This important historical release brings the only performance Toscanini ever gave of the Swedish composer Kurt Atterberg’s Sixth Symphony, which won the 1928 Columbia Schubert Centenary Prize. This is therefore a highly valuable recording, for the composer later described Toscanini’s account as the finest he had ever heard of any of his works. Also on the disc are four items from an important Washington DC concert given in 1940 prior to a South American Tour, including the delightful Batuque by the Brazilian composer Fernandez and Samuel Barber’s haunting Adagio for strings. A rare disc of Toscanini in mainly 20th-century music.

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