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For information contact:
Eve Wolf,
Founder/ Executive Artistic Director
Phone:
212-288-8020
TOSCANINI MINI- FESTIVAL
January 15 Seminar at CUNY, To Dare to Say No, Harvey Sachs & James Melo, panelists
January 21 Theatrical Concert with the Escher
String Quartet
January 22 Preview of new documentary
film by
Larry Weinstein, with
pre-film
introduction by Walfredo Toscanini and Harvey Sachs
June 10 Theatrical Concert at Teatro La Fenice, Venice, with the Quartetto di
Venezia
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 22, 2008
Ensemble for the Romantic Century (ERC) presents innovative
chamber music concerts which combine chamber and vocal music with an
interweaving of letters, memoirs, diaries, poems, and
historical material. ERC celebrates its eighth season by examining the lives of
exiled artists in a three part concert series entitled Artists in
Exile. The first event of the series is a
Toscanini mini-festival that includes the theatrical concert, Toscanini: Nel
mio cuore troppo di assoluto
(Toscanini:too much of the absolute in my heart), a seminar, and a film preview. These
programs examine the life of the legendary conductor, with particular emphasis
on the period just before, during, and after World War II.
January 21, 2009
Theatrical
Concert: Toscanini : Nel
mio cuore troppo di assoluto (Too much of the absolute in my heart)
Ensemble for the Romantic Century (in partnership with the Italian
Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University) presents Toscanini, Too much of
the absolute in my heart, a theatrical concert based on the letters of Arturo Toscanini with the
music of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Guido Alberto Fano, Aldo Finzi, Verdi,
Respighi, Martucci, Wagner and Gershwin.
Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957), the most celebrated conductor
in history, was admired also for his opposition to Fascism and Nazism.
His clashes with Mussolini and Hitler and his trips to Palestine to conduct an
orchestra made up of Jewish refugees from Europe showed the world that artists
can raise their voices against totalitarianism. During World War II he lived in
exile in the United States, gave benefit concerts to further the war effort,
and assisted other musicians to immigrate and find work. Toscanini, Nel mio cuore
troppo di assoluto, is based mainly on the hundreds of passionate letters Toscanini
wrote to his lover Ada Mainardi during the 1930's, in which he discussed
political, artistic, and personal matters, and on his letters to Mussolini,
Hitler, Roosevelt, and others. They reveal the thoughts of an artist who had
the courage to say no to the tyrants of his time. Toscanini will
feature music by younger contemporaries of Toscanini who were forced to flee
Italy as well as works by Verdi and Respighi and will incorporate some of the
historical recordings of Toscanini in rehearsal and concert.
John Hellweg as Arturo Toscanini
Written by Eve Wolf and directed by Donald T. Sanders
Production and Costume Design by Vanessa James
The Escher String Quartet: Adam Barnett-Hart, Violin; Wu Jie,
Violin; Pierre Lapointe, Viola; Andrew Janss, Cello
C J
Camerieri,
trumpet; Eve Wolf,
piano
Pre-concert lecturer Harvey Sachs, author of Toscanini, editor and translator of The Letters of Arturo Toscanini
Eve Wolf & Max Barros ERC Artistic Directors , James Melo, ERC musicologist
Wednesday January 21st 8:00pm (7pm Pre-concert
lecture)
The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia
University (Casa Italiana)
1161 Amsterdam Avenue (just south of 118th
Street)
Tickets: (212) 288 8020
$45 General
Admission $15 Students (with ID)
For further information visit www.romanticcentury.org
January 15, 2009
Free
Seminar: TO DARE TO SAY NO
(ERC is in residence as a musicological affiliate to the
Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation at the CUNY Graduate
Center)
Panelists:
Harvey Sachs and James Melo
By the late
1920s, Arturo Toscanini – then in his early sixties – was music
director of La Scala in Milan and the New York Philharmonic, and beyond a doubt
the most celebrated conductor in the world. He had worked with many of the worlds most important opera
ensembles and symphony orchestras, had brought about major reforms in the
former, and had raised performance standards in the latter. But his hatred of Mussolinis fascist
regime was beginning to become public knowledge in Toscaninis native Italy,
and in 1931 he was struck and knocked down by fascist thugs for refusing to
conduct the Fascist Partys anthem before a concert. This only strengthened his resolve not to comply with
Mussolinis edicts: he declared that he would not perform again in Italy unless
and until the fascist regime fell, and he extended his protest to Germany in
1933, when Hitler came to power, and to Austria in 1938, when that country
became part of the Third Reich. In
1936 and 1938 he went to Palestine at his own expense to conduct the new
symphony orchestra (now the Israel Philharmonic) made up largely of Jewish
refugees from central Europe, and he spent the war years in exile in the United
States, where he conducted concerts to benefit the Allied war effort and the
Red Cross, helped refugee musicians less fortunate than himself to find work,
and participated, with other leading Italian antifascist exiles, in efforts to
insure that postwar Italy would have a truly democratic government. In this seminar, Harvey Sachs, who has written books on Toscanini
as well as the history Music in Fascist Italy, will discuss the impact of
antifascism on Toscaninis life, and Toscaninis position in the antifascist
movement.
