In 1897 Mascagni wrote to a friend: “… in Milan no one knows me as an orchestra conductor. I always conduct my music coldly so as not to look like a charlatan. But I always direct the music of others as I feel it”. Directing, however, was extremely important for him and covered a rather large span of time.

Mascagni started directing still young before exploding as a composer. After he was forced to leave the Conservatory of Milan, he travelled around Italy with an operetta troupe. He went in touch with the most up-to-date European musical experience thanks to his activity as a director. He was adventurous even on the podium. His artistic choices were characterised by a continual search for originality. To understand this driving force in Mascagni’s life, we need only to think of his discovery of Tchajkovskij for the Italian opera goers. His experience on the podium helped the composer above all with aspects of harmony.

If Mascagni had long pauses on the creative level throughout his musical career, his work as an orchestra director was always intense and non-stop.

He began the activity as conductor between the end of 1885 and the beginning of the following year, by working at the Politeama in Genoa and directing Boccaccio by Suppè, Il Guitarrero by Millocker, Le Campane di Corneville by Planquette and La figlia di madame Angot by Lecocq.

The reviews back then were almost telegraphic but Cicala in speaking about Caffaro performed on 24 December 1885 had words of great esteem for the then unknown director. “I noticed a lively movement in the choruses and the excellent direction of orchestra.

Mascagni was jealous of his own music, but he put up with listening to it conducted by others. He was often at odds with prestigious conductors. I was so in 1898 for the debut of Iris in the Costanzi in Rome. Ricordi had chosen Edoardo Mascheroni. Mascagni protested openly and made sure that Mascheroni left the baton to him.

In another circumstance, more or less similar, in 1892, Mascagni substituted Toscanini as the director of Rantzau again performed in the Costanzi in Rome.

Concerning the premier of Guglielmo Ratcliff at the Scala in Milan, Giulio Ricordi in the Gazzetta Musicale di Milano, notes that “Mascagni is excellent. His directing of the orchestra is very effective and he directs with the highest ability, without short-cuts, without exaggerating…”

Mahler asked him to come to Vienna in April 1901 to conduct Verdi’s Requiem for the commemoration of Busseto’s composer’s death.

He went back to Vienna in 1927 to represent Italy for the Beethoven festivities for which he often directed the symphonies. We can remember his execution of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Bucharest again in 1927. He deepened his knowledge and technique of Brahms. We note this remembering his performance in 1904 of Second symphony at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia. Mascagni had a great love for Mozart’s Don Giovanni. In fact he conducted this opera in various cities, among which were Naples and Madrid. In 1942 he wrote Anna Lolli about Dvorak’s Symphony of the New World which was new for Naples because it had never been performed there before. “They said that the music is too difficult. Think instead about just how clear and melodic it is.

Adriano Lualdi (1885-1971) a young composer, who, for a while, worked as Mascagni’s assistant describes Mascagni with these words, “… an essential beginning, I learned from Mascagni about assisting at orchestral rehearsals: to play sweetly, so fundamental so indispensable and so neglected even today; one needs to say it with bitterness about some great orchestras for the simple reason that many directors of a high class even renowned, do not fulfil this demand. They do not ask to rigorously observe this rule.

Read what Mascagni said during his first small speech at the Teatro Lirico:

“Yes, the notes are the same. The rhythms and the configurations are exact. Even the phrasing is exact. You have produced the sound volume in fortissimo. But everything does not turn out very well, some might say even badly, because everybody plays with bitterness, curtness, almost with anger, instead of love. You all play in an empty musical way. The arches are scratchy. The wood section screams and the brass section bellows. Oh, good heavens. What has happened? Were you all beaten by a tarantula?” But how could music become alive, express itself, communicate? The answer is sound.

So then, even playing forte even fortissimo , play sweetly. Oh, good heavens! The music must come out limp, light, clean, harmonic. Why? Music is and must be your religion, just like it is mine. But please watch out so as not to fall and be guilty of the opposite extreme, i.e., an empty sound. Those of you who play the arches of pianissimo, be careful not to fall into falsetto which is itself anti-musical. It is an affront to your religion”

“More than once,” continues Lualdi, “his observation were brief. They had a tightly technical sense. And they sometimes ended up as a joke that made the entire orchestra laugh. And while he rendered the discipline spontaneous, he filled it with a spirit of collaboration and enthusiasm”.

Symphonic repertoire directed by Mascagni, sorted alphabetically by composer.

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