Earl Wild Archive

Toscanini Conducts American Music, Volume 1 = LOEFFLER: Memories of  My Childhood; CRESTON: Choric Dance No. 2; GOULD: Lincoln Legend; GERSHWIN: Rhapsody in Blue – Earl Wild, piano/ Benny Goodman, clarinet/ NBC Symphony Orchestra/ Arturo Toscanini – Pristine Audio

Toscanini Conducts American Music, Volume 1 = LOEFFLER: Memories of My Childhood; CRESTON: Choric Dance No. 2; GOULD: Lincoln Legend; GERSHWIN: Rhapsody in Blue – Earl Wild, piano/ Benny Goodman, clarinet/ NBC Symphony Orchestra/ Arturo Toscanini – Pristine Audio

Arturo Toscanini leads a wartime concert that celebrates the American musical character.  Toscanini Conducts American Music, Volume 1 = LOEFFLER: Memories of  My Childhood (Life in a Russian Village); CRESTON: Choric Dance No. 2; GOULD: Lincoln Legend; GERSHWIN: Rhapsody in Blue – Earl Wild, piano/ Benny Goodman, clarinet/ NBC Symphony Orchestra/ Arturo Toscanini – Pristine Audio PASC 495, 54:03 [www.pristineclassical.com] ****: Andrew Rose restores to full, intensely resonant sonics the live NBC Symphony broadcast from Studio 8-H of 1 November 1942, dedicated to American music by way of lifting the morale at the front during wartime. Rose notes that prior to this concert, only the Loeffler work had enjoyed attention from Toscanini; and, after this concert, none of the selections was to receive a second session, a trait that lies closer to Stokowski than to Toscanini. The Loeffler piece has a curious history, having been premiered in this country by Frederick Stock in 1924.  Loeffler led a rustic, village life in the Ukraine village of Smela; but the family left for Germany, where his father ran a sugar factory. When Bismarck sought the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, Loeffler’s father joined an organization in opposition, suffered conviction and imprisonment in […]