George Szell

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George Szell, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1954

György Széll, best known by his Anglicised name George Szell (June 7, 1897 – July 29, 1970) was a conductor and composer. He is remembered today for his long and successful tenure as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra from 1946 to 1970 and for the recordings of the standard classical repertory he made with Cleveland and other orchestras. It is said that Szell, among all conductors, had a baton with "one of the sharpest points" because his orchestras were distinguished by their precision.

Early Career

Szell was born in Budapest but grew up in Vienna, studying there and in Leipzig with Eusebius Mandyczewski (and, for a brief period, with Max Reger). Richard Strauss had appointed him as his assistant at the Berlin Royal Opera when Szell left to take a number of conducting posts throughout Europe: in Berlin, Strasbourg (where he succeeded Otto Klemperer at the Municipal Theatre), Prague, Darmstadt, Düsseldorf and Glasgow before becoming principal conductor, in 1924, of the Berlin Staatsoper (which by now had replaced the Royal Opera). In 1930, Szell made his United States debut with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.

Move to the U.S.

Szell was in the U.S. when World War II broke out, and he settled there. From 1942 to 1946, he was a regular conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. In 1946 he became a naturalized U.S. citizen and took the post of principal conductor (music director) of the Cleveland Orchestra. He held this post until his death in 1970. It is for this work that Szell is best known. He is credited with taking the Cleveland ensemble, which had been a solid regional orchestra, to the world-class level. From the late 1950s until Szell's death, the Cleveland Orchestra was generally considered among the world's finest. In addition to taking the orchestra on annual tours to Carnegie Hall and the East Coast, Szell led the orchestra on its first international tours to Europe, the Soviet Union, Australia, and Japan.

Szell also became closely associated with the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, where he was a frequent guest conductor, and he often appeared at the Salzburg Festival. In the last years of his life, he also served as Musical Advisor to the New York Philharmonic.

Szell's work as a composer is less well-known. In addition to writing original pieces, he arranged Bedrich Smetana's String Quartet No. 1, From My Life, for orchestra.

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