Arturo Toscanini was the most famous conductor of his time, or indeed any time. He was also one of the most hard-working, conducting thousands of operas, concerts, and radio broadcasts in a career that lasted from 1884, when he was a 17-year-old cellist in an opera company touring South America, until 1954, when he retired from conducting an orchestra created specially for him. A great many of those performances were recorded, whether by RCA Victor in its studios or during his broadcasts mainly on NBC. And the most comprehensive archive of Toscanini performances, comprising some 43,000 items, is owned by the Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, a division of the New York Public library for the Performing Arts.
The sound archive doesn't just keep its collection on the shelves. Vast amounts of time, care, and money are spent to repair and restore the recordings. Experienced and sophisticated sound engineers such as Seth B. Winner, who has also restored historical recordings for commercial record companies, work with state of the art equipment to return the recordings to their original quality, as closely as is possible.
This major exhibition at the Library for the Performing Arts has a dual focus. It documents and celebrates the life and work of Toscanini, and it also illustrates the history of sound recording and audio preservation. Along one wall, on shelves 8 feet high, are the hundreds of 10"-reel audio tapes transferred from the Toscanini Legacy collection of sound recordings, 1926-1968 - Toscanini's own archive, assembled and eventually sold to the Library by his son Walter. In the center of the gallery are a dozen audio recording and playback devices used by the Library to make the transfers, including probably the only working Selenophon in the world. Video screens show Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra as reconstructed from kinescopes of the original NBC telecasts. Much to see and much to think about.
Incidentally, anyone can listen to any of these recordings in the Library for free, though advance notice may be required to retrieve some of them from off-site storage.
Open now. Ends April 7th, 2018.
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