Arturo Toscanini, one of the most celebrated conductors of the 20th century, led the NBC Symphony Orchestra in a broadcast concert as part of a series specifically created by NBC to lure him out of retirement. The broadcasts, heard by millions of American households, played a major role in popularizing classical music through the new medium of radio during the golden age of broadcasting.
NBC built an entire orchestra around one man. When Arturo Toscanini retired from the New York Philharmonic in 1936 in frustration with its management, NBC's David Sarnoff lured him back by creating the NBC Symphony Orchestra specifically for him, with a state-of-the-art studio, Studio 8-H, built inside Rockefeller Center to his exacting acoustic specifications.
Toscanini's radio broadcasts, transmitted to a national audience largely unfamiliar with hearing full orchestral works in their own living rooms, are credited with a substantial expansion of the American classical music audience. His famously fiery temperament—he was known to snap batons in half and hurl scores at musicians who displeased him—only added to his mystique. The broadcasts continued for seventeen years, becoming a fixture of American cultural life and demonstrating radio's power to make high culture accessible to ordinary households far from concert halls in New York or Vienna.