George Szell
November 15, 2024
The other day I turned on the radio and heard the slow movement of Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto being played. The orchestra itself immediately caught my attention. There was an elegance, a clarity, and a transparency to its sound that was breathtaking. The solo pianist was clearly an artist, but so was the clarinetist, who soon joined with such ethereal beauty in rapturous dialogue that I thought I’d died and gone to musical heaven. Of course, I had to know who was playing in such inspired fashion. The performance was by the Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, conductor, and Leon Fleisher, pianist. “Wait a minute,” I blurted out loud even though no one was with me, “I’m in that recording.”
That chance hearing inevitably brought back memories of my first job out of music school, over sixty years ago, as assistant concertmaster of the renowned Cleveland Orchestra. Even in my excitement at the very first rehearsal, sitting next to the beloved concertmaster Josef Gingold, I couldn’t help but notice the heaviness in the Severance Hall air as we all awaited Szell’s arrival. Before a summer storm one often feels this kind of atmosphere, which seems to press in on the senses. At 10 a.m. sharp the maestro entered stage left and mounted the podium with a “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Brahms’ First.” There had been no stragglers and very little talk beforehand. The troops were awaiting the general’s inspection.
In that first rehearsal, Szell conducted an immaculate and polished read-through of the Brahms Symphony. The orchestra sounded phenomenal to me, but Szell was not happy. He set about realigning principal and accompanying voices so that all the instruments could be heard according to their true importance in the musical texture. He was willing to take a great deal of rehearsal time to achieve these goals. One might expect this to be the aim of a string quartet, where clarity and balance are all-important, but in an orchestra, with its huge wash of sound created by a hundred people playing a hundred instruments, many conductors consider it too difficult and too time-consuming. Not Szell. In a Szell performance the listener had the feeling that by magic the musical score had opened up and simply played itself for him, all instruments in perfect balance and ensemble.
That perfection had its darker side: at worst, his performances could sound unyielding and clinical. Herbert Elwell, music critic of the Cleveland Plain Dealer concluded one review of a Szell performance this way: “The program ended with Claude Debussy’s Das Mer.” And the headline of a Michael Steinberg review for the Boston Globe read “George Szell and his Rockettes,” sarcastically referencing the famous Radio City Rockettes, an American female precision dance company.
In response to such criticism, Szell expressed his credo: “The borderline is very thin between clarity and coolness, self-discipline and severity. There exist different nuances of warmth—from the chaste warmth of Mozart to the sensuous warmth of Tchaikovsky, from the noble passion of Fidelio to the lascivious passion of Salome. I cannot pour chocolate sauce over asparagus.” And yet, when the spirit moved Szell, audiences heard memorably detailed and wonderfully nuanced interpretations.
George Szell began his career as a child prodigy pianist and composer, but it soon became apparent that his true calling was conducting. In 1915, at the age of 18, Szell won an appointment with Berlin’s Royal Opera (now known as the Staatsoper). There he met Richard Strauss, who quickly recognized Szell’s talent—especially his gift for conducting Strauss’s music. Szell conducted mainly in Europe until the Nazis came to power. In 1939 he moved to New York City, and taught at the Mannes School during World War II.
During his Cleveland tenure as conductor, from 1946 until his death in 1970, Szell turned a fine orchestra into a great one. His memory and attention to all manner of detail were legendary. That he took a somewhat fatherly interest in me, the youngest member of the orchestra, meant that I was forever under Szell’s scrutiny. He brought me into his office and demonstrated how to keep my socks up (with garters) so that, god forbid, no naked bit of leg would show. He monitored how early I arrived for rehearsals and chewed me out if I came at the last moment. He stared at me during a performance of Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony pizzicato movement, and immediately after the performance explained why I should employ pizzicato only with the right hand. (Szell knew a lot about string playing, but not as much as he thought he did.) It was said, only partly in jest, that he chose the toilet paper in Severance Hall.
Yet Szell’s priority was alway great artistry, as exemplified by the orchestra’s first-chair players. None were what my friend Larry Angell, one of the orchestra’s double bassists, called “instrument operators”—those who play at a solid technical level but offer not much more. Concertmaster Josef Gingold, violist Abraham Skernik, cellist Jules Eskin, French hornist Myron Bloom, clarinetist Robert Marcellus, oboist Marc Lifschey. . .these were artists who gave me goosebumps when they played. And Szell recognized my musical gifts as well, inviting me to perform the Beethoven Violin Concerto with him and the orchestra, and arranging for me to study with the great Hungarian violinist Joseph Szigeti in Switzerland, while generously paying for my trip himself.
George Szell’s bluntness often made musicians justifiably nervous but, on the other hand, his honesty could be quite refreshing. When the Cleveland Orchestra was invited to perform at the opening of Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, Szell wasted no time telling the board of directors how poorly the acoustics had turned out. During the next year, the board came up with money to make small acoustical changes, and, when the orchestra returned the following season, once again asked Szell what he thought. “Well,” he was reported to have said, “you’ve got a person who is knock-kneed, cross-eyed and with five facial warts. You’ve just removed one of the warts.”
Music lovers flocked to hear the Cleveland Orchestra’s sold-out concerts at home and on tour. Even Clevelanders who might never have set foot in a classical music concert bragged to out-of-towners about their world-class orchestra. Sometimes, while shopping for my favorite ricotta cheese in the city’s “Little Italy” on Mayfield Road, strangers noticing my violin case would come up to me and ask whether I played in the Cleveland Orchestra. Whether a bricklayer, a dentist, or a certified public accountant, to them the orchestra was the pride of the city.
