Tag

Toscanini

Finale 45: Beethoven Symphony No. 7

April 24, 2026

Composed between 1811 and 1812, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 emerged during a turbulent yet creatively fertile period in the life of the composer. Europe was in the throes of the Napoleonic Wars, and Vienna itself was marked by political uncertainty and shifting alliances. Beethoven, increasingly isolated by his advancing deafness, retreated during the summer of […]

Finale 44 – Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony

February 27, 2025

Beethoven’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 […]

Toscanini: Musician of Conscience – Book Review

November 20, 2017

Harvey 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 […]

Toscanini: Musician of Conscience – Book Review

Aureliano Pertile

December 12, 2009

Aureliano 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. […]

About the Editor

Neil Kurtzman

Physician. Professor. Writer.

Neil A Kurtzman MD is the Grover E Murray Professor Emeritus and University Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Department of Internal Medicine at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock. He has combined careers in clinical medicine, education, basic research, and administration for more than 40 years.