Thursday January 15th 5:30 – 7:30pm
CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, Skyylight Room, 9th
floor
For further information visit www.romanticcentury.org
January 22, 2009
Free Documentary
Film Preview: TOSCANINI IN HIS OWN WORDS
directed
by Larry Weinstein
The making
of a new film about Arturo Toscanini became feasible in 2007, fifty years after
the conductors death, when his family allowed his biographer, Harvey Sachs, to listen to many dozens of hours of
unpublished tapes of the Maestro in conversation with friends, family members,
and colleagues. These tapes,
recorded without Toscaninis knowledge during the last years of his long life,
revealed much about a man who had never granted interviews or written about
himself for publication. Together
with excerpts from the hundreds of Toscaninis letters that Sachs edited and
translated for publication in 2002, excerpts from the conversation tapes form
the basis of this new TV film, in which actors playing the roles of the aged
Toscanini and various friends and relatives are offset by documentary film
footage, including home movies provided by the Toscanini family. The film, produced by Idale-Audience,
directed by Larry Weinstein, and co-authored by Weinstein and Sachs, will be
shown on the BBC, Arte, and other international networks in 2009. The film
screening will be preceeded by a short talk by Walfredo Toscanini.
Thursday January 22nd 8:00pm
The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University
(Casa Italiana)
1161 Amsterdam Avenue (just south of 118th
Street)
For further information visit www.romanticcentury.org
June 10, 2009
Theatrical
Concert in Italy: Toscanini: Nel
mio cuore troppo di assoluto
The
theatrical concert will be performed in Italian at Teatro La Fenice (Sale
Apollinee) in Venice, under the auspices of the Archivio Fano, with the Quartetto
di Venezia and Eve
Wolf, piano. (actor
TBA)
SUPPLEMENTARY
MATERIAL
HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
by
Harvey Sachs
Arturo
Toscanini (Parma, Italy 1867 – New York 1957), probably the most
celebrated conductor in history, revolutionized performance practices in the
worlds major opera houses and raised the standards of orchestral playing to
previously unattained levels.
Thanks to his extraordinary talents (photographic memory, virtually
infallible ear, exceptional sense of musical architecture) and his
uncompromising mentality, he achieved results that remain exemplary more than
half a century after his death.
Toscanini was at various times music director of Milans Teatro alla
Scala, New Yorks Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the NBC
Symphony Orchestra, and other ensembles, and a mainstay of the Bayreuth,
Salzburg, and Lucerne festivals.
During a career that lasted from 1886 to 1954 and that comprised a
repertoire of over 600 works – all rehearsed and performed from memory -
he conducted the world premieres of Leoncavallos Pagliacci and three of Puccinis operas (La
Bohme, La
Fanciulla del West,
and Turandot);
the Italian premieres of Wagners Siegfried and Gtterdmmerung, Tchaikovskys Eugene Onegin, Strausss Salome, and Debussys Pellas et
Mlisande; and the
US premiere of Mussorgskys Boris Godunov.
Toscanini
was also known for his courageous opposition to fascism, which began at the
time of Mussolinis rise to power in 1922. He did not perform in Italy after he was physically attacked
by fascist thugs in 1931, in Germany after Hitler came to power in 1933, or in
Austria after the Anschluss of 1938.
In 1936 and again in 1938 he went to Palestine at his own expense to
conduct a newly formed orchestra (now known as the Israel Philharmonic) made up
of Jewish refugees, and in the late 1930s he and his wife helped many European
Jewish and anti-fascist friends to immigrate to and find work in the United
States, where he lived in exile from 1938 until the end of World War II. During the war, he was active in the
left wing of the Mazzini Society, a group of prominent Italian exiles who tried
to influence the Allies with respect to how Italy would be governed after the
fall of fascism.
These and
other subjects occupy much space in his letters to the pianist Ada Mainardi,
with whom, during the 1930s, he had one of the longest and most intense love
affairs of his life. (Toscanini
was, on the one hand, a devoted family man who remained married to the same
woman for 54 years and who loved his children and grandchildren, but, on the other,
an inveterate womanizer, even in his 80s.) The fact that Adas antifascism was lukewarm made her lover
express his political and humanistic opinions with ever more violent
conviction. All of these aspects of
his life and work resulted from his passionate, uncompromising nature, which he
himself described as proud and scornful, but also clear as crystal and just
as cutting. His terrible temper
on the podium was legendary, but he was loved even more than he was feared by
those who worked with him. They
feared him because of his unending demands for maximum concentration and
dedication from all concerned, but they loved him because they knew that he
demanded even more of himself than of others and because of his great personal
generosity – on and off the podium. -----Harvey Sachs, author of Toscanini (biography), 1978, and Reflections
on Toscanini
(essays), 1991. Editor and translator of The Letters of Arturo Toscanini, 2002. Co-author of the television films Toscanini:The Maestro
(PBS, Bravo, RAI, etc.; 1985) and Toscanini in His Own Words (BBC, Arte, etc.; to be broadcast
in 2009).
ENSEMBLE
FOR THE ROMANTIC CENTURY