Ships that Pass in the Night
This article was written at the request of Tully Potter around 2001. We had been chatting about various musical personalities while at a Lionel Tertis George International Viola Competition that I was Chairing in the Isle of Man. George Szell particularly interested him, as one of the most notable of guest conductors during my time with the London Symphony Orchestra. Szell's rare appearances were always keenly awaited, his actual presence was high tension, and a collective sigh of relief greeted his departure. He was unfailingly demanding, irascible, and as insulting as he could be whenever he saw an opportunity. For a guest conductor Szell saw confrontation as the fastest means of travelling from incompetence to competence, for whom time was always short, the resident conductor always a fool, and a 'please' or a 'thank-you' unimagineable except as exclamation marks of contempt. A merciless tyrant on the rehearsal battlefield, although apparently a meek second-best in domestic pastures, his conducting in the public forum occasionally left something to be desired.
Glancing through a magazine perhaps five or six years ago I was brought up short by an advert for the re-issue of an historic recording of Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn with the London Symphony Orchestra, Szell, Schwarzkopf and Fischer-Dieskau. It was the adjective ‘historic’ that had been startling. A flood of memories was instantly released as I had played on the recording in the mid sixties although I didn’t then, and don’t now, feel historic. As always with Szell, the memories were interesting and sharply defined. The LSO and Szell had worked together a number of times in concerts and recordings, in varying repertoire and situations. Altogether these events amounted to a considerable experience.
Handel at Watford
1961, and some hastily arranged sessions at Watford Town Hall, gave me my first glimpse of a conductor who was to appear fitfully with the LSO over the next nine years till his death. There was certainly a frisson of interest and expectation in the Orchestra: the manager, Ernest Fleischmann, was becoming increasingly successful in engaging the biggest name conductors. At this time the orchestra was very clearly seen to be on the up, and beginning to make the running in London. After the Great LSO Split in the mid nineteen fifties, all the Wind and Brass Principals with the exception of Oboist Roger Lord left the Orchestra, to be replaced by young unknowns such as Barry Tuckwell, Gervase de Peyer, William Waterhouse and Denis Wick among others. With a totally different style of playing from the other bands, and particularly in contrast to the Philharmonia Orchestra still being run by Walter Legge, the LSO’s attack, edge, power and above all, excitement, were dazzling audiences and critics alike.
I have no special memories of these sessions, which were of Hamilton Harty’s Handel arrangements, except that they proceeded reasonably smoothly. It was clear straight away that Szell was a detail man first, only willing to move on to the bigger picture after every speck of dust had been polished at least twice.
Tshaikovsky at Walthamstow
In 1962 we met again for Tshaikovsky’s Fourth. The phrase ‘Let battle commence’ might have been coined for this encounter. Possibly it was the fact that we had a number of new players in key string roles, who, while they were wonderful players, lacked the street-fighter’s experience … hold-move-hit-on-the-break …. essential in dealing with over-controlling conductors used to utterly obedient players.
The first explosion of which I was aware was Szell’s bellow of rage as he looked over to see the First Violin section busily rubbing out the bowing marks in his own set of parts and pencilling in new ones. And we were hardly into the first movement! Even I knew, as a young and green brass player, that for a conductor of Szell’s type, bowings were his territory, and not that of the players. It is perhaps historically useful to point out that, at that time, almost all conductors of premier rank owned their own sets of parts of the classic repertoire, in which bowings across all string sections were unified, sometimes a mass of nuance inserted, and all other relevant detail noted. The LSO’s librarian Henry Greenwood told me that the Cleveland Orchestra library contained up to four or five sets of the material for basic repertoire, each marked by and for notable maestri of the past. To Szell this erasure of his sacred script, edited and re-edited over decades of performances, must have seemed like vandalism.
Once this squall had passed, the other sessions passed in an atmosphere of desert warfare, as my colleague Willy Lang remarked, with landmines going off at regular intervals …. krumpff …. now the woodwind, now the brass, as Szell uncovered new ‘atrocities’ for disapproval. After two long days even his very deep well of disgust seemed to run dry.
A closing Codetta seemed to sum it up. Those of us who had called in to The Bell at the Walthamstow crossroads before the drive home were astonished to see the door of the bar open and the hapless producer of the sessions, John Culshaw, lead George Szell to the bar for a drink. A singularly inept and noisy pop group provided another bizarre touch. Szell, blinking through his pebble glasses, ordered a half of bitter, downed it in one single open-throated gulp, made for the door, and disappeared into the night even before Culshaw had paid the reckoning. Culshaw, a charming and expert producer, scuttled out as fast as he could, no doubt fearing the worst for the journey back to London.
Later it came out that Szell had refused to sanction the record’s release. It was issued only after his death.
