Happy Birthday Maestro Toscanini!

Arturo Toscanini was born on 25th March 1867 in Parma, Italy. My photograph shows him celebrating while on tour in the US in May, 1950. The photo was taken at Sun Valley, Idaho, where the maestro conducted an impromptu band of toy guitars, wash-tubs, and a clarinet for a refreshingly multi-cultural audience.

Now listen as the maestro conducts a real orchestra (after a brief Finnish introduction) in the complete Prelude to the third act of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg in November 1951. The orchestra is Toscanini's own NBC Symphony, and the recording was made in Carnegie Hall, where the orchestra and its conductor can be seen in my picture below -


Toscanini's Wagner may have been sublime, but his opposition to fascism was trenchant, read about it here. And for another Toscanini download take An Overgrown Path to Schoenberg on Toscanini Audio file credit YLE Radio 1, NBC Symphony from Wikipedia/NBC TV. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

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