Tag Archives: Toscanini
Finale 44 – Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 27th February 2025Beethoven’s C minor Symphony, built around the universally known four-note phrase, transitions quietly from its third movement to its fourth. The brief journey over the orchestra explodes in a burst of C major, unusual for a symphony that began in a minor key. The four-note figure occurs repeatedly in different guises as it does in…
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Toscanini: Musician of Conscience – Book Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 20th November 2017Harvey Sachs has made a career, well part of one, writing books about the eminent conductor. Sachs wrote his first Toscanini biography in 1978. Why a second one almost 40 years later? Sachs cites the additional material now available that was denied him during his first go around with the conductor. The book’s subtitle, Musician…
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Aureliano Pertile
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 12th December 2009Aureliano Pertile was born in 1885 in Montagnana near Padua. Interestingly, Giovanni Martinelli was born in the same town in the same year. Pertile’s career was mainly based at La Scala where he had the reputation as Toscanini’s favorite tenor, though the great maestro did not ask him to sing at the prima of Turandot….
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