TOSCANINI - The NBC Verdi Opera Collection - PABX053

Toscanini's Traviata - The electrifying 1946 NBC broadcasts

Even livelier in this new 32-bit XR Pristine remastering for Verdi's 200th birthday

Toscanini's broadcast recordings of La Traviata spanned two live transmissions a week apart in December 1946, and that is how we've split them here: first Act 1 and Act 2, Scene 1, then Act 2, Scene 2 and Act 3.The pace is certainly brisk - some twenty minutes quicker than Callas under Santini in 1953 - yet Toscanini's brilliantly-drilled musicians bring it off with aplomb.

As with most of Toscanini's NBC broadcasts of this era, the original sound has been well-preserved. It's no great surprise to find Gramophone's reviewer baulking at the Studio 8-H acoustics; as a part of this remastering, which has greatly improved the overall sound quality, I've also made judicious use of the reverberant profile of one of the world's great opera houses, a technique which greatly aids the projection and enhances the enjoyment of the singers here who, as a result, probably deserve something of a reappraisal.

Andrew Rose

Toscanini's classic 1947 Otello newly restored & remastered

Possibly the best recording of Otello ever made - now in stunning XR sound

This recording, taken from two specially-lengthened broadcasts on 6th and 13th December, 1947, is widely regarded as perhaps the greatest ever made of Verdi's masterpiece, Otello. As NBC announcer Ben Grauer notes in his introduction to the first broadcast, it has a special link to Toscanini, who as a young cellist had played in the world première of the piece, under Verdi's baton, in La Scala, Milan on 5th February, 1887, some 60 years earlier.

Verdi is regarded by many as especially important to Toscanini, and this is among his greatest recordings - Mortimer Frank writes: "Of all the composers in Toscanini's repertory, Verdi was probably closest to him... what NBC preserved... if not necessarily representative of his staged performances or of his best work, is often compelling. Given limitations such as occasionally weak casting, they are uneven. Bet when everything more or less fell into place, as in the complete Otello, a performance of towering merit resulted."

Meanwhile we see in the notes on this work at Wikipedia: "most music-guide reviewers contend that a recording made of a 1947 radio broadcast of the opera, conducted with thrilling verve and precision by Arturo Toscanini and featuring such solid singers as Herva Nelli, Ramón Vinay and Giuseppe Valdengo, is musically (if not in terms of sound quality) the best of these versions".

For the restoration and remastering engineer tackling this recording today it is the phrase in paratheses above which is in sore need of justified removal. One discography of Toscanini lists sux separate releases of this recording, and I'm reasonably confident that there are actually more than this. Yet when I visited ardent Toscanini fan and collector Christophe Pizzutti earlier this year to take temporary charge of a large number of rare recordings for transfer and restoration, it was this recording he repeatedly pressed me to work upon, convinced that my XR remastering technique could finally reveal the full sonic magnificence of this immortal performance.

And so, with sources provided both by Christophe and by other collectors, I've endeavoured to assemble the very best quality material from which to assemble what I hope can be seen as a definitive recording of the two broadcasts (note that some recordings switch between live and rehearsal material, others include sections of severly reduced fidelity, none has had the benefit of XR re-equalisation and the latest remastering techniques associated with it).

The recording was made in the very end of the pre-tape era, and would have been preserved over a number of acetate discs. Fortunately these have been remarkably well-preserved in various incarnations, and the results of careful selections of the best possible sources and the magic of both XR remastering and Ambient Stereo processing (direct mono is of course also available) makes a huge impact on the final overall sound quality of the recording. This is one of Toscanini's greatest masterpieces, and it's never sounded better.

Andrew Rose

"PASSING his eighty-second birthday, Mr. Toscanini has afforded the audience of the nation, and we hope of even wider areas, a consummative example of interpretation in his broadcast performance in two parts of Verdi's “Aida,” completed yesterday afternoon in Radio City. Thanks enough can hardly be given the National Broadcasting Company which made such a performance available to every listener with a radio or television set at his disposal, wherever he might happen to be.

It is not this winter’s belief that any radio transmission can catch completely the innermost nuance or pulsation of such a performance, which is to be experienced completely only perhaps by those within actual earshot. Something is denatured in the transmission, to say nothing of the fact that it is still necessary, as we understand it—knowing nothing whatever of the technical process—to limit the sonorous range from very soft to very loud in any broadcasting. These limitations, though they lessen every year, do inhere in radio transmission.

On the other hand, such is the power in the province of the art which we ourselves are incapable of regarding as anything but the supreme art of them all—the art of music—that the thought and emotion back of the notes responsible for their projection come through unmistakably. The listener must sense strongly the creative impulsion of such a Toscanini interpretation. Whatever the acoustical boundaries, if the listener is at all sensitive himself he is likely to "get it." He may not get the complete impression that he does if he sits in Studio 8H, but he will be caught in the evocative power of such a recreation of music."

Olin Downes, New York Times, 3 April 1949

The opening paragraphs of Olin Downes' essay on Toscanini's 1949 NBC Aïda express, in the kindest possible way, his frustration at the inability of a contemporary radio broadcast to reproduce the experience of hearing the performance in real life (the article is reproduced in full here - see tabs above).

It's the eternal quest both of the hi-fi buff or audiophile, and the recording producers and engineers whose work aims to bring the listener as close as possible to the "real thing", whatever that may actually be - one person's perception somewhere in the upper tiers of an opera house will inevitably differ considerably to that of the conductor in the orchestra pit. Toscanini famously desired the kind of bone dry acoustic he was almost certainly used to in the opera houses he'd spent his life working in, something modern ears often struggle with.

