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Editorial Reviews

If Beethoven's "Symphony No. 9" was his "Ode to Joy," his "Missa Solemnis" was his Hymn to God. For Beethoven, God was the God of the Enlightenment, the God who was always and everywhere and everything and over and above and beyond but, above all, the God deep in his heart, mind, soul, and spirit. In his setting of the ordinary of the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, Beethoven sang his hymn to God with all the power, poetry, and profundity that was in him. For Beethoven, the "Ninth" was his best symphony, but his best work was the "Missa Solemnis."

But for Arturo Toscanini, God was the Lord of the Old Testament, the barbaric Bronze Age God who rained fire on Sodom, who ordered Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, and who drown the whole world in his wrath. In this recording of a performance in Carnegie Hall on December 28, 1940, Arturo Toscanini leads the NBC Symphony, the Westminster Choir, Zinka Milanov, Bruna Castagna, Jussi Björling, and Alexander Kipnis in a spectacular and stupendous performance of Beethoven's "Missa Solemnis." Toscanini leads a performance of shock and awe, a performance of unstoppable strength and unendurable intensity, a performance that staggers and stuns and ultimately overwhelms any and all objections, or at least as long as it is happening. But after the spell dissipates, all that is left in the room is the smell of fire and brimstone and the faint stench of fascism. Toscanini's severe accompaniment to the auster Jascha Heifetz in their March 11, 1940, performance of Beethoven's "Violin Concerto" is an apt inclusion in the package if not a quite apt performance of the work. Guild's sound is the best these recordings have ever had. James Leonard, All Music Guide

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