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George Szell

For the Hungarian Prime Minister, see Kálmán Széll.
The native form of this personal name is Széll György. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.
George Szell, 1954

George Szell (/ˈsɛl/; June 7, 1897 – July 30, 1970), originally György Széll, György Endre Szél, or Georg Szell,[1] was a Hungarian-born American conductor and composer. Considered one of the twentieth century's greatest conductors,[2] he was music director of the Cleveland Orchestra of Cleveland, Ohio, and recorded much of the standard classical repertoire in Cleveland and with other orchestras.

Szell came to Cleveland in 1946 to take over its respected if undersized orchestra, which was struggling to recover from the disruptions of World War II. By the time of his death he was credited, to quote the critic Donal Henahan, with having built it into "what many critics regarded as the world's keenest symphonic instrument."[3][4]

Through his recordings, Szell has remained a presence in the classical music world long after his death, and his name remains synonymous with that of the Cleveland Orchestra. While on tour with the Orchestra in the late 1980s, then-Music Director Christoph von Dohnányi remarked, "We give a great concert, and George Szell gets a great review."[5]

  1. ^ Sources differ on Szell's birthname or "real" name. Slonimsky 2001, for example, begins its entry, "Szell, George (actually, György) ...", and Charry 2011 gives his birth name as György Endre Szél. This form would seem consistent with Szell's Hungarian origins. However, both Charry 2001 and Rosenberg 2000 fail to cite the name "György" at all, mentioning instead the more Germanic "Georg," which would seem appropriate in Szell's childhood home of Vienna. Rosenberg goes so far as to say, "[h]e was born Georg Szell on June 7, 1897, in Budapest ..." (p. 237, emphasis added). Sources agree, however, that in later life (at least after coming to America) Szell went by the Anglicised "George," and that is the name credited on his extant recordings.
  2. ^ Charry, Michael (2011) "George Szell A Life of Music" University of Illinois Press.
  3. ^ Henahan, Donal (31 July 1970). "George Szell, Conductor, Is Dead". The New York Times. p. 1. ISBN 9780405111532. Retrieved 2007-07-15.
  4. ^ Brown, Richard; Brown, Gene (1978). The Arts. New York: Arno Press. ISBN 0-405-11153-3.
  5. ^ Oestreich, James R. (26 January 1997). "Out From Under the Shadow". The New York Times.

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