He has always conducted from memory because he believes that having the score in his head gives a conductor greater freedom and authority to impose his musical will upon his men. At rehearsals the score is kept on a stand a few feet from the Maestro. From time to time he consults it to verify a point at dispute. He has never been known to be wrong.
His memory is, of course, phenomenal. Anything he has once seen, read and particularly, heard, he not only remembers but is unable to forget. The other day he and a friend were discussing the concerto played by a certain pianist on his American debut in 1911. Mr. Toscanini remembered it as Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto; the friend maintained it was the Second.
The Maestro said: "I recall the concert very well. He was soloist with the Philharmonic." And he reeled off all the other compositions on that program of twenty-seven years ago.
To settle the argument the skeptical friend called the office of the Philharmonic. Mr. Toscanini had been right about the Beethoven Concerto and had correctly remembered the purely orchestral numbers as well.
He is a profound student, not only of music but of all available literature bearing upon it. A music critic who visited him in Salzburg a few years ago, just before he was to conduct Wagner's "Die Meistersinger," found him in a room littered with books on the opera, books on Wagner, volumes of the composer's correspondence.
The Maestro, who has been coming to this country since 1908, speaks better English than most of us. He knows his English literature and is in the sometimes disconcerting habit of quoting by the yard from the works of Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley and Swinburne.
Almost as great a linguist as he is a musician, he coaxes and curses his men in perfect, idiomatic French, German and Spanish as well as English and Italian.
He likes reading, listening to the radio—he is fond of good jazz—and driving out in the country. He loves speed. An American friend who some years ago accompanied him on a motor trip from Milan to Venice groaned when the speedometer began hovering around 78. "What's the matter with you?" the Maestro wanted to know. "We're only jogging along." Whenever possible he flies.
Since 1926 he and Mrs. Toscanini have occupied an apartment in the Astor—the same suite of four smallish rooms. The place is furnished by the hotel, but the Maestro always brings his beloved knickknacks—his miniature of Beethoven, his Wagner and Verdi manuscripts, his family photographs.
He has no valet and dislikes being pawed by barbers. He shaves himself, and Mrs. Toscanini or one of the daughters cuts his hair. He eats very little—two plates of soup (preferably minestrone), a piece of bread and a glass of chianti do him nicely for dinner.