George Szell
Part of the wave of great Hungarian conductors who took over American musical life just before and after World War II (the others included Fritz Reiner, Antal Dorati, and Eugene Ormandy), George Szell quickly transformed a middling Midwestern orchestra into one of the nation's Big Five. His cultivation of the Cleveland Orchestra set an example of discipline and hard work that gradually helped raise the standards of orchestras across America.
Although born in Hungary, Szell was raised in Vienna, where he studied composition with Eusebius Mandyczewski and piano with Richard Robert; he also studied composition in Prague with J.B.. Foerster. Szell was a wunderkind, playing a Mozart piano concerto with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra when he was 10, and composing a number of quite solid chamber and orchestral works in lush late Romantic style as a child and teenager. He was a comparatively elderly 17 when he conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in a program including one of his own compositions.
Despite these early successes, Szell rose through the conducting ranks in the traditional way of the period, with a series of opera positions: Royal Opera of Berlin (1915-17), Strasbourg (1917-18), Prague (1919-21), Darmstadt (1921- 22), and Düsseldorf (1922-24). Szell's first prestigious post came to him in 1924, when he was named first conductor of the Berlin State Opera; he simultaneously served as a professor at Berlin's Hochschule für Musik. In 1929, he moved on to become general music director of the German Opera and Philharmonic in Prague, where he remained until 1937. All this activity effectively ended his career as a composer, although he did eventually produce an interesting orchestration of Smetana's String Quartet No. 1, "From My Life."
Szell began focusing more on orchestral repertory in the 1930s; he made his U.S. debut as guest conductor of the St. Louis Symphony in 1930, and in 1937 he was appointed conductor of the Scottish Orchestra in Glasgow while maintaining a steady relationship with the Residentie Orkest in The Hague. Szell was in America in 1939 when war broke out in Europe; he remained in the U.S. through the war, first depending on guest engagements and then, in 1942, becoming a regular conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, where he was especially praised for his Wagner performances. In 1946 Szell took American citizenship and became music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, a post he held for 24 years (he was also the New York Philharmonic's music advisor and senior guest conductor during the last two years of his life).
Although Szell made a few recordings in Europe in the 1950s and '60s for Decca and in Cleveland at the very end of his life for EMI, as well as scattered 78-era efforts, the bulk of his substantial discography was the result of his long collaboration with Columbia Records in Cleveland.
There, Szell had inherited an able but ordinary orchestra and, through no little tyranny, molded it into one of America's finest. A Szell performance was remarkable for its textural clarity, chamber-like balances, and precision of attack and release. He drilled his orchestra mercilessly, even in works it had performed with him not long before. Szell was particularly admired for his performances of Austro-Germanic classics from Haydn to Richard Strauss, his sharp renderings of works by a select few twentieth-century composers (Bartók, Prokofiev, Janácek, Walton), and his idiomatic way with Dvorák; indeed, some collectors maintain that Szell's monaural, early-1950s recording of Dvorák's Eighth Symphony with the Concertgebouw Orchestra has never been equaled. His treatment of French composers, on the other hand, was criticized for its lack of atmosphere, and detractors maintained that he achieved precision at the expense of emotional expression. To those who demanded a warmer approach to his beloved Mozart, however, Szell is said to have retorted, "One does not pour chocolate sauce over asparagus."
© James Reel /TiVo
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Ludwig van Beethoven conducted by George Szell live Carnegie Hall 11.11.1945 (Live)
Classical - Released by Archipel on 7 Jul 2023
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Symphonie No. 9 (Mono Version)
The Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell
Miscellaneous - Released by BNF Collection on 1 Jan 1962
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Schubert: Symphonie "Inachevée" (Mono Version)
George Szell, The Cleveland Orchestra
Miscellaneous - Released by BNF Collection on 1 Jan 1956
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Mendelssohn: Symphonie No. 4 "Italienne" & Le songe d'une nuit d'été, extraits (Mono Version)
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, George Szell, Eduard van Beinum
Miscellaneous - Released by BNF Collection on 1 Jan 1962
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Szell Conducts Wagner Overtures
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on 10 Aug 2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky & Bloch: Cello Works
Leonard Rose, Gladys Swarthout, New York Philharmonic, Dimitri Mitropoulos, George Szell, Gibner King
Classical - Released by Biddulph Recordings on 30 Sep 2004
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Overtures
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on 26 Mar 2001
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Quatuors pour piano
George Szell, Benny Goodman, Budapest String Quartet
Chamber Music - Released by Naxos on 25 Jan 2007
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Great Pianists : Moiseiwitsch, volume 8 (1950 & 1938)
Benno Moiseiwitsch, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, George Szell
Classical - Released by Naxos on 1 Nov 2004
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Dvorák: Slavonic Dances
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on 17 Apr 2000
The Qobuz Essential Discography16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Historical Mahler, Vol. 10 (Remastered 2023)
The Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell
Classical - Released by Urania Records on 27 Apr 1959
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
R. Strauss Vier letzte Lieder
George Szell, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin
Classical - Released by Warner Music Group - X5 Music Group on 2 Feb 2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mussorgsky, M.P.: Boris Godunov (Kipnis) (1943-1944) (Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky - Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov - Dmitry Shostakovich)
Alexander Kipnis, George Szell
Opera - Released by Music and Arts Programs of America on 1 Apr 2011
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bruckner: Symphony No. 3 in D Minor, WAB 103 "Wagner" (1877 Version) [Live]
Wiener Philharmonic Orchestra, George Szell
Classical - Released by Urania Records on 3 Dec 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mendelssohn: Le songe d'une nuit d'été, Extracts (Stereo Version)
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, George Szell
Miscellaneous - Released by BNF Collection on 1 Jan 1962
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Szell: Symphony No. 93 & Symphony No. 5
Wiener Symphoniker, George Szell
Chamber Music - Released by Orfeo on 1 Jan 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Symphony No. 4, Op. 60 & Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus, Op. 43
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on 4 Apr 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 "Choral" & Fidelio Overture
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on 15 Apr 1991
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Grandes Virtuosos de la Música: George Szell
Classical - Released by ns on 9 Sep 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bedrich Smetana: Má vlast (My Fatherland) - Prodaná nevěsta (The bartered bride) - String Quartet No. 1 in E Minor, "From my Life" Overture (Recordings of 1949 - 1958)
New York Philharmonic, The Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell
Classical - Released by GazzaLadra on 30 Mar 2024
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Dvořák: Danses slaves (Mono Version)
The Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell
Miscellaneous - Released by BNF Collection on 1 Jan 1961
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo