THIS WAS TOSCANINI: The Maestro, My Father, and Me. By Samuel Antek and Lucy Antek Johnson. Narrated by David Garrison and Lucy Antek Johnson. Dallas, TX: Brown Books, 2024. Streaming audio (294:09). Available on Audible, Spotify, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Google Play, and Chirp

This is a long audio book, but streaming it was not at all an arduous task. For what it is worth, I used Spotify and had no problems: The sound is excellent, both for the voices and the musical excerpts.

What we have here is a multiplicity of delights. Samuel Antek, a violinist in Toscanini’s NBC SO, sadly died before finishing his book This Was Toscanini. Now we have commentary by Lucy Antek Johnson, Samuel’s daughter, herself immersed in media and an expert at narration. This is the second edition of the book.

Before I hone in on the details, what stands out for me first and foremost from the nearly 300 minutes of listening is a sense of affection. Yes, there is reverence there, too, but there is also a real portrait of Toscanini the person. Not just the tantrums are represented, but also Toscanini relaxing on tour, when an impish sense of humor seeps through; Toscanini at home; Toscanini the father and husband.

Actor David Garrison is the male narrator, and to him falls the task of imitating Toscanini’s voice (hoarse and heavily Italian-accented) in the words the Maestro used. We hear “Vergogna!” (“Shame!”) a lot. There are musical sound excerpts dotted throughout: indeed, Johnson’s spoken “Prelude” begins with a bright and breezy Mendelssohn “Italian” Symphony first movement.

Johnson introduces each chapter. The strains of the big tune from Brahms’s First Symphony finale underpin her “Introduction to Chapter 1,” full of atmospheric recollections by Johnson. This is invaluable: Antek’s own daughter gives us a window into the world of a legend. She also adds a short Postscript to the fourth chapter.

The actual book chapters are as follows. Chapter 1, “Playing with Toscanini,” provides a brief portrait of Toscanini, including an appraisal of what made Toscanini special: “[H]ow every phrase related to the work as a whole.... It was in the vertical awareness of each thread that Toscanini stood supreme.” Chapter 2, “Touring with Toscanini,” offers a cornucopia of tales. Chapter 3 covers “Recording with Toscanini”; Antek participated in all but one recording session during his tenure, starting with the Haydn Symphony No. 88 in 1938 in Studio 8H, while the last, “numbing” session was at Carnegie Hall shortly after the final concert, in 1954. Chapter 4, “A Visit with Toscanini,” fascinatingly documents a one-on-one meeting between Antek and the Maestro, including great insight into Verdi and Toscanini’s relationship to accuracy of detail. Chapter 5, “Toscanini Conducts Oberon,” takes us through a complete work, Weber’s Overture to Oberon, from start to end.

This last, the Oberon analysis, merits some comment, as it sounds difficult to follow without a score at hand, but it really is not. There is careful description of arrival points and how passages relate to them, and itemizing of what to listen for, plus sound examples. The Maestro’s baton technique is discussed in detail, and its eloquent relationship to emotion (what Antek calls a “sticky beat”). The relationship of textbook technique and Toscanini’s own technique is considered (he’s not as textbook as you might think), but so are his requests to achieve the effects he wanted (for example, “cantare,” or “far away,” or “vibrare,” as he vibrates a finger over his heart). A single eighth-note, buried in so many performances, sparks extended debate. This is the stuff to get sucked into, and then to go to his remarkable recording (August 1952). Listen to that and, using this as a launching pad, seek out Toscanini’s October 1951 performance of Weber’s overture to Euryanthe (again with the NBC SO), and you appreciate what this is all about: precision at a preternatural level, and a complete understanding of the value of Weber’s unique voice.

Toscanini lavished his whole being on everything he touched: His performance of Wolf-Ferrari’s Overture to Il segreto di Susanna, although early and in poor sound, makes us wish the rest of the opera followed, so fresh is it, and so clear of articulation. (The piece is on my mind only because it was performed at Opera Holland Park in London this year; it is not featured in Antek’s book, but nevertheless serves to illustrate a point.)

To have a daughter’s commentary on this is actually really touching. One ends up cherishing the memories of Toscanini the person and his life as much as the rehearsal insights, and the takes from the viewpoint of the violins’ ranks. (The moment Toscanini zeroes in on Antek is scary indeed!) Antek’s hobbies? Playing tennis and watching Brooklyn Dodgers games.

The works we hear in part, sometimes as background to speech, are: Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 5 and 9; Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4, “Italian”; Brahms: Symphony No. 1; Souza: Stars and Stripes Forever; Rossini: William Tell Overture; Wagner: Lohengrin (act III Prelude) and Tannhäuser (Overture) (for some reason pronounced minus umlaut by Johnson); Verdi: La traviata (act III Prelude), Requiem (Kyrie) and Aida (Overture); Weber: Oberon (Overture); and Mozart: Symphony 40. There is also a 1943 recording from Johnson’s own files of Antek on violin and his wife Alice on piano, playing Tchaikovsky’s “None but the Lonely Heart”—what a way to finish the book! Its admittedly scratchy sound only adds atmosphere, and Antek’s violin almost has the tonal bloom of a cello. His playing is utterly remarkable (the piano, admittedly, is less well reproduced).

The whole audiobook is produced brilliantly and faultlessly. The audio format lends itself so well to a subject such as Toscanini, and when executed as slickly as this the result is a triumph. But at the end of the day, what do we take away? A more rounded appreciation of Toscanini, for sure. Shouting he might have done (loudly and often), but he was absolutely capable of warmth. Descriptions of his conducting, and even how he listened to playback, bring the Maestro back to life, a revivification that is heartwarming. We meet him in the concert hall, in the studio, and in his Riverdale home. But most of all we meet him in the music close to his heart, which is exactly how it should be.

Hearing this is a remarkable experience; do give it a chance, as it is the real deal. This is a meticulously constructed audiobook, with care lavished on every aspect, all in homage to Arturo Toscanini via the invaluable words of Samuel Antek, supplemented by Lucy Antek Johnson. Colin Clarke

 

This Was Toscanini, the Audio Version
By Peter Burwasser

Samuel Antek’s 1963 posthumously published book about Arturo Toscanini, This Was Toscanini, stood out from a number of other very fine books about the legendary maestro because it was the only one that was written from the perspective of the orchestra itself. Antek sat in the first violin section of the NBC Symphony Orchestra for its entire existence, and chronicled the day-to-day experiences of rehearsals, concerts, recording sessions, and tours with the towering personality that was Toscanini, replete with tales of his fiery personality and relentlessly high standards. He also had the rare privilege of forming a personal, if almost inevitably reserved, relationship with Toscanini, which is movingly related in the book. Antek died suddenly in 1958 at the age of 49, and so it was left to his widow Alice to organize his notes and submit a manuscript for publication. In 2021 his daughter, Lucy Antek Johnson, published a new edition of the book, with her own introductions to each chapter plus excellent reprints of the famously evocative black-and-white Robert Hupka photos of Toscanini. I interviewed Antek Johnson at the time (Fanfare 43:5), and we spoke again for the new audiobook version of her revised edition.

As I was listening to the audio version of This Was Toscanini it occurred to me that this is my third exposure to this wonderful memoir. The first occurred many years ago when I first read the original version of your father’s book, then more recently with the publication of your edition which includes your insightful and touching commentary as well as additional images, and now this audiobook, which adds yet another layer by virtue of the spoken word. Can you briefly describe your own voyage along this path?

The journey from first published edition to audio book has taken 60 years! When I was about six or seven, my father started writing about his experiences of playing first violin for the NBC Symphony under the legendary baton of Arturo Toscanini. He wrote any free moment he could; in between concerts, on trains touring the country, or late at night once home from a rehearsal or recording session. When he died so tragically at only 49 (I was 12), my mother was encouraged by the publisher Vanguard Press to put all the existing written pieces together so they could publish the eagerly anticipated revelations about the Maestro. Toscanini was an internationally renowned conductor (he was a rock star in his day) and everyone wanted to know, “What was Toscanini really like?”

My clearest memory as a teenager was of watching my mother and Robert Hupka, the photographer of the iconic candid shots of the Maestro, hunched over the dining room table night after night, week after week, month after month, matching up my dad’s text to Hupka’s thousands of photos taken during a decade of rehearsals and performances. Thus, This Was Toscanini was completed and published—posthumously—in 1963.

In 2017, the 150th anniversary of the Maestro’s birth, many articles and books were written about Toscanini’s legacy. The one book that stood out for me was Harvey Sachs’s Toscanini: Musician of Conscience, in which Harvey included many paragraphs from my father’s book, which by then had become a classic. I was so proud and moved to see that my dad’s elegant narrative was still relevant. I absolutely believed it deserved a renewed life in order to reach new generations of musicians, students, and classical music enthusiasts. Since my dad didn’t reveal much about himself in his memoir, I decided in this updated edition to add my own chapter introductions, bringing my father’s career more center stage and sharing what it was like for me to grow up in a home filled with music, in which Toscanini was such a strong influence. Thus the new and expanded edition, This Was Toscanini: The Maestro My Father and Me, was completed and published by Brown Books in 2021.

And ... on to the audio version!

I was always convinced that my father’s musical analysis, entertaining anecdotes, and engaging writing style about his 17 years as a first violinist with the NBC Symphony would translate easily to the audio format. But an audio book about Toscanini had to have music! È vero? How would I adapt this elegant and well-established book, with memorable illustrative photos, and turn it into an audiobook with actual NBC Symphony musical excerpts woven throughout the text? I am a TV producer and network executive by profession, and during this audio production I utilized every creative and management skill I had acquired over the decades to make this audio experience distinctive. The most challenging part of this journey occurred after David Garrison and I recorded our narration. The Toscanini Estate gave me access to a limited list of recordings, and Richard Caniell of Immortal Performances.org provided me with additional rehearsal and benefit performance recordings from his private collection.

I spent weeks sitting at the computer listening to each selection, deciding which work would be an effective opening or closing or musical illustration, and figuring out the timings necessary. For example, I chose Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for the opening titles, and incorporated 55 seconds of Wagner’s Lohengrin to close Chapter 3. Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 seemed to be the perfect underscore for the acknowledgments, and so on. It took two months in the state-of-the-art Verso sound studio of my town’s Westport Library, working with engineer Travis Bell, to refine, edit in, and artfully blend in the cues. Luckily, he is a musician as well, so his taste and skill made a significant difference to the painstaking process. And thus the audio edition of This Was Toscanini was released in June 2024 through publisher Brown Books.

I am curious about what your process was in making decisions about how to narrate the book. The choice of you reading your own words is obviously appropriate, and, I think, enhances your emotional connection to the project, but I wonder if there was any debate about imitating Toscanini’s voice when his words appear.

My first and only choice as a co-narrator was David Garrison, a dear friend and award-winning theater and television performer. Since my father’s text not only describes the Maestro in action but quotes him throughout the book, David and I talked a lot about how to interpret Toscanini’s vocal quality. When reading Toscanini’s dialog on the page, the reader’s own imagination fills in the rhythm and sound of Maestro’s voice. However, David, with his musical theater background, did his research watching existing videos and listening to rehearsal recordings (including some explosive rants!) and found the balance of how much of an Italian accent (which Toscanini did have) to use, and how best to demonstrate Maestro’s vocal intensity when illustrating his many moods and inflections. While sitting in the studio listening to David record the chapters, I was moved to a whole new level of understanding for what my dad must have experienced sitting in the orchestra, facing their fierce leader. The words and feelings were elevated by David’s interpretation.

On that point, I dug up my old VHS tape The Art of Conducting, which of course included a segment on Toscanini, and featured a short clip of one of his rants. I have to say that your narrator nailed his impersonation! It has been a few years since we first spoke about your new edition of your father’s book. At that time you spoke about being drawn deeper into the creative and personal life of Toscanini. I wonder if that sense of discovery has intensified even more, and if so, how?

Yes. Working on this audio edition, I was drawn even deeper into Toscanini’s passion, his power, his exacting musical demands, and also his gentleness and curiosity when conversing with other musicians about music. In the rehearsal recordings I was impressed by his various methods (both matter of fact and enraged) of having to rework a sequence that, by his standards, wasn’t sounding just right. I listened to hours and hours of his concerts and rehearsals, and felt, just as my father had described, what Toscanini was striving for and what made his music-making distinctive.

There has been a steady stream of reissues of Toscanini live concert performances in the last few years, especially on the label Pristine Audio, which include the original NBC broadcasters announcing the program. I can imagine that must evoke a great deal of nostalgia on your part, since you describe listening to those concerts on the radio in real time in the book.

I remember so well listening to the radio concerts “live” from NBC’s Studio 8H, but in this research of watching the TV concerts or other videos the experience became even more emotional for me. I got to see my dad, often in close-up, playing his violin. I got teary every time the camera cut to him in the 1943 film of Verdi’s Hymn of Nations.

Can you speak about the pluses and minuses of the audio version of the book versus the printed one? For example, I can imagine that you were delighted to include a segment of your father speaking to one of his children’s concert audiences, something not possible with the print version. Also, I couldn’t help noticing that there are some subtle tweaks to your chapter introductions, such as substituting “Beyoncé” for “Jay-Z” in your comments on recording technologies. Any other edits that you think are of interest?

I am an avid audio book listener. I am keenly aware that the listening experience is very different from holding a book and reading it. When reading, you can scan a page, easily go back and forth through pages, jump ahead, etc. With an audiobook you have to grab the listener right away and hold on. Of course, one can fast forward or rewind, but as a producer, I wanted the listener to stay with it as each chapter unfolded. For those reasons, I changed some of the language of my essays to be a bit less formal in places, making it more conversational and accessible. Also, I didn’t want any of my references to make listeners say to themselves, “What did she say?” If they are distracted by confusion, you’ve lost them. One example was substituting Beyoncé for Jay-Z. I wanted a female reference, and also knew that the sound of her name is instantly recognizable.

The most special part of my audio journey? I was able to include two other audio pieces that I found tucked away in my family files. In the Chapter 4 introduction, when I describe my father’s innovative children’s concerts, I resurrected and remastered, as best as we could, a segment from one of his children’s concerts where he’s interacting with the young audience. Just as we get to hear segments of the NBC Symphony concerts, the listener can now get a bit closer to my father’s style and personality.

My other favorite moment is the closing section—the bonus! It’s the 1940s homemade recording of my mother on piano and my father on violin playing a duet, Tchaikovsky’s “None But The Lonely Heart.” The listener, who has up to now spent almost five hours hearing my father’s and my narratives, will, at the very close when he reaches and holds the high note on the violin, be able to experience my very personal and emotional way to conclude this edition.

I am told by many that they listen to the audio edition while reading along with the book, looking at its exquisite photo illustrations. All senses are stimulated. It seems to me that they are perfect companion pieces.