We are apt to ask where resides the power of a great conductor.   There can be only one ultimate answer:  it lies in the capacity to master scores and all that is in them.  In this work Toscanini is unequalled, and probably never has been.  His ear misses nothing.  Ernest Newman once remarked after he had heard Tristan at Bayreuth conducted by Toscanini, that it was the only perfect performance he had sat through in his long life.  We in London may never see Toscanini conducting in opera.  E.N. evidently regarded his own experience as unique and inexpressible:  there were finely shaded nuances he had never heard before, but later reference to the full score showed how right Toscanini’s reading had been.

It is the superior and fastidious qualities of his training, the inflexible power of his fiery imagination that make Toscanini different even from the few celebrity conductors.  In Germany and Austria his name has a magic ring that stands for all that is perfect and superlative in orchestral and operatic interpretation.   His advent into the principal chair at Bayreuth was heralded with great pomp and ceremony;  but he did not cling to the position when he saw that it would become a pivot in politics.  He promptly cabled his resignation from New York [3].  This desire to be free from party strife was shown by his refusal on artistic grounds to conduct a faction hymn;  but they restricted his liberty to his own house for his pains [4].  This incident sheds a ray of light on the sincerity of Toscanini’s attitude to his art.

He has the wish and the power to sink his personality into that of the composer whose work he is conducting.  This rare gift, added to his supreme technique, gives a halo of distinction to his interpretations.  When Toscanini came to London with the New York Symphony Orchestra, his most fervent admirers were professional orchestral players and conductors.  The Eroica Symphony is everyone’s possession to-day:  but Toscanini’s rendering of it [5] will remain with us as a beautiful and abiding memory through the years that are yet to run.