Brahms at Kingsway
During one of Szell’s visits to the LSO, a recording of Brahm’s D minor Piano Concerto with Clifford Curzon took place in Kingsway Hall. Curzon was a musician much liked by the Orchestra, both for his musical and human qualities. He was the romantic, the exposed, the quivering and sensitive musician, alive to more nuances than he could ever express. The contrast in the Orchestra’s attitude to Szell could hardly have been clearer: he was seen as the ultimate musical engineer. His form of poetry resided in the cleanliness of every moving part and the mechanical perfection of the whole construction. Pianist and conductor were obviously friends; one can only presume that Curzon had asked for Szell to conduct, or, at the least, agreed to the producer’s suggestion.
I remember the weather as being cold, if only because Curzon put on thick, black, woolly gloves the moment he stopped playing. As the work progressed – (there were three sessions) – Curzon appeared to be his normal self. His playing suffered the usual admixture of small blemishes, and even if the whole project seemed to be ploughing through heavy ground, steady if slow progress was made. However, by the third session, with the bulk of the Concerto complete, the tempo of work had slowed to a walk, as Curzon tried to capture one or two of the most difficult passages where his capability was clearly at the limit. All musicians understand that the recording process has its own sod’s law whereby a passage that generally runs well can develop a tic, becoming a problem. After a number of tries, one prays that the law of averages will rescue it: surely it has got to come out well at least once? But tiredness and rising low-grade anxiety in the background ensure that the tic pops up in different places each time, even down to the recording engineer finding, after the one-good-take, ‘Sorry, small problem in here, once more please!’ or the Kingsway train, the Flying Dutchman of the Underground, rumbling through on a pianissimo. As long as the conductor knows how to control these situations with a light, low-key touch, they can be smoothed away.
One passage remained to be done. As the number of takes rose so did Curzon’s anxiety: he added distracted perambulations to his glove routine, circling the foyer outside the hall, away from the recording area. I have a dim impression that he also smoked. Szell’s impatience also grew. He used his voice, which was nasal and loud, like a dagger, with a finicky precision. A take announcement from the producer ‘Take fifty-one’, drew the very pointed correction ‘Don’t you mean take one hundred and fifty-one?’ Curzon, swallowing the barb, said ‘Oh George!’ and leapt from the piano stool to begin another walk around the hall. After yet another time out called by the producer, Szell sat down at the keyboard and rattled off the offending passage, one of those big-handed, athletic, Brahmsian moments. He didn’t say anything, but his whole demeanour suggested puzzlement that there was a problem. He may of course just have been showing off. It is inconceivable that he could have been unaware that he was creating yet more tension for Curzon.
Mahler at Kingsway
The sessions at Kingsway were in the typical Szell mould of intensely examined detail and characterisation, which suited this work very well indeed. The finished result when I listened to it many years later is in the highest class of performance from all the participants. The sessions had been preceded by two concerts at the Royal Festival Hall, the second one on a Sunday afternoon, during which a strange and alarming weakness was revealed in Szell’s armoury. Not that weakness is strange per se: all performers, however highly their surfaces are enamelled and polished, have little secret cracks and fissures in their techniques. In this case it was a rudimentary weakness: he experienced occasional problems in starting movements where there were divided upbeats before the barlines. The start of one of the movements begins with three trumpets playing on the third quaver (eighth note) in four-four time before the barline, and on that Sunday afternoon, it was very scrappy. Head in the score, giving an unnecessary 1-2-3 before the entry, even he was confused by his own uncertain and always ungainly movements. (It never ceases to surprise how much confusion a conductor can cause with a single ambiguous gesture! The uncertain but streetwise conductor knows how to make a simple lunge and then let the orchestra sort out the problem. It was impossible for Szell to conceive of that approach: he was always up to his elbows in the tub.) The resultant entry was much better than he deserved, which he admitted negatively by not looking up and glaring at us.
I had played third trumpet in the concerts, being at that time Co-Principal Trumpet, but for the recordings, due to illness, I stepped up to the Principal position. The recordings took the usual turn, and as with all ‘new’ faces, I had to be tested if possible to destruction. Conductors of this school and background just had to know where the breaking point was with players with whom they were unfamiliar as principals. My particular test was appropriately, and immediately, the trumpet moments in ‘Wo die schönen trompeten blasen’ and particularly the final arpeggio followed by repeated low notes. As a player I actually relished these little contests and sustained no injuries whatsoever in rehearsal or in takes. To my surprise, having arrived early for the next day’s session, Szell, who was wandering around the empty orchestral seating in Kingsway, came over and engaged me in friendly conversation for several minutes. He brought up the matter of musical detail, and having complimented me on the previous day’s playing said that he could not understand musicians who were not concerned with intonation and rhythm among other things. ‘Surely it is like personal hygiene, like cleaning their fingernails and ears every day?’ When I attempted an admittedly weak joke that I knew quite a few musicians whose personal hygiene was not much of a priority for them, I was treated to a trademark stare.
The music making was however a joy. These Mahler songs suited him perfectly in his role as a visiting conductor. He could polish limited moments to his heart’s content, and the result would hold, whereas with much larger symphonic works he literally could not find the time to create his own perfection.
