ORCHESTRAL GENIUS

Southland Times, Issue 23782, 1 April 1939, Page 13

ORCHESTRAL GENIUS

The Methods Of Toscanini

By

PAUL MOKAND

TIE first time I saw Toscanini he was conducting “Falstaff.” I am glad I saw “Falstaff” first, for had it been “Fidelio” or “The Magic Flute” the miracle would not have burst with such amazement upon my naive' eyes. I was bowled over at the first ten notes. What power of attack! What a rush of music! what a marvellous leap over the long overtures and the slow potpourri of expositions!

A single charge began and won immediately. The fury never fails; the whole opera unfolds in that dazzling light that reveals the very depth of Verdi and of all music.

For three hours a man stood there, hands outstretched, tense from head to foot in pursuit of impossible perfection. From his baton ran electric sparks of sound, a flowing of his soul into the orchestra. He is a tyrant. He overcomes the last imperceptible flicker of resistance, the tiniest trace of personality even in the most submissive instrumentalist.

I would give anything to be present at one of the world-famous rehearsals, where only a privileged few are admitted, and the Maestro arrives gloomy and taciturn. He has the keenest ear in the world, and he looks like a deaf old man. He is shut up in an inner world of his own, listening to the perfect and impeccable concert. Other conductors grope for their ideal through the maze of rehearsals; Toscanini arrives bearing within himself the work complete to the smallest details. He actually creates it over again. “Maestro,” cried Puccini, at the general rehearsal of “The Girl of the Golden West,” “you have composed my opera!” Scores Not Used

This man, who sleeps only three hours a day, can learn a score by heart in two days. When he was a beardless boy of 19, a series of unforeseen circumstances called him to conduct the orchestra where he was the violincellist. He walked to the stand and made the gesture that became famous—he closed the score with one flip of the hand. Even to this day he never uses the score except to brandish it aloft or fling it into a corner, in the furious moments when he insults, implores, storms. He grinds the musicians to atoms and then runs them through the mold of his brain. He is pitiless, In

the middle of a rehearsal he roars: “Un altro tenore!” and out walks the tenor, however famous. His instrumentalists tremble before him. Last year the Viennese counterbase asked to be retired: “I am too much afraid of the Maestro.” Stabile, the marvellous tenor, says he has a different voice when he sings under Toscanini. Toscanini achieves these wonders, not by giving instructions in the four or five languages which he speaks very badly, but by magnetism of a will always bent on fugitive perfection. Other conductors think they have attained it, and smile happily; not Toscanini. Hailed by salvos of applause, he comes forward awkward and shamefaced; his keen ear heard a note onetenth off key from the last violin in the last row. God sees everything and Toscanini hears everything. At Bayrueth he detected mistakes that had been going on for three generations. He conducts at a rhythm I should love to live by; the immaculate speed of lightning, white and shining. Other conductors try to imitate this fulguration, but Toscanini keeps his secret. The marshals of the empire won great victories, but only Napoleon could win Austerlitz.

No Encores

Toscanini has conducted hundreds of operas, and his memory is infallible. One day the flautist came to him before the rehearsal to say his C sharp had burst. What was he to do? “There is not a single C sharp in your part,” answered Toscanini.

He has never consented to encore a number. Were the ceiling to fall, he would still be inexorable. He was nearly killed at La Scala in 1903 when he refused an encore. The Italian public accustomed to two or three encores, chased him into the corridors, and he escaped seriously hurt, by breaking through a glass door. He has no opposition, but he has detractors. Mozart fanatics, Austrians especially, say that he conducts “The Magic Flute” in the Italian style, not in the traditional German manner. But what is tradition? I know a game where each player murmurs the same phrase in turn in his neighbour’s ear; it comes back unrecognizable. In the same way, those who think they have kept the creator’s spirit are often farthest from it. An interpreter with genius should have the right to create a new tradition.

When Toscanini was still at the Conservatory, his comrades called him “il genio.” Under the baton of that genius, music reaches unheard-of heights. Not the smallest detail escapes him. He jumps on the stage and snatches the

palms out of the actors’ hands to show how the joyous expectation of the Masters’ procession should be played. Woe to the theatre manager who refuses him an extra rehearsal, however costly. It happened once: Toscanini declared that he would not conduct, and when the opening night arrived, with a full orchestra and a packed house, Toscanini quietly went to bed and slept.