Late in life, Bruno Walter would muse upon the didactic value of sound recordings to Columbia Records’ Arnold Michaelis. Tellingly, he singled out the recorded legacy of one conductor as being particularly valuable to future generations:
“I am really very happy about this idea that the disappearance of all the traces of our lives as performing musicians is not anymore to be feared. That we really. . . can live on in our best efforts. . . It is a kind of school. So it is for young conductors who can hear how Toscanini conducted this or that.”
The conducting profession has never been conducive to the forging of warm friendships among its most famous practitioners, especially during the golden age of the maestro-auteur in the early 20th century. Walter himself was aware that his mentor, Gustav Mahler, had been a fierce rival of Arturo Toscanini’s when happenstance brought both conductors to New York City during the same period. The disparity of their respective backgrounds and ages notwithstanding, a firm friendship based on mutual respect would be forged between these two conductors which would endure their entire lives.
They first crossed paths in 1926 when Walter, then among the leading lights of the German musical world, was invited as a guest conductor to La Scala. Writing about the occasion in his memoirs, Theme and Variations, Walter recalled: “The meeting, casual though it was, made a deep and lasting impression upon me. I wished I would come to know the man better and fathom the secret of so exponential a being.”
Toscanini, though sometimes grumbling disapprovingly over his colleague’s interpretations, was nonetheless appreciative of Walter as both friend and musician
“When I see the good Bruno Walter,” he confided to his mistress, Ada Colleone Mainardi, “I really feel that I’m ten years younger than he!”
Within less than a decade of their first meeting, the lives of both conductors would be tossed asunder by the epochal winds of history about to blow through Europe. Toscanini, by the late 1930s permanently residing in America, emerged from retirement to assume the role as music director of NBC’s newly created flagship orchestra. Though prone to professional jealousies, he extended guest invitations to conductors fleeing the Old World in search of refuge and a chance to restart their careers in the New World. Among those whom he helped was Walter, who had fled the Anschluss and the imminent invasion of France, and was mourning the murder of his daughter Gretel besides. He made his first post-exile American appearance in March and April 1939 with the NBC Symphony in a five-concert series—a generous engagement reflective of Toscanini’s admiration. This was followed next season with another five-concert guest series which included, among other things, an electrifying reading of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony which, gratefully, has been preserved.
Curiously, Walter would not be invited to conduct the NBC Symphony again until February 1951, when he replaced Toscanini, then recovering from a knee injury.
After Toscanini’s final retirement in April 1954, NBC disbanded what had by then essentially become “his” orchestra. Instead of walking away, the ensemble independently reconstituted as the Symphony of the Air, promoting itself as “the orchestra that refused to die.” Don Gillis, composer and former producer for the NBC Symphony’s broadcasts, cabled the ensemble’s former music director an invitation to lead their first concert. He politely, but firmly rejected the orchestra’s “touching and kind [message],” stating that his advanced age and frail health precluded any possibility of considering any conducting engagements.
If not presiding in person, Toscanini’s spirit at least hovered over the orchestra as strong as ever, even while the man himself rapidly wasted away. By the time his former orchestra was planning its elaborate concert commemorating his ninetieth birthday, Toscanini mental faculties had deteriorated to such a degree that one wonders whether he was even aware of the forthcoming occasion. Early in the morning of January 1, 1957, Toscanini would suffer a debilitating stroke—two weeks later he was dead.
“I am too deeply shocked by the passing of my dear and revered friend,” Walter wrote in a memorial tribute. “In him was greatness and I am sure the memories of his glorious activities. . . will live on in the hearts of all of us.”
Walter, himself an octogenarian and not in robust health, was moved to make out his last will and testament during this time. A few weeks later, his fragile physical state forced him to decline being a pallbearer for Toscanini at his funeral in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.
Already from the year before, when he was approaching his eightieth birthday, Walter was beginning to curtail his conducting engagements. In a letter to the New York Philharmonic’s manager, Bruno Zirato, he announced that he would not renew his regular guest appearances with the orchestra after the 1956 – 1957 season.
“I feel the hour has struck for me to discontinue an activity which has meant so much to me,” he wrote.
In his final years, he would cease performing live altogether, instead venturing from his Beverly Hills home only as far as a relatively short drive to Hollywood and Eagle Rock in order to conduct the pick-up Columbia Symphony Orchestra. These final recording sessions—covering repertoire ranging from Mozart to Mahler—have remained Walter’s best known, with the fire and verve of his early years mellowed (some would argue “dulled”) into agreeable geniality.
But on February 3, 1957, as he (along with Pierre Monteux and Charles Munch) stepped before Toscanini’s old orchestra for the last time, much of that old fire returned in a triumphantly blazing performance of the Beethoven Eroica that is perhaps the finest of all Walter’s extant recordings of the symphony.
Unsurprisingly given the occasion and ensemble, the performance has a Toscanini-like grip quite unlike Walter’s contemporary performances, be they in the studio or the concert hall. It also is a reminder of the orchestra’s reluctance to play according to Walter’s preferences. Violinist Felix Galimir remarked that members of the NBC Symphony would often “not even watch whatever [the guest conductor] was doing.”
Replying to an admirer who had also commented on this unique aspect of this performance, Walter wrote: “I presume your impression may be explained by the fact that it was an orchestra which had played the same work under Toscanini for many years.”
The performance does not suffer in the least for all that, which is markedly superior to the stereo commercial recording he would make shortly afterwards. From the moment those twin E-flat chords pound forth, Walter’s interpretation surges with an irresistible sense of momentum tempered by subtle flexibility of line and sonority. It is tempting to wonder whether Walter’s traversal would have earned the admiration of Toscanini had he lived to hear it. Certainly it proves to not only be a fitting tribute to his recently deceased friend, but an inadvertently touching memento of the elemental power that Walter still managed to rouse from himself on occasion.
Just over a month later, on March 7, 1957, he suffered a heart attack, the first of two that year, leaving a permanent mark on his career and performance style. The final curtain upon Bruno Walter’s career had begun to be drawn.
Walter and Toscanini, unlikely friends, looking cozy in Leipzig during the latter’s 1930 European tour with the New York Philharmonic.