In 1945, Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra recorded the music in Carnegie Hall, one of the few commercial recordings Toscanini made of music by an American composer.

During that year, legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini made his first of ten TV appearances conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra, and Texaco Star Theater, starring comedian Milton Berle, became television's first gigantic hit show.

He took the Scala Orchestra to the United States on a concert tour in 1920 / 21 ; it was during that tour that Toscanini made his first recordings ( for the Victor Talking Machine Company ).

File: Toscanini recoding. jpg | Advertisement for one of the first records made by Toscanini conducting the La Scala Orchestra.

With RCA's experiments in stereo in early 1954, stereo tapes were made of Toscanini's final two broadcast concerts, as well as the rehearsals, as documented by Samuel Antek in This Was Toscanini.

Additional releases included a number of Beethoven symphonies recorded with the New York Philharmonic during the 1930s, a performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 27 on February 20, 1936, at which Rudolf Serkin made his New York debut, and one of the most celebrated underground Toscanini recordings of all, the legendary 1940 broadcast version of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, which has better soloists ( Zinka Milanov, Jussi Bjoerling, both in their prime ) and a more powerful style than the 1953 RCA studio recording, although the microphone placement was kinder to the soloists in 1953.

) There was speculation that, the Toscanini family itself, prodded by his daughter Wanda, sought to defend the Maestro's original decisions, made mostly during his last years, on what should be released.

In December 1943, Toscanini made a 31-minute film for the United States Office of War Information called Hymn of the Nations, directed by Alexander Hammid.

Toscanini: The Maestro is a 1985 documentary made for cable television.

Another criticism leveled at Toscanini stems from the constricted sound quality that comes from many of his recordings, notably those made in NBC's Studio 8-H.

Arturo Toscanini made a series of recordings for RCA Victor with the orchestra in 1941 and 1942.

In 1920 – 21, Arturo Toscanini made his first recordings, conducting the La Scala Orchestra, which was then on an American tour.

Toscanini made his first Victor electrical recordings with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1929.

A number of recordings were made with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, usually conducted by Arturo Toscanini ; sometimes RCA utilized recordings of broadcast concerts ( Toscanini had been recording for the label since the days of acoustic recordings, and the label had been recording the NBC Symphony since its creation in 1937 ).

Other early stereo recordings were made by Toscanini and Guido Cantelli respectively, with the NBC Symphony Orchestra ; the Boston Pops Orchestra under Arthur Fiedler ; and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Fritz Reiner.

Toscanini played in orchestras under Giuseppe Verdi and made his debut conducting Aida in 1886, filling in at the last minute for in indisposed conductor.

Huberman recruited musicians from Europe's leading orchestras, and the Palestine Philharmonic made its debut in December 1936, under the baton of Arturo Toscanini.

In 1967, as RCA Victrola reissued numerous recordings of Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra, Seraphim reissued some of Toscanini's British recordings with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, made in London's Queen's Hall from 1937 to 1939.

Two separate performances of Horowitz playing the concerto and Toscanini conducting were eventually released on records and CDs-the live 1943 rendition, and an earlier studio recording made in 1941.

In 1942, Arturo Toscanini invited him for a performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which was a resounding success and made him a household name.

* March 26 – The first half of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida, conducted by legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini, and performed in concert ( i. e. no scenery or costumes ), is telecast by NBC, live from Studio 8H at Rockefeller Center.

** Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is played on television in its entirety for the first time, in a concert featuring Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra.

* December 25 – At the age of 70, legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini conducts the NBC Symphony Orchestra on radio for the first time, beginning his successful 17-year tenure with that orchestra.

Complete concert version of the opera, the first to be televised ( on the NBC television network ), conducted by Toscanini with Herva Nelli as Aida and Richard Tucker as Radamès.

The first performance was held at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan on April 25, 1926 and conducted by Arturo Toscanini.

The first performance of the opera as completed by Alfano was the following night, 26 April, although it is disputed whether this was conducted by Toscanini again or by Ettore Panizza.

Two authors believe that the second and subsequent performances of the 1926 La Scala season, which included the Alfano ending, were conducted by Ettore Panizza and Toscanini never conducted the opera again after the first performance.

Among its guest conductors in its first years was Arturo Toscanini, who judged it the finest orchestra he had ever conducted.

Toscanini conducted ten concerts that first season, making his NBC debut on December 25, 1937.

In 1896, Toscanini conducted his first symphonic concert ( in Turin, with works by Schubert, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner ).

Toscanini was the first non-German conductor to appear at Bayreuth ( 1930 – 1931 ), and the New York Philharmonic was the first non-German orchestra to play there.

In 1980, it was used by Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in a series of special televised NBC concerts called " Live From Studio 8H ", the first one being a tribute to Toscanini, punctuated by clips from his television concerts.

But Toscanini coveted this for himself and there were a number of remarkable letters between the two conductors ( reproduced by Harvey Sachs in his biography ) before Stokowski agreed to let Toscanini have the privilege of conducting the first performance.

Toscanini favored the traditional orchestral seating plan with the first violins and cellos on the left, the violas on the near right, and the second violins on the far right.

Arturo Toscanini was one of the first conductors to make extended appearances on live television.

Less than a month after the first Toscanini televised concert, a performance by the conductor of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was telecast on April 3, 1948.

Like Toscanini, Monteux insisted on the traditional orchestral layout with first and second violins to the conductor's left and right, believing that this gave a better representation of string detail than grouping all the violins together on the left.

Additional Toscanini recordings with the Philharmonic, all for Victor, took place on Carnegie Hall's stage in 1929 and 1936.

RCA has only reissued recordings that were personally approved by Toscanini, including some broadcast performances such as the seven complete operas he conducted at NBC between 1944 and 1950 ; however, other labels have released discs taken from off-the-air recordings of NBC broadcast concerts.

In some of his recordings, Toscanini can be heard singing or humming.

The two Toscanini concerts recorded in stereo have been issued on LP and CD and have also been offered for download in digitally enhanced sound by Pristine Classical, a company which produces digitally enhanced versions of older classical recordings.

There are many pieces which Toscanini never recorded in the studio ; among these, some of the most interesting surviving recordings ( off-the-air ) include:

Whatever the real reasons, the Arturo Toscanini Society was forced to disband and cease releasing any further recordings.

Named The Toscanini Legacy, this vast collection contains thousands of letters, programs and various documents, over 1, 800 scores and more than 400 hours of sound recordings.

* Arturo Toscanini Society recordings