All’s Szell that ends well.
A notorious autocrat from an era when autocrats were tolerated, respected, and even revered on the podium, George Szell was a formidable perfectionist, even to the extent of lecturing the Severance Hall custodians on the proper way to mop a floor and what kind of toilet paper they should be supplying in the restrooms.
When he took over as music director in Cleveland in 1946, straight off, he fired 12 of the orchestra’s 97 players and signed the rest to short-term contracts. His aim was to rebuild the ensemble into a force to be reckoned with. “A new leaf will be turned over with a bang,” he declared. By the time of his death in 1970, 40 percent of his musicians were seeing psychiatrists.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau noted “his compulsive need to always have an opinion different from others and his considerable paranoia when it came to the orchestra’s ill-will.” Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they don’t hope you fall down the stairs and break your neck.
He may have been a bit of a martinet and a world-class S.O.B., but Szell’s goal was a lofty one. He whipped Cleveland into one of the country’s top orchestras – which is to say, one of the best in the world. If he expected much of his musicians, he himself never phoned-in a performance. He was always hyper-prepared, and in rehearsals, nothing escaped his notice. It was not unusual for him to take everything apart and rebuild it from the ground up, even at the expense of his musician’s nerves. Sometimes it backfired, and the orchestra was so wrung out, it had nothing left for the actual performance.
While the uncanny precision of Szell’s Clevelanders was often praised, many of their performances were criticized for a perceived lack of warmth. Certainly, there is enough documentary evidence to prove that on occasion Szell could indeed catch fire and inspire his players. He is much kinder in filmed rehearsals than his reputation would suggest.
He may have been a little tightly wound, but you can’t quibble with the results. Thank your lucky stars you didn’t have to work for him, but boy, he certainly could conduct!
Happy birthday, George Szell.
Szell’s benchmark modern orchestra Haydn:
While on tour with the Cleveland Orchestra in Tokyo, and with only two months to live (he was terminally ill with cancer), Szell conducted what may very well be the most thrilling performance of Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2 I have ever heard, certainly on a par with the classic Barbirolli account with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra:
Szell as a Mozart pianist:
One of Szell’s own, early compositions, “Variations on an Original Theme”:
Szell speaks!
Szell on “The Bell Telephone Hour” on NBC. These days, you won’t even find something like this on PBS.
Szell rehearses Beethoven
Szell conducts Beethoven and Bruckner in Vienna
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