Synopsis

On today’s date in 1937, as a Christmas gift to the nation, the NBC radio network broadcast the first NBC Symphony Orchestra concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini. The orchestra had been specifically created to lure the famous Italian conductor back to America.

For the first selection on his first concert, Toscanini chose what was then an obscure piece an obscure Italian composer named Antonio Vivaldi: his Concerto Grosso No. 11, to be exact.

These days we are used to hearing Baroque music in “historically informed performances,” “hip” for short, and often played on period instruments. By those standards, Toscanini’s Vivaldi might be described as “pre-historic,” but in 1937 it must have seemed a shockingly hip selection: a bracing, bold shot of unfamiliar Baroque music by a composer rarely — if ever — heard on a symphony concert.

In fact, one might argue that Toscanini was trying to be “historically informed,” since he probably used a score prepared by the Italian musicologist and composer Gian Francesco Malipiero, based on manuscripts and original editions of Vivaldi’s music found in the library of the Liceo Musicale in Venice, where Malipiero taught in the 1930s and Vivaldi lived in the 1730s.

Music Played in Today's Program

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741): Concerto Grosso No. 11; NBC Symphony; Arturo Toscanini, conductor (r. Dec. 25, 1937)