Toscanini conducts Bizet, Mozart, Copland, etc.

• Main performer: Arturo Toscanini
• Booklet languages: English, German, French
• Time: 141:18
• Release Date: 2006

Review

For anyone who relishes the conducting of Arturo Toscanini, this two-disc collection will be irresistible. Only two of the works included here -- two movements of Goldmark's Rustic Wedding Symphony and Smith's The Star-Spangled Banner -- were released in commercial recordings by Toscanini; all the others have been heretofore unreleased. For Toscanini collectors, this means eight recordings of pieces the conductor had otherwise never recorded: Meyerbeer's Dinorah Overture, Bizet's La jolie fille de Perth Suite, Massenet's Orchestral Suite Scènes alsaciennes, Mozart's Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola, Kalinnikov's Symphony No. 1, and Sousa's Semper Fidelis and El Capitán marches. While none of these are what might be called standard, or even first-class, repertoire -- excepting, of course, the Sinfonia concertante -- Toscanini clearly expended as much energy and intensity in performing them as he would have on Beethoven's Fifth. The clarity of the lines, the brightness of the colors, the sharpness of the ensemble, the energy of the tempos, and the sheer force of personality are all distinctively Toscanini's. Played by the "trying as hard as they could but never quite succeeding in sounding world-class" NBC Symphony and recorded in RCA's exceedingly dry Studio 8-H, these performances may or may not do much for non-fans, but they are guaranteed to excite collectors. ~ James Leonard, Rovi

Performances

Composer	Title	Time
Giacomo Meyerbeer	Dinorah (Le pardon de Ploërmel), comic opera in 3 acts (Overture)	13:45
Karl Goldmark	Rustic Wedding, symphonic poem in E flat major, Op. 26 (In the Garden)	8:11
Karl Goldmark	Rustic Wedding, symphonic poem in E flat major, Op. 26 (Serenade)	4:01
Georges Bizet	La Jolie Fille de Perth, orchestral suite	15:11
Jules Massenet	Suite No.7 for orchestra ("Scènes alsaciennes")	22:38
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart	Sinfonia concertante for violin, viola & orchestra in E flat major, K. 364 (K. 320d)	27:32
Vasily Kalinnikov	Symphony No. 1 in G minor	33:21
Aaron Copland	El Salón México, for orchestra	10:17
John Philip Sousa	Semper Fidelis, march for band	2:38
John Philip Sousa	El Capitan, march for band	2:23
John Stafford Smith	The Star-Spangled Banner (National Anthem, USA), for orchestra & voice/chorus, ad lib	1:21

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