Page "Arturo Toscanini" Paragraph 143

Beginning in 1963, NBC Radio broadcast a weekly series of programs entitled Toscanini: The Man Behind The Legend, commemorating Toscanini's years with the NBC Symphony Orchestra.

The show, hosted by NBC announcer Ben Grauer, who had also hosted many of the original Toscanini broadcasts, featured interviews with members of the conductor's family, as well as musicians of the NBC Symphony, David Sarnoff, and noted classical musicians who had worked with the conductor, such as Giovanni Martinelli.

It spotlighted partial or complete rebroadcasts of many of Toscanini's recordings.

The program ran for at least three years, and did not feature any of the revisionist commentary about the conductor one finds so often today in magazines such as American Record Guide.

The series was rebroadcast by PBS radio in the late 1970s.