Toscanini’s Carnegie Hall Debut
One hundred years ago today … The internationally renowned conductor Arturo Toscanini made his Carnegie Hall debut.
Program cover. 3 January 1921, Carnegie Hall. Carnegie Hall Archives.
The concert was a benefit for the Italian Welfare League (which we covered in our May 10, 1920 post). According to the Herald, it raised $11,000 ("Toscanini Orchestra at Benefit," New York Herald, 4 January 1921, p. 8).
Toscanini was at the time conductor of Milan's La Scala Orchestra, which would play numerous NYC venues that winter as part of a 1921 tour of the US–including, for example, a charity event for the Society for Prevention and Relief of Tuberculosis at the Hippodrome on January 16.
Victor Records recorded Toscanini's Orchestra in its Camden, New Jersey facility and released several 78 rpm records in 1921, starting with two sections from Mozart's Symphony In E Flat Major.
Glen Falls Post-Star, 1 March 1921, p. 3. Chronicling America.
Listen to the 1921 record of Toscanini's La Scala Orchestra playing Mozart's Symphony In E Flat Major–Menuetto here:
Mozart was not among music Toscanini conducted 100 years ago today; at his Carnegie Hall debut, the program included Beethoven, Brahms, and other standards, and a piece by his contemporary and rival conductor/composer, Victor de Sabata. See the whole program here.
Toscanini would return to Carnegie Hall on March 18, 1921, and sign a photo for the house manager Louis Salter.
Carnegie Hall. Carnegie Hall Archives.
– Jonathan Goldman, January 3, 2021
TAGS: concerts, orchestra, classical music, charity, venue, entertainment, recording