And encounters with the orchestra’s fans could be unexpected. Driving home after an orchestra rehearsal one day, I had the misfortune of getting stuck behind a beat-up old gardener’s truck. The driver was not only going very slowly but also hogging both lanes of the road. For a while I resigned myself to following at a turtle’s pace behind him, with a front-row view of the rakes, shovels, picks, etc. that protruded willy-nilly from the back of his truck. Finally I lost patience and managed to squeeze by the truck’s right side and resume normal speed. “That slowpoke is history,” I said to myself, quite pleased. But up ahead the light suddenly turned red, and in a matter of seconds the truck pulled up alongside me. The driver honked his horn, rolled down his passenger-side window and indicated that I should do the same. Finally, he pointed at me menacingly and said, “I’m going to tell George Szell you passed me on the right!”
Leon Fleisher plays Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1 with George Szell and The Cleveland Orchestra
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Comments
And now I’m listening to the recording. Thank you for your warm and insightful essays; for sharing your remarkable life and art with us.
As always, a terrific article ! You are a favorite writer of mine and friends… mother and I were subscribers to the orchestra when you were there, and I was already a fan of yours- your career gave so much beauty to so many … I remember, my teacher, Arthur Loesser introduced me to Ethel Goldsmith, where I practiced and then we went to shul… later I found out you lived in that house-wow ! Anyway, those Cleveland Orchestra concerts really inspired me forever. bravo !@
Informative and enjoyable. Thank you, Mr Steinhardt.
Thank you for this reminiscence. I read two of your books. I really like your writing. Growing up in Chicago with the Chicago Symphony and with a friend who loved the Cleveland Orchestra and George Szell, we always had discussions of the relative merits of Szell vs Reiner. I had great respect for both, and Robert Marcellus was a hero to us. Unfortunately I was just a bit too young to have heard either Reiner or Szell conduct in person, but my high school friends (two clarinetists) and I loved listening to many of the recordings of both orchestras and conductors. Circling back to how I started this note, thank you so much for writing about your own experiences with Szell and Cleveland. I love hearing these stories.
Great story!
I love George Szell!
I love what Arnold Steinhardt wrote about George Szell. I can attest to his accuracy in describing the maestro since I auditioned for him and got the position of double bassist in the Cleveland Orchestra. I still get teary eyed when Szell comes up in conversation.
Thank you for the brilliant and fascinating article. I’m writing because just a few weeks ago I had a similar experience. It was the Eroica playing on my car radio. It was absolutely perfect and the greatest performance I ever heard of it. Pulled,the car over;.It was Szell,and Clevleland .And I’ve heard a lot good performances -, I was in the BSO cello section for 43 years.
Thank you for another beautifully written and funny reminiscence. I grew up listening to and loving the Szell / Fleisher Beethoven Concerti. Now that I know you were part of them, I love them even more.
What a joy to get lost in your reflections as i read this beautiful piece ending with a laugh out loud. This is much needed at this time. Music helps keeps me sane. Thank you.
Hi, Mr. Steinhardt.
I look forward to each of your new stories and absolutely love reading them. Thank you so much for sharing these with us!
Best regards,
Mark
in the nyc philharmonic about 50 years ago i sat next to amyas ames who i think was president. in the intermission off he went to confer with the architect and the acoustician. it was about the floating panels. i think they were changing them for the second time. the three of them looked terribly serious talking. well of course it was about the sound. i could hardly believe that that showy new interior had bad sound. how could they have possibly misjudged sound? apparently acoustics is a mysterious fine art in itself… sandy
I first heard the Cleveland Orchestra in 1979, almost ten years after Dr. Szell’s passing. At that time, there was a great sense of responsibility in some of the veteran players to pass along the principles Szell had so rigorously instilled— the precision of dotted rhythms, clarity of articulation, evenness, and an ability to listen to lines as they emerged from the texture. His terse manner was still spoken of as if he still peered out of his office window at Severance Hall to see which of his musicians arrived carrying their music— or God forbid without it. There was still a sense of palpable fear at the thought of his capacity for discipline. Perhaps it was the structure his relentless discipline created that gave the great artists in his orchestra the impetus to develop their expressive gifts within it— a needed respite from the severity. One thing is certain— the idea that the musician serves the music and not vice-versa was eminently clear to every member of the orchestra. What a gift they were.
Always love your stories. The ending put me in mind of my first week playing with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Saratoga Springs. I was running late to the first rehearsal with Ormandy; I sped along the stately Avenue of the Pines (47 mph in a 25 zone). The policeman, hearing I was heading to play for Ormandy at SPAC, let me off with just a warning. But that night I got it from the orchestra’s concertmaster Norman Carol who, that quickly, had heard about it.
Thank you , Arnold, for this wonderful and clarifying music. It puts everything in the perspective of truth love and utter commitment. Thank you, thank you!
ARNI WHAT A TREAT. I COULDN’T SLEEP. SO I WENT TO MY COMPUTER AND FOUND THIS BEAUTIFUL CONCERT. I MISS YOU SO.LOVE ARIANNE
I was wondering where this was going. You made me LOL.
I had the joy of listening to Marc Lifcshey and Paul Renzi (Principal Flute of the NBC Orchestra) when they were principals in my orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony for my first decade in the orchestra. Both had unmistakable sounds, to the point where it bacame a verb to “Renzify” a solo! Listening to Marc play the oboe solo in the slow movement of the Brahms Violin Concerto was to think “there is no other way to play that”. He frequently outshone the soloist. Thanks for bringing back those memories.
I especially love this article having been raised with The Cleveland Orchestra under Szell, but think you should have included my dad, George Goslee, in your list of first-chair players!
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