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Founded in 1923 by Sir Compton Mackenzie and Christopher Stone as ‘an organ of candid opinion for the numerous possessors of gramophones’
Who are today’s Toscaninis – or tomorrow’s?
Several years ago I visited Toscanini’s birthplace, now a museum paying homage to Parma’s famous conducting son. He was from a poor background, such that his mother didn’t feel herself sufficiently elegant to visit him at the city’s music school. The house doesn’t appear too small, until you discover that the Toscaninis shared it with three other families. Toscanini’s father, a tailor, used the downstairs room as a workshop.
medium as a way of increasing and democratising audiences (just as another Italian, Enrico Caruso, had spotted the potential of recording to do likewise decades earlier), Toscanini, at the helm of his NBC orchestra, became synonymous with orchestral music-making in the public mind. As Richard Osborne reminds us in his cover story, a poll in 1937 suggested that 70 per cent of Americans knew who he was.
There’s something strangely powerful about a musician’s birthplace. The artist invariably moves on, settling perhaps in one of the international centres of music-making, or following whirlwind careers and never really settling anywhere for long. But something of the essence of their origins invariably shapes them. In Toscanini’s case, perhaps his humble beginnings helped form his humanitarianism and commitment to widening audiences. Meanwhile, Benjamin Britten’s childhood house – which was turned into a pop-up museum for his centenary – looks out towards the churning, foam-flecked North Sea, which was such a crucial part of his music. There are, indeed, many composer birthplace museums – a UK itinerary alone could take in Elgar, Holst and Vaughan Williams. But a museum devoted to a conductor or instrumentalist is more rare and, in the case of Toscanini, really symbolises the esteem in which he was held in his day.
One of the reasons we’re celebrating his life this month – aside from it being 150 years since his birth – is because of the pivotal role he played in shaping the relationship between classical music and broadcasting. Quick to grasp the potential for exploiting this
How many classical musicians can be said to have that same mass appeal today (expanding this thoughtexperiment beyond America to the wider world)? That’s a sobering thought, for I doubt there are many. Daniel Barenboim perhaps? I reckon Simon Rattle might score fairly high in the UK, Yo-Yo Ma in the US, and Lang Lang in China and elsewhere. Venezuelans will likely recognise Gustavo Dudamel, and so might a fair few in other countries.
These names have earned much of their status through their outreach work. There’s nothing wrong with that, but who is following in Toscanini’s – and Caruso’s – footsteps today when it comes to using modern technology to communicate music-making? I’d say it’s probably organisations more than individuals. We’ve recently increased our focus on live streaming, drawing attention to the commitment by organisations as varied as the Berlin Philharmonic, Gothenburg Symphony and the Philharmonie de Paris to making their performances available online, live and archived. This, in itself, builds on the own-label boom pioneered by the LSO and others. Who knows what will come next – and who will pick up the baton, so to speak? martin.cullingford@markallengroup.com
THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS
‘Take an umbrella and galoshes’, Respighi warned a friend who was about to hear Toscanini conduct The Fountains of
‘Composing with weird string tunings is a bit of an obsession with me’, says FABRICE FITCH, who enjoyed
Rome. It was this elemental aspect that ‡irst commended the maestro to RICHARD OSBORNE, who this issue makes his own anniversary enquiry into the phenomenon that was Arturo Toscanini.
getting stuck into this month’s Collection on Biber’s Mystery Sonatas. ‘It was about time I tackled these pieces which Maya Homburger has plausibly likened to Bach’s Solo Violin Sonatas’, he adds.
‘Some do it by skilful orchestration, others with imaginative harmonies and textures’, says
JEREMY NICHOLAS, who compiled our winter-themed Specialist’s Guide. ‘The variety of ways in which composers have responded to the season presented me with a heartwarming embarras de richesses.’
THE REVIEWERS Andrew Achenbach • David Allen • Nalen Anthoni • Tim Ashley • Mike Ashman • Richard Bratby Edward Breen • Liam Cagney • Philip Clark • Alexandra Coghlan • Rob Cowan (consultant reviewer) Jeremy Dibble • Peter Dickinson • Jed Distler • Adrian Edwards • Richard Fairman • David Fallows David Fanning • Andrew Farach-Colton • Iain Fenlon • Neil Fisher • Fabrice Fitch • Jonathan Freeman-Attwood Charlotte Gardner • Caroline Gill • David Gutman • Christian Hoskins • Lindsay Kemp • Philip Kennicott Richard Lawrence • Andrew Mellor • Kate Molleson • Ivan Moody • Bryce Morrison • Hannah Nepil Jeremy Nicholas • Christopher Nickol • Geo‡frey Norris • Richard Osborne • Stephen Plaistow • Mark Pullinger Peter Quantrill • Guy Rickards • Malcolm Riley • Marc Rochester • Patrick Rucker • Julie Anne Sadie Edward Seckerson • Hugo Shirley • Pwyll ap Siôn • Harriet Smith • David Patrick Stearns • David Threasher David Vickers • John Warrack • Richard Whitehouse • Arnold Whittall • Richard Wigmore • William Yeoman
Gramophone, which has been serving the classical music world since 1923, is irst and foremost a monthly review magazine, delivered today in both print and digital formats. It boasts an eminent and knowledgeable panel of experts, which reviews the full range of classical music recordings. Its reviews are completely independent. In addition to reviews, its interviews and features help readers to explore in greater depth the recordings that the magazine covers, as well as o fer insight into the work of composers and performers. It is the magazine for the classical record collector, as well as for the enthusiast starting a voyage of discovery.
gramophone.co.uk
GRAMOPHONE JANUARY 2017 3
