“He drove the orchestra hard whenever there was a shadow of an excuse for doing it.”“He has evidently some of the defects of his virtues.”“The orchestra quickly and appallingly retrograded in its discipline and its technical quality, while reviewers became positively embarrassed to record the level of mediocrity, or worse, in the performances.”This is just a sampling of the grim verdicts that Olin Downes of The New York Times delivered on John Barbirolli when that young and little known Englishman had the unenviable task, from 1937 to 1942, of following the epochal Arturo Toscanini as music director of the New York Philharmonic. Perhaps Virgil Thomson, of The New York Herald Tribune, was more receptive? Barbirolli is a Latin out of his natural water; perhaps, too, just a little over his head.”

Source: New York Times August 13, 2020 13:52 UTC