Robert Clements ([log in to unmask]) wrote:

>Politically, he loathed facism/naziism with a fury; an attitude which
>cost him quite a few opportunities in Europe.

Some of this may have been the zeal of the reformed, though: Toscanini
actually stood as a fascist candidate in the 1919 (?) Italian elections.

>Aesthetically, Toscanini was brough up with the same Goethic visions
>of the artist-as-hero (ie, not because the artist did something heroic,
>as in the case of Theodorakis; but merely because he was an artist) as the
>facists/nazis were; so the sense that his conducting style sounds facistic
>probably isn't facile.

But that same tradition also produced At's antithesis: Furtwaengler.

Deryk Barker
[log in to unmask]