In mid-1941 Toscanini temporarily fell out with the NBC Symphony Orchestra management, and during the following season directed the Philadelphia Orchestra in a number of concerts. Some of the items he conducted were also recorded by RCA over several sessions, but various technical disasters left the metal masters with heavy surface noise and a barrage of clicks and pops. Nothing could be done to salvage the situation at the time, but later technology opened up possibilities and in 1963 the Schubert Ninth Symphony was published. In 1977 the whole Philadelphia series finally saw the light of day on five LPs (nla), but some allowance had then to be made for the recording quality. Further technological miracles have taken place and as a result all the performances have emerged on CD with remarkably improved sound. In fact, the recordings now seem very good indeed for their date, and RCA are therefore in a sense justified in leaving the troubled history of the enterprise out of their accompanying notes.
Only in one item is one aware that the recording quality is really too dim. That is in Feste romane, whose huge washes of sound really need more high fidelity. This gorgeously extravagant, uproarious piece is played to great effect by Toscanini, who conducted the work's first performance in 1929. His 1949 recording with the NBC Symphony Orchestra has more range, however, and serves an equally effective reading to better effect (RCA (CD) GD60262, 1/91). In fact, Toscanini re-recorded all the Philadelphia items with the NBC orchestra, but later versions do not all show gain. Neither the 1947 nor the 1953 recordings of Schubert's Ninth Symphony can hold a candle to his Philadelphia version, where there is infinitely more subtlety of phrase and rubato and generally a more sympathetic response. This is not a Viennese-style performance, but it shows remarkable sensibility.
Another great performance whose qualities really emerge for the first time in the improved sound is that of the Pathetique. Here is a most moving, eloquent and exciting account of the symphony, one which is a great deal more characterful than Toscanini's somewhat detached 1947 NBC recording. This now takes its place besides the extraordinary 1937 Furtwangler version (Novello, 4/90—nla) as one of the most powerful accounts of the work ever recorded.
Strauss's Tod und Verklarung is given a very dramatic, vivid reading, while the Berlioz piece has just the right quicksilver, atmospheric quality. Mendelssohn's score is given with much charm and character, and it is only in the Debussy works that I have any reservation. La mer was always a Toscanini showpiece, as it is here, but although there is some breathtaking virtuosity from the Philadelphia players there is little delicacy or refinement. The score is somewhat brutalized—to great effect, it's true, but in an unidiomatic fashion. Likewise, Debussy's lazy Spanish rhythms in ''Iberia'' are somewhat frog-marched and the score in general is super-charged to a degree which chills its colourful, scented atmosphere.
The Philadelphia Orchestra of 1941 was very much a Stokowski-trained instrument, and possessed more tonal colour and warmth than the New York, NBC and BBC orchestras with which Toscanini made most of his recordings. These performances tend to show a different aspect of the great conductor, one where he sometimes responds in a slightly more yielding fashion to the character of the orchestra and to the acoustic of Philadelphia's Academy of Music, which was softer than Toscanini's usual New York venues.'