To the waning numbers of music lovers who have a clear memory of a live or even a recorded performance conducted by Arturo Toscanini (1867–1957), it must be galling to note how the grandeur of his achievement is gradually diminishing, principally among the two or three most recent generations of musicians and music lovers. The testimony from past audiences on particular live performances of Toscanini heard, let’s say, at La Scala, Bayreuth, Vienna, or Salzburg before the war attests to the stunning impact of this conductor on musicians and audiences alike. Yet this history must come from written reports and interviews; whatever primitive recordings of such performances exist are still not available to the general public.

As for the recordings that are available, I note that many younger listeners just can’t bear to listen to even a monophonic recording made by Toscanini and his heroic NBC Symphony, let alone a reissue made from old 78s from his splendid epoch with the New York Philharmonic. For them, it is just too hard on the ear—they only go for the digital recording, or stereophonic at the very least.

Something else is on the wane—the fanatic adulation of certain music lovers and critics alleging the superiority of Toscanini’s performances over all others. I myself can attest to this fervor. Living in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the mid-1960s, I invited a teaching colleague from Wellesley College to supper, and he brought along the distinguished musical critic B. H. Haggin, whose trenchant reviews