Death of a Master Builder

It was a grim week for the world of music. On Wednesday, news came of the death of British Conductor Sir John Barbirolli, 70, whose early failure with the New York Philharmonic had long been erased by his direction of the Halle orchestra (see MILESTONES). The same day, Conductor Jonel Perlea, 69, died in New York, ending a career whose flickering brilliance had been dimmed by war and a succession of illnesses. Then came perhaps the saddest word of all. George Szell, 73, had died in Cleveland, victim of fever, bone cancer and heart attack.

Szell's loss to the world of music, like Toscanini's before him, is incalculable. The two conductors resembled each other in many ways, though they had arrived at the resemblance by opposite paths. The Italian had brought Verdian passion to the Viennese world of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, restraining his fire with a rigorous intellectualism. Szell, born in Hungary and schooled in Vienna, brought a Viennese richness and Teutonic thoroughness to the mainstream of Central European music, touching it with a fierce temperament unheard of in most Germanic conductors. He had enough dramatic depth to disdain mere showmanship, enough inner fire to opt for ice.

Szell was an extraordinary pianist, and though he could not play a single orchestral instrument, he knew exactly what each could do, often proving he knew more about it than the players themselves. His beat was sharply defined and unfailing as an atomic clock. He was a scholar with a mania for research and a memory that neatly stored away the data in mental cubbyholes for instant retrieval. Though he cared deeply for paintings and literature and was a gourmet, music was his passion. Everything and everybody, including himself, was to be sacrificed to its perfection. He was fearsome, unforgiving and, in his own performances, nearly flawless. "Well, what do you know," chortled a musician once when Szell momentarily beat a measure incorrectly. "Somebody just threw a spitball into Univac."

The New Mozart. Szell's demand for perfection from himself and his musicians grew from a lifelong, almost superhuman, discipline. A child prodigy, he could sing some 40 folk songs in four languages at the age of two. He could also scribble musical notations, he liked to recall, "that made no sense at all. That's the way the modern composers do it today." At four, he was slapping his mother's hand when she hit a wrong note on the piano.

As a boy, he was being called "the new Mozart" and regarded with awe by his classmates. One of them, a skinny twelve-year-old named Rudolf Serkin, stole some of Szell's compositions from a piano and practiced them furiously to play for Szell's birthday. Serkin still winces at Szell's uncompromising comment: "Serkin! How can you play such trash?" At 17, Richard Strauss hired young Szell as assistant conductor at the Berlin State Opera.

By 1930, Szell had earned a minor but worldwide reputation. As Europe geared itself for war, he moved from Prague to Scotland. When World War II broke out, Szell was returning to Glasgow from an Australian tour and found himself stranded in New York. Toscanini invited him to conduct the NBC Symphony; other U.S. orchestras soon extended invitations and, in 1942, he joined the Met, amazing the musicians by conducting Wagnerian operas from memory. It was there, later, as a guest, that he collided with the equally autocratic General Manager Rudolf Bing. Szell bowed to no man, and since Bing was boss, he left in a fury, vowing never to return. He never did.

New Leaf. An orchestra is to a conductor what a fine piano is to a pianist. So far, George Szell had played a long series of pianos, but none built to his specifications. When the Cleveland Orchestra asked him to become its permanent conductor in 1946, Szell knew he had his chance. His contract gave him absolute control. "A new leaf will be turned over with a bang," he announced, and fired twelve musicians. Szell kept weeding and replanting until he had the 108 people he wanted. He demonstrated an unswerving aural vision of how music should sound--and the ear, the technique, the almost psychic power of leadership to make it sound that way. "I have created an instrument perfectly suited to express my artistic intentions," he said of the results.

Everyone agreed. In a decade, the once provincial Cleveland Orchestra had achieved world stature. Szell's artistic intentions were being perfectly expressed. If he specialized in Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms and Mahler, slighting French, Russian and avant-garde music, he had earned the right to be selective. Guest soloists came and went, most of them shuddering in fear of Szell's learning and notorious lack of patience. "Szell is a man who is dreadfully right," said Isaac Stern. "He is always right. If he doesn't know something, he won't even offer an opinion on it."

He expressed himself with Szellous precision. Unlike Toscanini, who would shriek, swear, smash watches and hurl chairs, Szell preferred the freezing stare and the poisonous epigram. Canadian Pianist Glenn Gould once arrived for rehearsal and proceeded to adjust his piano bench with Gouldish concern. Up a bit, down a hair, up a fraction, down a smidgen--while Szell smoldered. Finally he spoke: "Perhaps if I were to slice one-sixteenth of an inch off your derriere, Mr. Gould, we could begin." Later he was to say of Gould: "No doubt about it. That nut's a genius."

Those who could meet Szell's altitudinous standards, though, found him a helpful colleague and an artistic inspiration. Pianist Gary Graffman, who was the last soloist to play with the Cleveland Orchestra under Szell's baton, says, "He was the most human person that ever was. His uncompromising attitude was because he cared so much." The great conductor was once jocularly chided for working at rehearsal "as if it were a matter of life and death." Characteristically, Szell did not get the joke. "Don't you see," he said, "it is. It is!"

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