Arturo Toscanini - The Essential Recordings

The recordings for Arturo Toscanini The Essential Recordings were all made for RCA Victor between 1929, when ArturoToscanini was 62 years old, and 1952, when he was 85, and provide a great representation of his repertoire preferences. Chronologically by work, this collection begins with a live concert performance of the second act of Gluck s Orfeo ed Euridice, which had had its premiere in 1762, and end with Samuel Barber s ever-popular Adagio for Strings (an arrangement of the second movement of the String Quartet, op. 11), of which Toscanini himself conducted the world premiere in 1938. In between, there are Classical and Romantic orchestral works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Rossini, Schubert, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Wagner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Liadov; music by Toscanini s contemporaries Debussy, Richard Strauss and Sibelius; and other pieces by composers younger than himself: Ravel, Respighi and Kodály. In addition, there are recordings of live concert performances of whole scenes (with vocal soloists) from Wagner s Die Walküre and Götterdämmerung; two complete Verdi operas Otello and Falstaff, plus the final act of Rigoletto; and Puccini s La Bohème as performed and broadcast in 1946, on the fiftieth anniversary of the work s premiere, which Toscanini had conducted.