Brown Books Publishing Group Releases New Audio Version of the Award-Winning This Was Toscanini: The Maestro, My Father, and Me for Audiobook Month

Live from New York, it’s Saturday night … 1937–1954! This Was Toscanini: The Maestro, My Father, and Me by Samuel Antek and Lucy Antek Johnson, with narration by Lucy Antek Johnson and David Garrison (Brown Books Publishing Group; Audiobook on sale June 4, 2024) publishes today in a riveting new audiobook format. It features recordings from original NBC Symphony performances, broadcast from Studio 8H Radio City in Rockefeller Center and Carnegie Hall.

This Was Toscanini: The Maestro, My Father, and Me is an intimate, firsthand portrait of Arturo Toscanini, widely considered the greatest conductor of the modern age. Originally released as a special expanded hardcover edition in 2021, the book will now be followed by the release of its companion audiobook in June 2024. This Was Toscanini is told from the perspective of Samuel Antek, the Maestro’s first violinist for all seventeen years of the NBC Symphony Orchestra’s existence — an orchestra specifically created for the purpose of being conducted by the legendary Maestro himself.

Antek’s timeless story of what it was to rehearse, record and go on tour with the famed Toscanini is brilliantly delivered by narrator Garrison. Newly added musical sequences bring listeners right into the seats of the orchestra players. Witnessing the crackling crescendos alongside the vehement strokes and slashes of Toscanini’s baton, it’ll feel as though one is attending the master class of an artistic genius.

Lucy Antek Johnson expands the spotlight on Arturo Toscanini to include her virtuosic father, relaying a story about two musicians whose paths fortuitously crossed when the historic NBC Symphony was formed. Providing her own audio narration in the prelude, coda and introductions to each chapter, she vividly regales us with memories of her father’s rise from a first violinist to simultaneously being named musical director and conductor of the New Jersey Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Young People’s Concerts With moving reflections on her father’s career and what it was like to grow up in an era of musical performance celebrity, Antek Johnson shares a remarkable contemporary look into the glamourous “heyday” of classical music history.

“I don’t want to hear notes anymore, there shouldn’t be any more notes ... Abandon yourself to your heart!”—Maestro Arturo Toscanini

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