Lucy Antek Johnson - 'This Was Toscanini: The Maestro, My Father, and Me'

In This Was Toscanini: The Maestro, My Father, and Me, Lucy Antek Johnson, along with her father, Samuel Antek, present an in-depth, firsthand account of Arturo Toscanini, one of the greatest and most influential conductors of the 20th century. Told from the point of view of Samuel, a first violinist of seventeen years in Toscanini’s NBC Symphony Orchestra, this format is the companion audiobook of the original 2021 hardcover of the same name. Detailing the origin of the NBC Symphony Orchestra, Johnson said, “The orchestra was formed in 1937… at that time, which was the rumblings of World War II and Europe had certainly already been listening to Hitler and Mussolini, Arturo Toscanini, who was a world-famous musician, was living in his home in Italy and was being more than harassed, sometimes beaten up by the fascists, and he had stood up against both Hitler and Mussolini to say, ‘I will not bend to your demands of me as an artist,’ and he refused to play the fascist anthem and they made life very, very difficult for him. So, when he got the invitation at the age of 70 to come to New York to create his own orchestra and be the conductor, they couldn’t have foreseen how wonderful.. that it would be a 17-year span of time. So, at the age of 70 when most people are retiring, he started a long-awaited orchestra that then became world-renowned called the NBC Symphony Orchestra, and my father was one of the original members as a violinist.”

While Toscanini had an illustrious career in music, Samuel Antek was also celebrated for his musical talents. “He was a violinist, certainly at that point, and his dream had been to conduct and he pursued that dream and he was rewarded for that dream while he maintained his position as first violinist of the NBC Symphony through the whole span of time until 1954 when Toscanini retired at the age of 87. He began his own conducting career with the support and enthusiasm of the maestro. So, he had two parallel musical careers, and… [in] 1947, he was named musical director/conductor of the New Jersey Symphony, and in that tenure he created a format for children’s concerts which had not been done before in this way… [he] even was invited by Toscanini to guest conduct the NBC Symphony on a few occasions, so he was a rising star until he died very young.”

For readers, the hardcover edition and audiobook of This Was Toscanini complement one another and can be enjoyed together. The audiobook can be found on various platforms including Audible, Spotify, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Google Play, and Chirp.