Anecdotes of Musical Abilities
There are several extraordinary anecdotes of Victor de Sabata's musical abilities. After de Sabata was shown the score for the first time of Elgar's Enigma Variations, the next day he conducted a rehearsal of the work from memory and pointed out several errors in the orchestral parts which no-one, including Elgar himself, had noticed previously. During a rehearsal of Respighi's Pines of Rome in London, de Sabata "demonstrated the bowing and fingering of the high cello part in the first movement by playing it—without even a glance at the part. The pianist asked for advice about the solo cadenza, which de Sabata also played by heart. In the rehearsal interval, he asked the flicorni for the final movement to play their brass fanfares. They did. 'What are you playing?' he asked. 'It is an octave higher.' 'Can't be done, Maestro.' ... The Maestro borrowed one of their instruments and blew the correct notes in the right octave." (this anecdote is all the more impressive when one knows that the flicorno (saxhorn) is an instrument usually associated with brass bands and very rarely used in a symphony orchestra). "A visitor rehearsing Tristan asked Victor de Sabata to take the baton while he tested the sound from the centre of the auditorium. Needless to say, the sound he heard was totally different from the one he produced. De Sabata, without uttering a word, asserted his dominance of the orchestra just by standing there". When Herbert von Karajan was making his own recording of Tosca in 1962, he would often ask his producer John Culshaw to play selections from the De Sabata/Callas recording to him. Culshaw reports that "One exceptionally tricky passage for the conductor is the entry of Tosca in Act 3, where Puccini's tempo directions can best be described as elastic. Karajan listened to De Sabata several times over during that passage and then said, 'No, he's right but I can't do that. That's his secret.'"
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