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Note & Nuance. Not very long ago, Soprano Nelli was a virtual unknown whom the Maestro had molded and hammered into a fine Desdemona for his broadcast of Otello (TIME, Dec. 15). She knew he would work with her on every note and nuance until the concert began; she also knew that if her singing the day before the concert was a flight below his perfectionist standards, out she would go. Toscanini once told a musician, "God tells me how the music should sound, but you get in my way"; he is a man who regards an imperfection in the performance of a composer's music as no better than the kiss of Judas Iscariot. When listening to playback records of the Otello broadcast at his home, he stomped to the phonograph, stopped the record and roared: "At this point, I was betrayed!"
To Toscanini, an erring musician is not a blunderer, he is an "assassin"; hands folded, the Maestro stands, humble with rage, before the player, then erupts: "Ver-gogna!" (shame). Once when the entire NBC Symphony seemed to be off in its playing, Toscanini roared: "Do you know what I am going to do? I am going to open a whore house, and not one musician can get in."
Head in Hands. Compromise is one word Arturo Toscanini never uses. Once in Salzburg, he adamantly refused to have a certain soloist in an opera because he felt he didn't look the part. He has canceled concerts at the last minute because he felt the orchestra was insufficiently rehearsed. No commands or considerations —financial or humane—have ever been able to shake him.
He is rarely satisfied with his own magnificent performances, and, notoriously, almost never pleased by any other conductor's. After some of his own concerts, he has gone into his dressing room to sit for hours, head in hands. More often than not, he blames himself, mutters over & over, "I am a stupid man." He astonished friends after one recent concert by politely refusing his customary glass of champagne, saying with a sweetly penitent smile: "No thank you, tonight I will take only water." He likewise surprised the orchestra and chorus after the recent performance of the Ninth Symphony. Mopping his forehead with a handkerchief, he said wearily: "I think that's the best I can do." RCA Victor has never been able to get a recording of the Ninth out of him which he would allow them to release. In fact, their files are full of performances which the Maestro has not okayed.
Artistic Outrage. Toscanini was always uncompromising, even before he was the great conductor who could afford to be. As a "beardless bambino" of 20, with only a season's conducting of a road-show opera company behind him, he was hired to play a concert in Turin, and demanded two rehearsals. The orchestra manager would grant him only one, despite young Toscanini's warnings that one would not be enough. When concert time came, Toscanini went home and went to bed. When they tried to rout him out, all he would say was: "The orchestra is not ready. I will not conduct." The audience was waiting, but the concert was canceled.