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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Barber: Essay No. 1 for Orchestra (Recorded 1950) (Live)
New York Philharmonic, George Szell
Classical - Released by New York Philharmonic on Dec 8, 2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Dvorák: Symphony No. 5 "From the New World" ((Remastered))
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Jun 15, 2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Lalo: Symphonie espagnole, Op. 21
Bronisław Huberman, Wiener Philharmonic Orchestra, George Szell
Classical - Released by Warner Classics on Oct 16, 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Pastorale
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Jun 17, 2002
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Dvorak: Slavonic Dances, Op. 46 & 72
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Apr 17, 2000
The Qobuz Essential Discography16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Dvorák: Piano Concerto, Op. 33 - Tchaikovsky: Rococo Variations
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Jun 22, 2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Dvorák: Symphony No. 9 in E Minor "From the New World" & Slavonic Dances
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Jan 10, 2000
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Richard Strauss: Tod und Verklärung, Sinfonia domestica & Dance of the Seven Veils
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Nov 25, 2002
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Blacher: Music for Cleveland - Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 27 - Brahms: Symphony No. 2 - Stravinsky: Fireworks
Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, George Szell
Classical - Released by Guild Music on Sep 15, 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A Minor "Tragic"
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Feb 17, 1992
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Brahms: Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34 – Schubert: Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 114, D. 667 (Live)
Budapest String Quartet, George Szell, Josef Roisman, Edgar Ortenberg, Boris Kroyt, Mischa Schneider
Chamber Music - Released by Archipel on Jan 8, 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Symphony No. 32 - Debussy: La Mer - Dvorak: Concerto for Cello and Orchestra
George Szell, Radio Sinfonie Orchester Köln
Classical - Released by Archipel on Jun 2, 2023
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 29, 40 & Piano Concerto No. 25 (Live)
Berliner Philharmoniker, Leon Fleisher, George Szell
Classical - Released by Archipel on Jan 29, 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73 - Haydn: Symphony No. 93 in D Major, Hob. I:93
Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Sinfonica Di Roma Della RAI, George Szell
Classical - Released by Archipel on Apr 9, 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Schumann: Symphony No. 2, Op. 61
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Jun 15, 2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Chamber Works (Live)
Gustave Langenus, George Szell, Budapest String Quartet
Chamber Music - Released by Bridge Records on Jan 1, 1998
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 -
Tchaikovsky & Lalo: Violin Concerto - Symphonie Espagnole - Encores by Brahms, Chopin, Sarasate, Tchaikovsky and Zarzycki
Bronislaw Huberman, Siegfried Schultze, William Steinberg, George Szell, Staatskapelle Berlin, Wiener Philharmonic Orchestra
Classical - Released by Infinity on May 27, 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Best Music of Mendelssohn
Jascha Heifetz, Gioconda De Vito, George Szell, New York Philharmonic
Classical - Released by ArnebAudio on Feb 26, 2024
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Beethoven Collection
Emanuel Ax, Leonard Bernstein, George Szell
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on Jun 27, 2006
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Ludwig van Beethoven conducted by George Szell live (Live)
Classical - Released by Archipel on Sep 1, 2023
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo