Credits:

Arturo Toscanini

Description:

Toscanini’s summation of the Enigma Variations – an interpretation that impressed even the English.A treasured performance restored in sound of unprecedented richness.- Toscanini first conducted the Enigma Variations in 1905, six years after the work was composed. When he conducted it in London as a guest of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1935, the conductor Landon Ronald declared that “the finest performance I had ever heard was the composer’s own, but Toscanini surpassed it”, and the eminent critic Ernest Newman added his own tribute – his reading enjoyed an authority beyond question.- This recording was made three months before the last concert at which Toscanini conducted the work, and thus represents the summation of his interpretation. It draws the NBC Symphony’s virtuosity to its fullest extent and brings out the varied appeal of the theme and its fourteen variations. A week earlier h