Now that translatlantic postage costs have become ludicrously high (a minuscule but sad reflection on the world’s situation today), I hardly ever buy CDs in the USA anymore, unlike ten years ago. Not worth it when, for a five-dollar bargain, you are requested to pay 15 or 25 bucks in postage – plus the customs and VAT that is likely to be levelled upon arrival.
But I still get regular notifications of new arrivals and restocks from Berkshire Record Outlet, which I rarely read now because I know it’ll probably be extremely frustrating, to be tempted by a number of offers which ultimately I’ll turn down because… not worth it.
But the title of the latest notification caught my attention
:
Now, conductor Hidemaro Konoye (18 November 1898 – 2 June 1973) may be unknown to most music lovers, but he is a recognized and important name for the Mahlerite. It may seem hard to believe (and it casts a surprising light on some aspects of the cultural exchanges before World War II, that we have forgotten today), but the premiere recording of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony was made in Japan, in 1930, on Japan Parlophone, by soprano Eiko Kitazawa and the Tokyo New Symphony Orchesra conducted by Konoye. It was reissued to CD as early as 1988 by Denon, CO 2111-EX (see listing on Discogs.com, link will open a new tab). I have the CD in my collection, haven’t listened to it in decades, but I remember that it was more than passable. The guy had an impressive pedigree too, you can read his bio on Wikipedia.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that Konoye was invited to conduct Toscanini’s NBC Symphony Orchestra in February 1937. This is what Berkshire has on sale:
And here’s how it looks:
But ay, there lies the rub. In the course of my Toscanini addictions, I’ve scoured every page, every line of Mortimer H. Frank’s indispensable if flawed survey of “Arturo Toscanini The NBC Years” (Amadeus Press 2002, ISBN 1574670697, barcode 9781574670691) – flawed, because riddled with hundreds if not thousands of errors of details, in its datings or discographic references (I’ve never published my review of that book, because it’s a never-ending process)… but indispensable nonetheless, and one of my bedside books, together with Peter Fülöp’s mammoth Mahler discography (and I’ve indeed published that review). Anyway, especially in Frank’s annex about the NBC concerts conducted by other conductors, I did not recall seeing the name of Konoye.
So, check, and, wait. The first concert given by Toscanini’s NBC Orchestra was conducted by his then assistant Artur Rodzinski (who had helped select the musicians for the orchestra) on 2 November 1937.
No way Konoye conducted Toscanini’s NBC in February of that year: the orchestra didn’t exist then.
I had to go to the fine print of Frank’s depiction of the founding of Toscanini’s Orchestra, to find the answer to that riddle.
“Perhaps the most remarkable among many remarkable aspects of this new venture was the speed and efficiency with which the NBC Symphony was assembled. John F. Royal, head of the programming department at NBC, arranged for the auditions that Rodzinski conducted. Applications for positions came from throughout the United States and from other countries as well. As it happened, however, thirty-one of the instrumentalists who ultimately passed the audition – almost exactly a third of the orchestra’s final complement of ninety-two musicians – were already in the employ of NBC”. And further on, Frank adds that in early November, as “the orchestra was fully assembled and preparing for its first concert (….), the entire project threatened to collapse”, when “Toscanini received word that NBC, in order to maintain its newly formed orchesttra, was discharging other employees, musicians among them. A furious Toscanini called from Italy and announced his withdrawal from the project. Panic ensued at network central”. NBC’s cabled reply “suggested that rather than discharging musicians, NBC was taking on many new ones in order to form the orchestra. To be sure, sixty-one new musicians were hired, who, along with the thirty-one retained by NBC from its staff orchestra, comprised the NBC Symphony. But many of those sixty-one were replacements for less skilled players”….
So, it appears that the label’s presentation of Konoye conducting the NBC Symphony is both true and deceitful. Yes, he must have conducted what Frank describes as the NBC’s “staff orchestra” of “less skilled players” (and I don’t know by which official name it went then). But it wasn’t (admittedly, a claim NOT made by the label, but a likely inference of the reader) “Toscanini’s NBC”.
And that’s how I didn’t buy the CD. If you hurry before I change my mind, it might still be on sale on Berkshire.