Click on the link below to watch George Szell rehearse the Cleveland Orchestra (he was its music director from 1946 until his death) in the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth. Szell was born in Budapest in 1897.
On this date: George Szell died fifty years ago.
Szell dead 50 years??? I have a lot of Szell vinyl supplemented by Sony’s CD box of his CBS recordings. What amazes is the superb Cleveland playing and Szell’s balance of heart and head, impassioned conducting and intellectual rigour.
George Szell was unquestionably one of the greatest conductors in the 20th century, though frequently decried by those who dislike the idea of any conductor on the rostrum exercising much power. As Karajan once memorably said, you cannot have artistic direction by committee. A recent book by Marcia Hansen Kraus (widow of one of the Cleveland Orchestra’s oboists) about Szell is full of amusing anecdotes. One of my favourites relates to his championing of contemporary music (which he in another context called “temporary“). He was annoyed at the way the Cleveland audience had been inattentive and rewarded his orchestra with insufficient applause for their efforts, so he turned to those in the auditorium and said: “This is a very short piece. So we will play it again.” Apparently, those listening were terrified that if they hadn’t sat in rigid silence they would have had a third hearing imposed on them. Great personalities are never bland.
Fischer-Dieskau on Szell, quoted by a friend (from F-D’s ‘Echoes of a Lifetime’) – “Perhaps he can be called a chemist among conductors, able, as was almost no other, to keep the sounds of the orchestra pure and distinct. That judgment should not tempt us, however carelessly, to pigeonhole him as one of the analytical conductors; when he worked he brought music to life, breathing, inspired”
In my LP collecting days Maestro Szell uniformly received faint praise for being a rigid and cold hearted conductor in Mozart and Strauss in particular, never mind poor Beethoven. I played his recordings with this backdrop of intentional denigration and wondered who to believe, the critics or my ears.
Well I now play his numerous recordings with great affection and wonder at his conjuring up a quite outstanding “sound” far removed from the then prevailing attitude.
I don’t think he would have been much fun to have a chat with but who cares when we have this wonderful legacy not least his overpowering Eroica, perfect in every way, at least to my ears.
Thanks Edward, great minds regarding Szell’s Eroica. For all the many recordings of the work, allowing there are numerous to admire, for me also GS’s is first choice. Colin
The coincidences pile up. As I recall both Barbirolli and Szell conducted the Scottish Orchestra in the 1930’s, both proposed to Evelyn Rothwell (the first oboe) who chose Barbirolli, both conductors were excellent cooks, both were also first rate orchestra builders (Halle and Cleveland respectively) and both died within 24 hours of each other. I had the enormous privilege of hearing 5 Szell concerts in the Usher Hall, 4 on consecutive nights with the Cleveland (soloists Kogan and Curzon) and one with the Concertgebouw (soloist once again Curzon). The Cleveland concerts included works by Weber, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Sibelius, Schumann and Walton, and were some of the most perfectly honed orchestral playing one is ever likely to hear. The attack of the string section at the opening of Don Juan and the raw power in the peroration of Sibelius 2 almost defy description but perhaps equally remarkable if I remember rightly was the sheer polish of the orchestral playing in Walton’s Variations on a theme by Hindemith. Both Barbirolli and Szell conducted the most enormous range of music with complete success. Once somebody commented to Klemperer that Szell was a machine – ‘Maybe’ Klemperer is reputed to have replied, taking a puff on his pipe, “but a very good machine’.
Great to read all of the above. Szell Supreme!
Szell was in the Jury when I won the American Conductors Competition, together with James Levine. Szell invited us to join him as assistant conductors with the Cleveland Orchestra. Levine accepted. I did not, because I was working with Leopold Stokowski
in NY as Associate Conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra, and had regular
concerts at Carnegie Hall, including concerts shared with Stokowski. A year later, he
announced he was returning to England, so I wrote to Szell. He replied that as an
assistant conductor I would have very little chance because he had a new Principal
Guest, Pierre Boulez (his first conducting job), 2 associates and multiple assistants
and offered me instead, courtesy of the Rockefeller Foundation, the position of
Composer in Residence of the Cleveland Orchestra, renewed the following year.
His two last years with the Cleveland were a magnificent experience for me. Szell
left me his Steinway Grand, still sitting in my New York home.
In one of his TV interviews mention was made of a cook book compiled from personalities’ favourite recipes – to which Szell had contributed.’Wasn’t that unlike you to do that?’ asked the interviewer. ‘Yes. But I left out the vital ingredient’ was the reply.
Players used jokingly to say “And now we rehearse the spontaneity”.
I think the big Sony box is pretty well unobtainable now – even Amazon says it’s unavailable.
Gone 50 years, and his performances are still missed. I was drawn to Szell when I first heard his Eroica and Beethoven 7th recordings, and the Jupiter. I hear brass parts at the ending of the symphonies that I had never heard before. When I went backstage at Carnegie Hall about1972, I told him about how much I liked these performances. He took me by the arm and marched me to his score of the 7th in his dressing room, opened it to the last few pages and said “What marking do you see here?”
I was terrified but very pleased.