Toscanini

Arturo Toscanini: Wallet Box [Germany]
$16.97
The Maestro recorded for RCA for over 20 years and the company did not release all the performances. Never released before performances include an elegant Rhapsody in Blue with Earl Wild and Benny Goodman, Kodaly's sparkling Marosszek Dances, Borodin's Second Symphony (in very poor sound), a marvelous Ein Heldenleben by Strauss, a scorching En Saga by Sibelius, and a horrible Hungarian Rhapsody by Liszt.
The Rossini overtures are in a class by themselves. No other conductor could gently raise the volume and tempo to get that wonderful Rossini effect.
Gershwin's American in Paris is no wimpy tourist. And Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite will never sound grander. Listen to the storm. Only the Maestro could make a storm sound like music, rather than just the banging of percussion (also in the William Tell overture).
The Wagner selections contain the most beautiful Siegfried Idyll you will ever hear.
Beethoven's 8th symphony receives a dramatic treatment, not the usual Haydn makeover.
Beethoven's violin concerto is played by Heifetz in a performance that is better than his stereo version with Munch.
Included are Brahms' and Schumann's third symphonies, Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe, Schubert's Unfinished symphony, Mozart's 40th symphony, and Cherubini's symphony all receiving the Toscanini treatment.
And there is more. Many of the performances were re-recorded 10 to 15 years later in better sound. But, this is a way for the unfamiliar to appreciate the greatness of the Maestro and for the familiar to fill out their collection.

Ludwig van Beethoven: The 9 Symphonies - Arturo Toscanini / NBC Symphony Orchestra
$29.98
[ASIN:B0000CNTLU Ludwig van Beethoven: The 9 Symphonies - Arturo Toscanini / NBC Symphony Orchestra]]: Have heard many orchestras and conductors playing Beethoven symphonies over half a century. Toscanini has been by far the best conductor that ever played Beethoven. I am so glad I was able to get the full set from Amazon and have it delivered at a record speed. It took me back to the first time I heard Toscanini conduct Beethoven symphonies in 1957 when I was only 16 in my home town, Mosul in Iraq.

Brahms: The Four Symphonies (NBC Symphony Orchestra Vol. IV)
$8.99
Alright, I admit my bias. I think Toscanini was the best recording artist of the 20th cerntury (in any genre, classical or otherwise). But his work with the Brahms symphonies is really incredible, and stands out above the rest. In my opinion, this double disk is simply the best classical recoding avaialable. Don't miss it!!

Arturo Toscanini: The Complete Philadelphia Orchestra Recordings 1941-42
$29.98
For those of us who have grown impatient with the dry, boxy sonics of Studio 8-H and also with the tense, unyielding approach to music that increasingly became the norm for Toscanini after WW II, the recordings he made in Philadelphia have been a hope and a promise. The promise was that the orchestra sounded positively lush compared to the NBC Sym., the hope was that the corroded masters from that wartime era could be somehow salvaged.

Up to now the hope was unfulfilled, but Sony/BMG has brought these legendary recordings to life. This isn't modern sound by any means, but compared to the products from Studio 8-H, here the strings sound sweet, the acoustic is spacious, there is air around the instruments, and the overall balance sounds true to life. One can only express gratitude at this accomplishment. It makes amends for RCA's horrible CD transcriptions of its Toscanini archive in the past.

As for the performances, other reviewers here detect smaller differences from their NBC counterparts than I do -- to my ears, these readings are decidedly more flexible and yielding. The reason that Toscanini ventured to Philly is that he got angry with musicians moonlighting from the NBC band on extra assignments and quit in a huff. He soon returned to his main orhestra, but we are hugely fortunate that he took this detour in 1942. If you want to judge whether there's enough musical difference to warrant a purchase, I think the touchstone is the Schubert Sym. #9. In its Philadelphia version Toscanini's approach is tensile, swift, full of discipline and nervous energy, but it doesn't cross the line and beome frenetic and wiry the way his later NBC reading does. For the first time in many years, I felt I got a glimpse of why the most famous of conductors enraptured his audiences.