George Szell - Biography
George Szell one of the great conductors of the Twentieth Century was born in Budapest on June 7th 1897 and died in Cleveland on July 30th 1970. His family was of Jewish origin but converted to Catholicism. He moved with his family to Vienna when he was a small child .He studied piano with Richard Robert who was also the teacher of pianist Rudolf Serkin who was to become a lifelong friend and frequent collaborator. Szell studied composition with Mandyszewski in Vienna and in his mid teens with famed composer Max Reger. Szell was something of a musical prodigy and was performing as a pianist in concert by the age of ten and was composing professionally by fourteen. Szell first conducting assignment was an assistant to Richard Strauss at the Berlin Royal Opera in 1915. Szell became a prodigy of Strauss and when Strauss made the first ever recordings of his Don Juan and Mozart’s 39th Symphony using the acoustic process he allowed Szell to record some of the sides when he got bored with the large number of takes. Szell held posts in his twenties in Darmstadt, Dusseldorf eventually becoming one of first conductor at the Berlin State Opera from 1924- 1929. Szell was also a frequent guest in Prague conducting opera and giving concerts with the Czech Philharmonic (he made a famous recording with them accompanying Casals in the Dvorak Cello Concerto in 1937). With the rise of Hitler he found it impossible to work in Germany, even though he was a Christian he was considered racially a Jew. Szell worked in Scotland in the late 1930’s with the Scottish Orchestra of Glasgow. In 1939 he immigrated to America. Szell had a difficult transition and had to teach until he conducted a series of concerts with Toscanini’s NBC Symphony and became a chief conductor at the Met during the Second World War.
George Szell in 1946 was offered the directorship of the Cleveland Orchestra which at the time was a good second tier orchestra that had lost many of its best players to the draft or were poached for the New York Philharmonic by former music director Artur Rodzinski. Szell demanded absolute control of the orchestra’s affairs and an increase in its size. He got his way. Szell besides his musical greatness was known for his severe and autocratic personality. Musicians who performed not just poorly but in a mediocre fashion were dismissed either on the spots or at the end of their contract. Musicians particularly after concerts were taped spent the week in terror awaiting a memo from Szell about mistakes they made. Szell also admonished players for any sloppiness in their appearance (well known pianist Gary Grafmann in his biography wrote that in the late sixties when he modishly grew out his hair was told by Szell that he wouldn’t perform with him until his hair was cut).He was a very hard taskmaster indeed. Szell with inevitable planning raised the orchestra by the mid 1950’s to one of the greatest in the world. He initially recorded for Columbia but his recording career took off when CBS created a sister label to Columbia, Epic and the Cleveland and Szell would make a long series of distinguished recordings for them between 1955 and 1964. Szell who for the first half of his career concentrated on opera now became after Toscanini’s death and Bruno Walter’s retirement the foremost conductor in America of the Austro/German repertoire, from Haydn to Mahler and Richard Strauss. Szell though conservative in his programming performed contemporary music by Americans like Barber and Schuman, modern classics like Bartok, Hindemith, Stravinsky and particularly the conservative English composer William Walton. Szell once wittily in an interview said that he “didn’t believe in the mass grave of an all contemporary music concert”.
Szell’s recordings in the early stereo era were one triumph after the other from the Brahms and Beethoven Concertos with Leon Fleisher, many great Mozart recordings, the tone poems of Richard Strauss and especially the Symphonies of Beethoven and Schumann. There were detractors, particularly amongst English record reviewers who found Szell’s readings cold and antiseptic. His response was characteristic “I prefer not to pour warm chocolate sauce over chilled asparagus” (he was also a gourmet cook) Szell also had a long standing relationship with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic. Szell often performed with the New York Philharmonic and had a cordial relationship with Leonard Bernstein, even though they couldn’t be more different as men and musicians. Szell and Cleveland rejoined Columbia when CBS no longer released classical recordings on Epic after 1964. Szell made for what were for him recordings of lighter repertoire like Bizet, Prokofiev and Kodaly along with great recordings of Haydn’s Symphonies # 93-98 and Mahler’s Fourth Symphony and Sixth Symphony .While in Amsterdam in 1965 he recorded what must be the finest recording of Sibelius Second Symphony. When Clive Davis the new president of Columbia Records moved it to a more rock oriented company Szell and Cleveland moved to EMI Records in 1968. They were just starting a series of recordings when Szell contracted a virulent form of bone cancer and died on July 30th 1970 at 73, an early age for a conductor.
Szell immediately after his death saw a drop in his prestige (from many musicians and critics who no; longer had to fear his sharp tongue). Szell was a tall very slender man whose thin reddish hair became increasingly spare and gray. His very penetrating blue eyes magnified with thick lenses reinforced his severe appearance. After a few years and the reissue and remastering of his great recordings his reputation is as high as it ever was. The distinguished conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra in the 1980’s and 90’s Christoph von Dohnyani ruefully joked that he was getting good reviews twenty years after his death. His recordings bear out that he was one of the greats of the past century.
