ABSTRACT
As a contributor to Modern Music, Thomson wrote primarily about composers; but as a reviewer for a daily newspaper, he had to evaluate performers, some of whom were prima donnas accustomed to fawning notices. Safely ensconced in his position at the Trib, Thomson did not hesitate in being severe—indeed, very severe—even about Arturo Toscanini, who had the status of a deity in New York in the 1940s. Thomson's reviews also had an abundance of bon mots that his readers could declaim aloud over breakfast, say, as in this about Dimitri Mitropoulos: “For the most part he did everything to the orchestra but conduct it. He whipped it up as if it were a cake, kneaded it like bread, shuffled and riffled an imaginary deck of cards, wound up a clock, shook a recalcitrant umbrella, rubbed something on a washboard, and wrung it out.” Here, as elsewhere, Thomson repeatedly pits European artists against American experience, for instance noticing that, even though the pianist Artur Rubinstein was born in Poland, his two-hand technique resembles that of “a good swing band.”
