Toscanini

In a Carnegie Hall gay with Italian and U.S. flags, 3,000 people sat and awaited the greatest event in Manhattan's music season. Three thousand people sat, hundreds more stood, jammed tightly in back of a red plush rail, and hundreds more turned reluctant feet down 57th Streethick-set little man scooted out on the stage and started for the conductor's daisg a band of able musicians how his "Clock" symphony should be playedras for nearly a decade now. Here are the pines of the Villa Borgheseini, a triumph for Respighi and the U.S. debut of a certain English nightingale in the third movement. For Respighi disdained any nightingale effect that might be obtained from strings or woodwinds, used a gramophone record made by a real birdToscanini as to make the readings of lesser men seem imitative and frail; and an audience that had jabbered its way into the hall went home stilled and critics went out fumbling for words.

In the '80s there was in Milan Conservatory a young 'cellist, short, muscular, with eyes that came from the very back of his head. Very bright eyes, they were, but very weak ones and it was almost impossible for him to see the music on his rack. It was hard to see the music, but very easy to remember it. He learned to do without a score, played everything from memory. In 1885 he was graduated from the Conservatory, received a diploma in 'cello and composition. He drifted about from one orchestra to another, went finally to Rio de Janeiro. It was during a performance of Aida, the regular conductor was taken ill and young Toscanini, 'cellist, called upon to replace him, won there his first honors in conducting. He went back to Italy, conducted first one orchestra, then another, was at La Scala for ten years until 1908 when he came to the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan. He was no Italian, at home with music of his own people, floundering through scores by Frenchmen and Germans. He was internationally great executive, wanted no conductor to be impresario too. Domineering, dynamic Toscanni went back to La Scala where now, as "artistic director" he rules supreme. "Devil" some call him. But his men adore him, tell many tales of his gentleness, his generosity. He conducted an orchestra in Turin not long ago. A second violinist made a false note in Beethoven's Ninth and Toscanini, enraged, struck the violin, smashed it, drove a splinter into the eye of the offender. Suit was brought and a genial judge forgave "the great master" because he had been righteously incensed. Toscanini, however, atoned out of court, gave the violinist many lire for injured feelings. "Devil" some call him. But the Philharmonic men have found him amiable and unaffected, have marveled at his knowledge of music. Over a hundred operas there are in his repertoire and an immense range of concert music. He never uses a score. He remembers allany conductors are able to dispense with a score: Leopold Stokowski, of the Philadelphia Symphony; Gennaro Papi of the Metropolitan Opera Company; Richard Wagner. But Toscanini never uses one