Classical music: New biography explains the professional importance and personal quirks of famed maestro Arturo Toscanini

By Jacob Stockinger

You  know  how sometimes a movie preview or trailer gives so much away of the story that it leaves you feeling you don’t really need to see the movie.

That’s how The Ear felt when he read a recent review in The New York Times of a new and exhaustive biography by Harvey Sachs of the famous conductor Arturo Toscanini (below).

Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini (1867 – 1957) conducts the NBC Symphony Orchestra in a televised recording of Verdi‘s ‘Hymn of the Nations‘, 1944. (Photo by Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

This is the second time that Sachs has written about the maestro. This time, however, he had access to recently released private papers.

And boy, are there some surprises.

In his lengthy review, Robert Gottlieb gives The Ear just about all he wants to know or needs to know about the Italian master from his youth (below, ca. 1890) to old age — and then some. (In the YouTube video at the bottom you can hear and see Toscanini conducting “The Ride of the Valkyries” by Richard Wagner in  1948.)

The Ear knew Toscanini was important. But he was never really quite sure why.

Now he knows.

Here is a link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/books/review/toscanini-biography-harvey-sachs.html

Read the review and see if you agree.

And tell us what you make of Toscanini the musician and Toscanini the man.

The Ear wants to hear.

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Posted in Classical music
Tags: Arts, Arturo Toscanini, Beethoven, biography, Book, Cello, Chamber music, choral music, Classical music, Compact Disc, critic, Franz Schubert, Getty Images, Harvey Sachs, hear, Italian, Italy, Jacob Stockinger, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison, man, movie, Mozart, Music, Musician, NBC, New York Times, opera, Orchestra, personal, preview, professional, quirk, review, Ride of the Valkyries, see, story, symphony, The New York Times, Toscanini, trailer, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Verdi, video, Viola, Violin, vocal music, Wisconsin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, YouTube