Any recording therefore includes a degree of artifice - we are no more able to visit the Studio 8H of 1949 today than most listeners could in 1949. Instead my aim is to offer a somewhat idealised sound to this recording - a sense of dimensional air around the performers in the absence of true stereo, a correctional equalisation to overcome the shortcomings of 1940s recording equipment, and so on. Hopefully as a result of this we can get closer than ever to Olin Downes' "innermost nuance or pulsation of such a performance".

Andrew Rose

Of all the composers in Toscanini’s repertory, Verdi was probably closest to him. The conductor’s third appointment as music director of La Scala (1920—29) may have produced the most organic Verdi productions of the century. During that appointment the composer’s operas formed the core of Toscanini’s work. He directed a dozen in all, more than those of any other composer he led in the theater. The extraordinary integrity of Toscanini’s Verdi at La Scala was noted by the young Herbert von Karajan, who wrote after witnessing Toscanini’s production of Falstaff in 1929:

“From the first … I was completely disconcerted by the perfection which had been achieved … For the first time I grasped what “direction” meant. To be sure, Toscanini had employed a stage director; but basically the essential conception came from him. The agreement between the music and the stage performance was something totally inconceivable for us: instead of people senselessly standing around, here everything had its place and its purpose.”

The key word in Karajan’s comment is “agreement.” We know, for example, that Toscanini took great pains with all the details of production, even to the point of objecting to the shoes worn by the cast of Falstaff for being anachronistic. But, most significantly, such care suggests that the overall pacing and musical approach of Toscanini’s productions may have differed from his concert performances of Verdi’s opera at NBC. Even some surviving NBC evidence suggests that those productions were not necessarily typical of a specific interpretive view; the dress rehearsals for La traviata and Falstaff, for example, were paced differently from their broadcast presentations. Then, too, the 1943 broadcast of the third act of Rigoletto is often broader and more rhythmically inflected than the 1944 concert performance released by RCA. Similarly, the 1943 broadcast account of the aria “Eri tu” (from Ballo) features far more rubato than in the 1954 broadcasts of the complete opera released by RCA. In part this may be rooted in the different styles of the two singers, Frank Valentino in 1943 and Robert Merrill in 1954. Still, it would seem that with operatic works, as well as symphonic ones, Toscanini was constantly revising his views.

But over and beyond this issue should be the obvious one that the exigencies of staging must affect the musical pacing of an opera. Consequently, some of the faster tempos in Toscanini’s broadcast performances may well have been at variance with what he did in the theater. It is interesting, for example, to compare a recording of his staged 1937 Salzburg production of Falstaff [Pristine PACO 035] to the 1950 NBC broadcasts released by RCA. Similarities not withstanding, the earlier version has greater breadth, wit, and (understandably) theatrical ambience. In short, although all of the conductor’s broadcasts of operas are valuable documents of his view of Verdi, they should not necessarily be taken as completely representative of how he may have performed the composer in the opera house.

Mortimer H. Frank, “Arturo Toscanini, The NBC Years” (2002)

By 1950 the use of tape recording technology was widespread in the world of radio, something for which we have Bing Crosby to thank as much as anyone – but that’s another story! What it means for this recording and others of the era is that we’re no longer relying on direct-cut acetate discs to preserve broadcasts, and this is greatly to the benefit both of sound quality and relatively noise-free  backgrounds. That said, the two broadcast recordings which make up this 1950 Falstaff emanated from the acoustic dead-zone that was NBC’s Studio 8H, which can make the taped recordings seem even more arid than their predecessors. The combination here of both XR remastering, which compensates for inaccuracies in microphone frequency responses, and Ambient Stereo (with a little convolution reverb, bringing with it a sense of real-world opera-house acoustics), makes for a much more enjoyable listening experience – indeed the sound here would surely not be out of place in a studio recording made several decades later.

Andrew Rose

Toscanini's 1954 operatic farewell newly restored & remastered

One of the finest recordings of this opera in a stunning XR makeover

Toscanini's final opera performance took place over two concerts at Carnegie Hall, both broadcast live on radio in specially-extended programmes. The original cast included the tenor Jussi Björling, replaced at short notice by Jan Peerce. This performance uses the 'censored text' version of the opera (see below), which moves the setting from Sweden to Massachusetts.

The source discs for this transfer were six LP sides issued as promotional gifts by "the makers of Mobilgas and Mobiloil", who had sponsored the broadcasts. Packaged in an album reminiscent more of typical US 78rpm sets than their LP equivalents, the set includes sleevenotes by NBC announcer Ben Grauer and a montage of press cuttings (see below) reviewing the concerts.

Each of the disc labels includes the words "Air Check" on it, which does raise the outside possibility that the discs do not include retakes Toscanini recorded in June 1954 at his final recording sessions, also in Carnegie Hall, and which are present in RCA's commercial issue. However, this seems unlikely - there is no radio announcer or applause on the recording, and clearly some efforts would have been made to produce the finest quality discs. Without catalogue numbers or further details it is difficult to know exactly when these discs were pressed and to whom they were sent, or indeed how many sets were ever made.

The sides themselves proved to be in excellent condition with the exception of the fifth, which was slightly scratched during the final four minutes or so, some remnants of which may still be apparent. Sound quality is excellent throughout - the close-up microphone technique, whilst holding back much of the ambience of Carnegie Hall, does allow for excellent clarity in both voices and orchestra.

Furthermore, this new transfer has benefitted enormously from XR remastering, bringing fabulous new depth and clarity to the sound and opening it out tremendously, something further enhanced when listening to the Ambient Stereo version, which helps create the sense of space lacking in the original by drawing out ambience from the recording and spreading it subtly across the soundstage.

Andrew Rose