Remembering the Maestro: Music Master, Anti-Fascist

by Stephen Lendman

The term maestro means a “master” or “teacher” in
Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.  In English it refers
to a distinguished musician or noted figure in any
artistic field.  Most often, however, it’s a term of
respect for an eminent conductor of classical music.
For this writer, the term applies to one great man
above all others, and this year commemorates the 50th
anniversary of his death - the incomparable Arturo
Toscanini whose anti-fascism enhanced his musical
prominence and is the reason for this article.

Here’s what former New York Times music critic Olin
Downes once wrote about him: “Toscanini (had)
unparalleled qualities as an interpreter.  (His
performances showed) profound intuition, abnormal
concentration (and) consuming sincerity which make
them what they are, and without a precise equivalent
in any other conductor of which we know….People
marvel at such physical as well as artistic capacity.
Toscanini is a physical and mental phenomenon….(The)
supreme….spirit of the sovereign artist….sustains
him….Watch him as he walks slowly to the podium and
mounts the stand.  Then see what happens the instant
he faces the orchestra, scoreless….taking command
immediately with imperious authority and elan.  A
rock-ribbed steadfastness of tempo emanates from the
baton….as the music ebbs and flows from this
extraordinary blend of control and
release…..Toscanini (is) like the invincible titan
and warrior of the faith.  (He’s) the great master,
the ageless hero….the incorruptible and consummate
artist (creating) art (that is) greater than man
himself….And it is this….which makes his
fellow-man his debtor.”

The Maestro was born in Parma, Italy March 25, 1867.
He began his musical career as a cellist and debuted
at age 19 as a conductor in Rio de Janeiro in 1886
when he was unexpectedly called on to substitute for
the regular music director. Amazingly, he led the
orchestra and cast in Verdi’s classic Aida from memory
without ever before having done it.  It changed his
life and the operatic and symphonic world.

Toscanini was considered by many critics and fellow
musicians the greatest conductor of his era, or any
other, that lasted nearly seven decades from 1886 to
his retirement in 1954 at age 86. His perfectionism
was demanding and extraordinary and was aided by his
phenomenal memory.  He conducted all his concerts
without scores, remembering every nuance of every note
of every performance until once late in his life his
memory faltered on April 4, 1954 at age 86.  In
mid-performance, he stopped conducting live on-air.
He covered his eyes and the orchestra, so dependent on
his leadership, at first fell silent.  With help, he
managed to finish the concert with the well-rehearsed
orchestra leading their Maestro who led them for so
many years.  Before the concert’s end, Toscanini
dropped his baton and left the stage.  He never
conducted in public again.

Toscanini’s musical genius had an enormously enriching
influence on many, including this writer. It began a
lifelong love for the classics that remains to this
day and is still enjoyed in a large collection of old
but very serviceable LP recordings of his operas and
symphonic works.

The first ever bought is still the one most cherished
- his classic 1946 recording of Puccini’s La Boheme
with a distinguished cast.  It was performed live to a
worldwide audience on NBC Radio on two successive
Sundays beginning 50 years and two days after he
premiered it in the Regio Opera House in Turin, Italy
for his friend and composer Giacomo Puccini.  In the
recorded performance, as in some others, Toscanini can
be heard humming at several dramatic moments and at
one stunning point sighing in an expression of deep
emotion. Some critics said it detracted from the
performance.  Others, and this writer, felt it
enriched the listening experience, making it special
by glorifying and highlighting it.  It made a lasting
impact on listeners still remaining for this one over
60 years later.

Toscanini was more than a great music master. He was
also uncompromisingly anti-fascist at a time of
Mussolini’s rise to power in his native Italy in the
1920s followed by Hitler in 1930s Germany.  Though
non-political overall, throughout that period and
during WW II, he was distinguished for his views as a
symbol of freedom and humanity when so little of it
existed at a time of global war on three continents.
More on that below.

