George Szell Sony Classical box, a treasure trove

2018 was the centenary year of the Cleveland Orchestra, and to mark the occasion the Sony Classical label decided to release a huge box set devoted to the orchestra’s most famous music director, George Szell. This boxed set of 106 discs documents more than 20 years of collaboration between Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra between 1946 and 1970.

George Szell – The Cleveland Orchestra – Sony Classical

Born in Budapest in 1897 but brought up in Vienna, George Szell, whose real name was György Széll, was a child prodigy, who studied with Richard Robert, the teacher of Hans Gál, Clara Haskil and Rudolf Serkin, as well as with the musicologist Eusebius Mandyszewski, a close confidant of Brahms.

Szell was initially a piano virtuoso. Although he stopped playing the piano in concert, his in-depth knowledge of the instrument can be heard in his many brilliant collaborations with great pianist such as Rudolf Serkin, Leon Fleischer, Robert Casadesus and Clifford Curzon. A protégé of Richard Strauss, Szell eventually became one of a generation of brilliant Hungarian conductors who have left a lasting imprint on American orchestras, such as Fritz Reiner in Chicago, Eugene Ormandy in Philadelphia and Antal Doráti in Minneapolis.

When Szell took over the Cleveland Orchestra from Erich Leinsborf, it was a respected but fairly minor regional orchestra that he transformed into one of the greatest American and international orchestras. Szell had the reputation of being a tyrant, like Reiner. However, unlike his idol Arturo Toscanini, Szell didn’t shout at the musicians: he was a cold-blooded, calm dictator with total mastery of the orchestra and absolute perfectionism, which explains the immense respect the musicians had for him. As one of the second violins put it: « Even when we argue and are unhappy, we play well for Szell. We do it out of respect for him, and maybe out of fear. »

I discovered George Szell’s art of conducting by watching a documentary entitled The Art of Conducting many years ago. It was a shock for me, who ideolized Herbert von Karajan at the time. It was the discovery of a sound that was not only plastically beautiful, but much sharper and more precise, of unparalleled perfection, with a clarity and balance that make his interpretations of the great classical composers, particularly Haydn, Beethoven and Schumann, which are still references today.

George Szell is sometimes criticised for the coldness and rigidity of his interpretations, but personally I would describe them more as hieratic and colourful, in the tradition of Central European conductors. Richard Osborne recalled in his article on Szell in the November 2018 issue of Gramophone magazine that the Hungarian conductor took particular pride in his orchestra playing different national music with a specific voice, which is the case if you listen to Szell’s recordings of Russian music, which sound almost Russian, whereas his recordings of Strauss sound Viennese.

Szell was a great orchestra builder, his collaboration with the Cleveland orchestra is a model of how a modest orchestra can be radically transformed into a world-class orchestra through hard work with a genius conductor.