Toscanini Is Back

Last winter Arturo Toscanini, the white-maned little titan, was beginning to look and move like a man nearing 84. Because of his ailing left knee, he was forced to cancel eight of his NBC concerts. When he flew off to Italy last spring, few of his musicians expected to have the privilege of trembling under one of his tirades again. Moreover, in midsummer came more bad news: the death of his wife Carla, 73, who had been his caretaker and counselor for 54 years. His friends feared he was through. They misjudged their man. Last week the old Arturo Toscanini was back on his podium--working with the dedication of a man fortified by grief. His wife's death has left him little to live for but his music.

His skin is pink, his eye is clear. The rasp--but not the power--is missing from his voice. His knee seems better, too. A safety railing was installed at the back of his podium last year, but when he gripped it at all in rehearsals last week, it was mostly to shake it with temperamental rage--that is, when the gravity of the crime did not actually set him jumping up & down with both feet.

Since his return to the U.S. in September, the little perfectionist has been recording (and releasing old records) at a furious pace, perhaps finally convinced that his performances are worth handing down to posterity.* When a recording session scheduled for this week was canceled, he demanded to know why. Told that the hall was available only after midnight, he said: "Oh. Perhaps the musicians will be too tired." Replied NBC Music Director Samuel Chotzinoff: "I wasn't thinking of them, Maestro, I was thinking of you." Said Toscanini: "Then we'll record." The truth seems to be that the old man, even though his son Walter and family are living with him, cannot bear the new loneliness of his big house overlooking the Hudson.

The music that poured from radio and television loudspeakers at week's end, as Arturo Toscanini began his 14th NBC season, bore little trace of the loneliness he feels. As ever, once on the podium, he was concerned only with the feelings Brahms put into his Symphony No. 1 and Weber into his Euryanthe Overture. At 84, Toscanini projected those feelings with a power, clarity and precision no other living conductor can match.

-RCA Victor even has hopes of releasing a Toscanini performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9; several renderings have been recorded, but, because of minor imperfections, the maestro has refused to approve any of them, for release.

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