Throughout the late 19th century, Toscanini slowly
built his reputation conducting in various concert
halls throughout Italy.  He directed the premiere
performances of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci in 1892 and La
Boheme in 1896.  He also directed the Italian
premieres of Wagner’s Gotterdammerung in 1895 and
Siegfried in 1899 at the famed La Scala opera house
that first began operating two years after the United
States declared its independence from the British
Crown.  During his illustrious career, he conducted
throughout Europe, North and South America and became
the principal conductor of the New York Metropolitan
Opera in 1908, remaining there until 1915.  In 1926,
he debuted with the New York Philharmonic, became its
co-conductor in 1927 and its principal music director
in 1929.

While on tour in Bologna, Italy in 1931, he was
assaulted by fascist thugs for his views, authorities
temporarily confiscated his passport, and the Fascist
party surrounded his Milan home with carabinieri.
During the same period, he was constantly attacked by
the Fascist press for his uncompromising views. As a
result, Toscanini refused thereafter to conduct in
Italy during Mussolini’s reign. 

In 1933, he withdrew from Bayreuth after Hitler became
German Chancellor in January that year. He even sent
Hitler a personal telegram stating his views to which
the German dictator responded by banning further sale
or performance of his recordings.  That same year his
daughter, Wanda, married famed concert pianist
Vladimir Horowitz who performed on-stage and in
recordings many times with his renowned father-in-law.
In the 1930s, Toscanini resigned from the New York
Philharmonic to lead the Vienna Philmarmonic, later
withdrawing from the Salzburg Festival in 1938
protesting Hitler’s Anschluss takeover of Austria in
March that year. 

Beginning with his first concert on Christmas Day,
1937, he began his association with the NBC Symphony,
many of whose recordings this writer has and treasures
as classics.  Company president David Sarnoff created
the orchestra expressly for the Maestro as an
inducement for him to return to New York.  He did and
remained the orchestra’s conductor until his
retirement in 1954.

Many critics and classical musicians regard the 1937 -
1954 17 year era as the golden age of symphonic music
in America when Arturo Toscanini led the NBC Symphony
throughout the period.  His weekly concerts were held
in NBC’s famed Studio 8-H in New York’s Rockefeller
Center until the fall of 1950 when they were moved to
Carnegie Hall for its superior acoustics. 

A personal note: Live Sunday evening concerts were
broadcast worldwide on NBC Radio, including 10
televised in the US from 1948 - 1952.  They were held
around the dinner hour in the 1940s and early 1950s.
My mother introduced me to them. She played classical
piano, listened when able, as did I as a young boy. It
began a lifetime love for the classics and the
Maestro’s incomparable performances that touched
everyone hearing them.  Toscanini’s uncompromising
standards of excellence and relentless quest for
perfection had a profound effect on his listeners.
I’m one of them any time I choose from my large
collection of his recordings.  They preserve his music
forever that’s as powerful and moving now as when
first performed. 

One other personal note: My mother’s love of great
music was matched by her passion for learning.  She
pursued it and received her well-deserved degree along
with her son in the same class of 1956, seven months
before Toscanini’s death. It was the first time a
mother and son ever graduated together in the 320 year
history of the oldest higher institution of learning
in the country.  June 14, 1956 was her day.  Her son
just went along for the ride.

Toscanini the Anti-Fascist

As a conductor and anti-fascist, Toscanini was
uncompromising.  This section covers the political
philosophy of a non-political man who was fiercely
democratic.  It emerged when the Maestro publicly
denounced Benito Mussolini after he led his National
Fascist Party’s march on Rome in October, 1922
declaring himself Il Duce or supreme leader.
Toscanini thereafter refused to play the Fascist
anthem Giovanezza he didn’t consider fit music and
wanted nothing to do with the Fascist dictator. 

When Italian King Emmanuel III declared himself
Emperor of conquered Ethiopia in 1936, Toscanini
wrote: “Cursed Rome. Mussolini, the Emperor-King, and
the Pope.  Pigs, all of them.”  In a letter to Berlin
in 1941, he wrote: “You are too poisoned by the
atmosphere that surrounds you, you are all living now
too much amid shame and dishonor, without showing any
sign of rebellion, to be able to value people like me,
who have remained and will remain above the mud, not
to give it a worse name, that is drowning the
Italians.”

