One of the great conductors, George Szell (1897-1970) remains synonymous with the Cleveland Orchestra, the ensemble he moulded into one of the World’s elite during his tenure as music director from 1946 until his death.
This Somm twofer “features eight historic performances made for the Book-of-the-Month Club in 1954 and 1955 – seven of which are first releases – that have been restored and remastered by the multi-award-winning audio restoration engineer Lani Spahr”, and mostly splendid they sound, too, whether mono or stereo, all set down in the Masonic Auditorium.
The bulk of Szell’s estimable Cleveland discography is today found on Sony Classical (https://www.classicalsource.com/article/countdown-to-christmas-boxes-and-into-2019-1-george-szell-complete-columbia-album-collection/) and, to a lesser extent in terms of volume, Warner Classics (link below).
Somm’s collection doesn’t add significantly to Szell’s recorded repertoire, save (as far as I know) for J. S. Bach’s D-major Orchestral Suite (No.3/BWV1068), a grand and jubilant conception, rhythmically buoyant (a harpsichord clearly audible amidst the vivid trumpets and timpani), with a particularly spacious and radiant account of the celebrated ‘Air’ (of G-string fame). There follows a brace of Szell classics, a superb ‘Vltava’ from Smetana’s Má vlast, music that Szell conducted supremely well, with ardency and drama (two other Cleveland versions testify to this), and an incident-packed Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, the musicians relishing Richard Strauss’s vivid scoring to cartoon-strip effect in what comes across as a one-take performance.
Then suddenly it’s widescreen stereo … for Mozart’s Symphony 39 (K543), a reading notable for Szell’s artless transition (relationship) from pensive slow introduction to fiery Allegro, then a richly lyrical and emotionally intense Andante, a striding Minuet (I assume the eloquent clarinet-led Trio is courtesy of Robert Marcellus) and a Finale that bustles along en pointe.
Everything on the second disc is also two-channel, opening with Brahms’s Academic Festival Overture (powerful yet yielding) and his Haydn Variations (beautifully characterised; this latter being the one recording here that has been previously available), then an electrifying/impassioned Schumann 4 (in its 1851 revision) if with no lack of tenderness or suspense when required. Finally, one of the Suites (that of 1919) from Stravinsky’s Firebird, which includes a white-hot ‘Infernal Dance’ that is thrilling and chilling. Phenomenal playing.
The mono recordings reproduce more smoothly than those in stereo; the latter can sometimes be fierce in fortissimos and a bit plummy down below, if with detail always clear, and Lani Spahr, who also writes a generous booklet note, has no doubt been faithful to the source material – not that this minor caveat will deter the devotee from adding this welcome Szell supplement to that already treasured. Somm Ariadne 5011-2 (2 CDs).
It may be helpful to. know of another Sibelius symphony that received early attention from Szell, namely No 3.
This broadcast was made from Severance Hall on 9 December 1947. It was issued as part of the wonderful Cleveland Orchestra Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Compact Disc Edition from 1993.
We note he took over the orchestra in 1946 after guest appearances two years before. So early allegiance to the extremely popular Sibelius was made with no time to waste.
I am not aware of any commercial recordings of Symphony 3 being made in America in the 1940’s despite the Finns wide popularity. Neither Koussevitzky nor Stokowski handed down any performances in this decade despite frequent concert exposure in most of the big City orchestras.
So we have only Szell to lay claim to some sort of performance standard and perhaps performance tradition from this period in America.
His first movement is steady and not hasty as so many modern performances seem to be. His middle movement pays no homage to the early Kajanus London recording some 15 years earlier. Szell takes a rather jaunty view rather than one of Finnish darkness permeating the sorrowful
melody which opens the movement from Kajanus ( and later from Davis and Vanska).
The finale is wonderfully constructed by Szell who achieves a steady building of the swiftly played foundations Sibelius so cunningly lays ahead of the chorale melody which apparently signifies resurrection after the earlier movements descriptions of the early life of Christ lifted from
sketches to a planned oratorio Marjatta, a Kalevala lady whose tale ends the epic poem. Marjatta appears as a work in progress following the death of his daughter, Kirsty in 1900. These sketches were incorporated into various works including Symphony 3.
Szell ends his performance in imperial fashion with beautifully balanced sound ringing out the good news . It surely is one of the great endings in the cycle, controlled and so powerfully uplifting . As an aside Adrian Leaper cites this ending as an example of how Sibelius routinely destroys his symphony endings saying the abrupt end to No 3 is so sudden that it is as if the composer thinks “that’s all folks”.
Think of other examples in symphonies 1, 4, 5 and 7. All curtailed by different strokes of a vivid imagination.
We can thank Szell for his early take on Sibelius 3 as one way to conduct a symphony that remains in the shadows despite its manifold qualities not least of symphonic experimentation coupled with, in the first movement, a classical
directness of style and form that he never touched on again. And that coda cited by Leaper does its job supremely well. Life does exist and is worth living. A true resurrection of the spirits.
I believe that Eugene Ormandy said he simply ‘could not understand’ No 3 and never touched it.
Szell’s Sibelius 3 dates from 1946 not 1947 – Severance Hall, 9 December. One of those pieces that for me somehow either works or doesn’t from the rhythmic articulation of the opening cello/double bass phrase. Szell, like Kajanus (LSO, Abbey Road, 21 June 1932), judged it exactly, just the right Moderato side of Allegro.