Szell anecdotes are many and various: a musician with the power given to his generation of conductors cannot help but reveal himself during the daily grind. No suave image building for him, just the daily grind of becoming better. One of many stories was Andre Previn’s. For a period before turning permanently to conducting, Previn worked as a solo pianist. He fetched up at Cleveland to perform the Strauss Burleske with Szell, and was summoned to meet the maestro in his room to discuss the performance. They sat down at the table where Szell, having opened the score, asked Previn to begin playing. Looking around for the piano and not seeing one, Previn then asked on what he was to play. ‘Play on the table, I can follow that’, he was sharply told. Doing as bid, he had hardly started when Szell interrupted very brusquely ‘No, no, you have played a wrong note!’ to which Previn, with his unmatched ability to respond with the right humorous touch, replied ‘I’m sorry, I’m not used to this table!’ The interview was terminated instantly.
What can any guest conductor do in limited time, entering into circumstances almost totally outside his control? I would guess that understanding situations such as these was not something in which Szell had any interest. The cast of his behaviour and approach leads one to conclude that control and domination were his methods. As a London based player I had no experience of him as a musical director, in a habitat controlled by him, but all the anecdotal evidence from inside the Cleveland camp suggests that this judgement was true there also.
Guest conductors come in two basic sizes: those who accept what they find and work with it, and those who can’t accept the prevailing standard and seek to rebuild in a very short space of time. The first type realises that setting up an amicable relationship is the very first element to be achieved. This will allow effective, co-operative work to be done, and with good fortune a definite gloss and finish can be achieved over and above what is routine for the orchestra. The right atmosphere and the stimulus provided by a new face can lift an ensemble’s response by a clearly perceptible amount. This will not preclude hard work, but it must be work that is aimed at the scheduled performance rather than at training, which is not the business of the guest. It has to be said that the second type, unwilling or unable to leave alone, has to be finally labelled unintelligent in approach. In this sense Szell was a poor guest conductor, because he was unable to accept that, in the short term, only so much is possible in the way of change or amendment. Of course with his ability, achievement and reputation, he enjoyed ‘acceptance’ by the Orchestra, that special lubricant to a good relationship which orchestras offer or withhold, often on whim.
I was always puzzled as to why he needed to guest conduct at all. He must have had the self knowledge to realise that he was the kind of musician who needed an ensemble that fitted him, glove to hand. With us in the LSO he was unable to accept that we couldn’t be transformed in a short time. The image that came into my mind was that of an expert clockmaker, who, having taken the clock apart, could not re-assemble the mechanism in the time available.
In assessing Szell’s musical qualities, many factors have to be considered. An orchestral player is not necessarily in the best place to make an overall judgement on a conductor because the relationship is a working one and therefore often too personal to be objective. The intensity of the relationship, conductor to player, is that of immediate self-interest on both sides, and when these situations become tense or less successful, they can deteriorate into a short goodbye. Outside the musicians lie the agents and critics, often with closely written agendas of their own. Beyond them is the public at large, hoping for enjoyment and searching for markers with which to improve their discrimination. The public, however, is almost always unrealistic in its judgements, liable to be too romantic in latching on to irrelevancies of presentation and falling for the surface appearance of things.
Pulling together these various thoughts, it was clear to me that Szell did not choose, or did not like, or was not able to improvise a performance, to allow a performance to take an unscheduled path. I suggest the latter because firstly, he was an ungainly conductor, awkward in gesture with very little responsiveness in his conducting language to changing moods in the performance. In this situation a conductor has to have the confidence to stretch or contract the pulse on the spur of the moment. Secondly, he became too focussed on clarity and precision at the expense of the broad picture. My experience of him is that he always needed to set a performance firmly in place and then just repeat it: ‘parrot-fashion’ is perhaps too impolite a phrase to use about Szell but in his world efficiency and order came before everything.
His professionalism was impeccable. A contemporary of mine, who had studied with him briefly, asked him after a discussion of a Strauss score – Til Eulenspiegel I think – whether he really knew all the myriad notes in the score, both vertically and horizontally. Szell responded instantly ‘What do you take me for, an amateur?’ Certainly today that level of professionalism is sadly lacking among conductors. Not only was he totally thorough in his musical preparation, but he knew how an orchestra worked: he could put his head under the bonnet and then he could fix it. He had taken many years to develop the Cleveland Orchestra into the most polished of orchestras: it can still today be heard as his voice and his monument, a tribute to his training, in spite of there having been some dubious hands on the tiller since his time there.
When I look back on his work with the LSO and listen to recordings of him elsewhere – a two movement Mahler 10 with Cleveland immediately springs to mind – I find myself reliving the memories of him with great enjoyment, and still feel a keen stimulus from going over them. One must never wish for a musician of substance to be different or less personal, especially in these bland times. I was privileged to have worked for him.
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