Earlier in 1938, he wrote: “I’ve never been and will
never be involved in politics; that is, I became
involved only once in ‘19, and for Mussolini and I
repented….I’ve never taken part in Societies, either
political or artistic….I’ve always believed only an
individual can be a gentleman….Everyone ought to
express his own opinion honestly and courageously,
then dictators, criminals, wouldn’t last so long.”

In February, 1941 Toscanini intervened on behalf of
fellow Italian and anti-fascist, Claudio Alcorso.
He’d been arrested because of his nationality in
allied Australia in July, 1940 and held for what
became a bitter three and a half year confinement.  It
was because Australia judged Italians during the war
the way the US viewed Japanese Americans.  It made
Alcorso believe “a dogmatic mentality was not the sole
prerogative of German and Italian Fascists.”
Toscanini’s efforts failed despite repeated efforts,
though Alcorso was finally freed after Mussolini and
his Fascist party fell in 1943.

While Mussolini ruled as Italy’s dictator, the Maestro
refused to perform in his native country including at
the famed Milan La Scala opera house.  He publicly
stated: “Never! I refuse to turn La Scala into a
market place for Fascist demonstrations.  They have
the square outside and also the Galleria nearby for
that, but while I conduct the Scala orchestra, it will
remain the home of opera and never will it become a
propaganda platform.”  Mussolini gave his brazen
response: “Never will my feet cross the threshold of
La Scala until Toscanini, the anti-Fascist, goes from
there.  How dare he refuse to play Giovanezza (the
Fascist anthem)?”

Toscanini condemned Mussolini for his comments telling
La Scala’s directors: “I will conduct Giovanezza never
and for nobody!”  He stood resolute by his word.  He
deplored dictatorships and never played in Czarist or
Stalinist Russia as well.  He was an implacable enemy
of tyranny.  In Weimar pre-Hitler Germany, he was the
first non-German to appear at the Wagner Festspielhaus
in Bayreuth, but refused to return in 1933 after
Hitler came to power.  He denounced the Nazi’s
treatment of Jewish musicians in protest.  He also
refused to conduct at Austria’s Salzburg Festival
because noted Jewish conductor Bruno Walter’s
performances there weren’t broadcast in Germany.
Later in 1938 and 1939, he conducted, without
compensation, at a Lucerne, Switzerland festival with
an orchestra entirely composed of musicians who’d fled
German persecution. 

During WW II, Toscanini said: “Italy will certainly
have a revolution as a result of the current war; the
Allies will either favor and help it, or hinder it.
The Allies’ attitude will determine whether the
revolution will, or will not, result in an orderly
democratic government….”  If he were still living,
Toscanini would be outspoken about today’s world and
the ugliness Washington injects in it. He’d denounce
fascism’s rise in America and the power of wealth and
privilege driving it.  He was a democrat and patriot
whose influential views had weight. 

Today the Mastro would be in the artistic forefront
leading the struggle for the same freedoms he believed
in when fascism earlier engulfed Europe, Asia and
North Africa in its greatest of all wars.  In words
and stunning music, he’d be in the lead to prevent it
happening again so the spirit of equity, social
justice and peace on earth could prevail for all above
the darkness of tyranny now threatening everyone in
the age of George Bush’s America.

Toscanini conducted his last concert on April 4, 1954
as mentioned above.  Always one to surprise (as he did
two and a half months earlier choosing Un Ballo in
maschera over Rigoletto for his final opera
performance), he eschewed his native Italy and chose
an all-Wagner program for the occasion. He died of a
stroke at age 89 on January 16, 1957.  His
extraordinary music and democratic spirit are sorely
missed but not forgotten. 

Throughout the year, many Toscanini commemorative
concerts and events were and are still being held in
the US, his native Italy and elsewhere.  Most notable
was the New York Public Library’s showcase exhibition
of rare Library material on the Maestro’s legacy that
ran from February 21 through May 25, 2007.  It was
called Arturo Toscanini: Homage to the Maestro. It
included rare rehearsal and performance recordings and
unique documents on Toscanini’s multifaceted persona.
Among items on exhibit were photographs, annotated
scores, letters, and many seldom ever seen unpublished
materials donated by the Toscanini family to the
Library’s Music Division.  Through these and other
documents, the Maestro’s memory, spirit and music
remains alive.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
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