.

Despite their broadcast origins the surviving recordings are remarkable for their warmth, dynamic range and clarity. In these new XR remasterings the sound reveals impressive orchestral colour, with quiet surfaces and extended frequency range that allow Rodziński’s incisive conducting and the NBC Symphony Orchestra’s brilliance to emerge with striking immediacy.

These final NBC broadcasts not only complete Rodziński’s recorded association with the orchestra but also offer a vivid glimpse of American orchestral broadcasting at the end of the 1930s.