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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Sibelius: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 4, Opp. 43 & 63 (Live)
George Szell, Concertgebouworkest, The Cleveland Orchestra
Classical - Released by Urania Records on Dec 3, 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 1-4, Haydn Variations, Tragic Overture, Academic Festival Overture & 5 Hungarian Dances
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Jun 30, 1994
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 35, 40 & 41
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Oct 29, 1990
The Qobuz Essential Discography16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony No. 34 - Ludwig van Beethoven: Egmont - Franz Schubert: Rosamunde
George Szell, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Wiener Philharmonic Orchestra
Symphonies - Released by Praga Digitals on Jan 1, 2018
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Schumann: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 3 (Les Indispensables de Diapason)
George Szell, Ferdinand Leitner, The Cleveland Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker
Classical - Released by Les Indispensables de Diapason on Apr 1, 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner Without Words
Symphonic Music - Released by Sony Classical on Nov 6, 1990
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 22 & 23 ((Remastered))
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Jul 6, 2018
24-Bit 192.0 kHz - Stereo -
Dvorák: Symphony No. 7 in D Minor, Op. 70
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Jul 6, 2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Tchaikovsky: Capriccio Italien, Op. 45 - Rimsky-Korsakov: Capriccio Espagnol, Op. 34
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Jun 29, 2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Schumann: The Four Symphonies
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Oct 1, 1996
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Szell Conducts Two Musical Fables ((Remastered))
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Aug 3, 2018
24-Bit 192.0 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 28, 33, 35 & Serenade No. 13 "Eine kleine Nachtmusik"
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on May 24, 2006
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 ("Choral") & Fidelio Overture
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Apr 15, 1991
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bizet: L'Arlésienne - Grieg: Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Jul 27, 2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bohemian Carnival ((Remastered))
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Jul 20, 2018
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Orchestral Music from The Ring of the Nibelung
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Apr 20, 1992
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Dvorák & Smetana: Orchestral Works
Symphonic Music - Released by Sony Classical on May 27, 1998
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Dvorák / Elgar: Cello Concertos
Pierre Fournier, Berliner Philharmoniker, George Szell, Alfred Wallenstein
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on Aug 3, 1988
The Qobuz Essential Discography16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
R. Strauss Les quatre derniers lieder
George Szell, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin
Classical - Released by Warner Music Group - X5 Music Group on Feb 2, 2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Brahms: Double Concerto
David Oïstrakh, Mstislav Rostropovich, The Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell
Classical - Released by Warner Classics on Mar 24, 2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Sinfonia concertante in E-Flat Major, K. 364 & Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Oct 25, 2007
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo