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George Szell: A Life of Music (Music in American Life) Hardcover – Illustrated, June 1, 2011

by Michael Charry (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 39 ratings
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This book is the first full biography of George Szell, one of the greatest orchestra and opera conductors of the twentieth century. From child prodigy pianist and composer to world-renowned conductor, Szell's career spanned seven decades, and he led most of the great orchestras and opera companies of the world, including the New York Philharmonic, the NBC and Chicago Symphonies, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and Opera, and the Concertgebouw Orchestra. A protégé of composer-conductor Richard Strauss at the Berlin State Opera, his crowning achievement was his twenty-four-year tenure as musical director of the Cleveland Orchestra, transforming it into one of the world's greatest ensembles, touring triumphantly in the United States, Europe, the Soviet Union, South Korea, and Japan.

 

Michael Charry, a conductor who worked with Szell and interviewed him, his family, and his associates over several decades, draws on this first-hand material and correspondence, orchestra records, reviews, and other archival sources to construct a lively and balanced portrait of Szell's life and work from his birth in 1897 in Budapest to his death in 1970 in Cleveland.

 

Readers will follow Szell from his career in Europe, Great Britain, and Australia to his guest conducting at the New York Philharmonic and his distinguished tenure at the Metropolitan Opera and Cleveland Orchestra. Charry details Szell's personal and musical qualities, his recordings and broadcast concerts, his approach to the great works of the orchestral repertoire, and his famous orchestrational changes and interpretation of the symphonies of Robert Schumann. The book also lists Szell's conducting repertoire and includes a comprehensive discography.

 

In highlighting Szell's legacy as a teacher and mentor as well as his contributions to orchestral and opera history, this biography will be of lasting interest to concert-goers, music lovers, conductors, musicians inspired by Szell's many great performances, and new generations who will come to know those performances through Szell's recorded legacy.
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Previous page
  1. Part of series
    Music in American Life
  2. Print length
    412 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    University of Illinois Press
  5. Publication date
    June 1, 2011
  6. Dimensions
    9.6 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    0252036166
  8. ISBN-13
    978-0252036163
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Received the Best Historical Research in Recorded Classical Music Award from the Association for Recorded Sound Collection (ARSC), 2012.

"Reading this book would serve as a manual of music appreciation.  Charry's tribute reflects the scope and brilliance of Szell's career, in the careful detailing of his performances and music critics' opinions of them."--Ohioana Quarterly




"A discerning and highly informed new biography.  Charry makes a convincing case for admiring his subject's skill in musical matters without concealing Szell's many personality flaws."--Forward




"Charry not only gives us invaluable insights into his leadership style and musical tastes ... but details some of the financial and political issues facing the orchestra during that era. . . . Perhaps the book’s greatest value lies in humanizing a man whom many have come to see as a humorless (or perhaps joyless) martinet."SymphonyNow



"A magnificent achievement. I was especially impressed by Mr. Charry's skill in conveying a deep admiration for his subject without falling into the trap of fawning or idol-worshipping--a quality seldom encountered in biographies of great conductors."--Stephen C. Hillyer, past president of the Fritz Reiner Society



"A fine biography of one of the 20th century's greatest classical conductors.  This thorough biography of one of the most important figures on the American classical scene in the post-World War II era is a valuable contribution to the literature on classical music."--Library Journal

"Charry’s achievement is unlikely to be surpassed for a long time, if ever, and the reader will come away with a real depth of insight into this towering, complex figure, which can only enhance our appreciation of his extraordinary accomplishment and artistic legacy."--Fanfare

"Charry examines Szell's personal life in greater detail than has been afforded before, with a trove of previously unpublished letters. . . . Straightforward and erudite."--The Wall Street Journal

"Musicians, concertgoers, and general readers will be captivated by the author's behind-the-scenes look at what goes into shaping a world-class orchestra."--The Washington Times

"An excellent job of chronicling the everyday life of professional musicians."--HuffingtonPost.com

"Given the conductor's close identification with a symphonic orchestra, the extent of Szell's operatic experience may come as a surprise to some readers. Charry has done excellent work in illuminating this overshadowed facet of Szell's career."--Opera News

"A lively and balanced portrait of Szell's life and work."--Opera America

"Very well written and will surely appeal to anyone with an interest in George Szell."--American Record Guide

"There is surely no one more qualified than Michael Charry to write Szell's biography."--Musical Opinion

About the Author

Michael Charry has conducted widely in the United States and internationally. He earned BS and MS degrees in Orchestral Conducting from the Julliard School of Music in the class of Jean Morel. His other conducting teachers were Pierre Monteux, at his school for conductors in Hancock, Maine; and Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, on a Fulbright Scholarship in Hamburg, Germany. He was a member of the conducting staff of the Cleveland Orchestra for nine years under George Szell and for two years after Szell's death. On the faculty of Mannes College The New School for Music since 1988, he is a former director of the Mannes Orchestra.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Illinois Press; First Edition (June 1, 2011)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 412 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0252036166
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0252036163
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.01 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.6 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 39 ratings

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Michael Charry

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4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
39 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Frog
5.0 out of 5 stars A Peek Into Musical Greatness
Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2014
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George Szell was one of the greatest conductors in the 20th Century. I met him on a couple of occasions, after concerts, as one of many who admired his music-making. Once, when I was in Salzburg, I happened to be staying at the same hotel as he.was I saw him at a table with two women, eating lunch. Letting my desire to obtain his autograph trump more polite considerations, I approached his table and, with a program from the concert of the previous evening, I asked for an autograph. He was most considerate and stated "that can be arranged," whereupon he graciously wrote his name on the program. I was all of 20 years old at the time and I was thrilled.

Many music critics claim he was a martinet---simply a drill master who was cold and forbidding. Quite the opposite, I found his music making to be lucid and precise, but also revealing aspects of a score which ordinarily are not heard at the concerts of other conductors. His Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn, for me, represented the paradigm which can be obtained in performance. He was outstanding in Mahler, Bruckner and Wagner. He was never less than very good in the music of other composers, and his concerts were never, never boring.

It was wonderful to have a biography from an author who not only is a well-trained musician, but who has two other characteristics which are most beneficial, to wit: he had a long-standing professional relationship with Szell, and he knows how to write. All too often, biographies fall into a stasis wherein insignificant detail is recited tediously and ponderousness overwhelms the reader. Here, Mr. Charry's work is an enjoyable read and I found it difficult to put it down. I enjoyed being able to partake in Charry's insights into Szell's life and professional work.
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Thomas Zimmermann
5.0 out of 5 stars A fine biography of a great conductor---Szell was the personification of ...
Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2018
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A fine biography of a great conductor---Szell was the personification of the true "maestro". which we see few examples these days. In fact, only two real conductors remain in the USA, Muti in Chicago and Welser-Möst in Cleveland. The others, in NYC, L.A., San Francisco, Boston, are clowns in the worst sense. With Reiner, Mitropoulos, Bruno Walter, Stokowski, Münch, Szell was in good company and gave the USA some fame as the home of great musicians, while Karajan,Böhm, etc. ruled in Europe. A golden age, alas, gone forever.
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R.D. Monsoon
3.0 out of 5 stars A good overview of Szell's life, but lacking in substance
Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2011
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As a big George Szell fan, I was hoping to love this biography, but I was disappointed. I did not feel that the Michael Charry revealed any new insights about what made Szell such a great and noteworthy conductor.

The major problem is that Charry feels the need to account for every moment in Szell's life. As a result, many of the chapters provide superficial overviews of a year in Szell's life, mentioning just the music he conducted, anecdotes about contract negotiations, and discussions with administrators at other orchestras about programming for guest appearances. It feels like it was originally written in bullet form and then converted into complete sentences. Understandably, Charry paces things very quickly to get to Szell's Cleveland tenure as soon as possible, and devotes the majority of the book to that. A lot of this period in Szell's life is already well known -- in fact, a lot of the stories and anecdotes Szell devotees will recognize from CD liner notes (many written by Charry) as well as Szell's hour long interview with John Culshaw for the BBC (which is by far the most insightful Szell document), audio interviews with Paul Myers and WQXR, and the Bell Telephone Hour documentary. What I wanted to know more about was Szell's life before Cleveland, especially when he was a prodigy in pre-war Europe.

Szell continues to fascinate listeners over 40 years after his death because of his unique interpretations and ability to exert total control over how the Cleveland Orchestra sounded -- so I was hoping for more analysis of this. From reading about Szell in the past, I know that he was meticulous at preparing a score he would conduct -- he would play through them on the piano several times -- and that his rehearsals were legendary for their intensity. Rather than trying to touch on every single year in Szell's life, I would have preferred if more of the book had been devoted to stories about Szell's creative process, leaving out years where not a whole was happening.

One thing I found particularly annoying, is that while Charry does touch on Szell's infamous temper, he never contextualizes it. For instance, Charry mentions a few incidents where Szell abruptly quit guest conducting gigs because he thought he was being shorted on rehearsal time, that singers were completely unprepared for their parts, general disagreements with management, etc. Whether or not Szell was in the right for walking out -- Charry typically includes Szell's lengthy defense for his actions that have been preserved in letters -- I was left wondering if other conductors of Szell's stature acted this way during his lifetime, or was it unique to him? Were these incidents major news back in the day, or did they happen regularly enough that it wasn't worth mentioning? Did these actions harm Szell's reputation?

Another issue I have with Charry is that he is a bit disingenuous with making it seem like Szell's repertoire was broader than it really was. Szell is often criticized for mainly conducting the 19th Century Austro-German repertoire and rarely touching 20th century music, and Charry's extensive listing of Szell's concert repertoire in the appendix does confirm this. But throughout the book, Charry mentions every time Szell conducted a premier of some kind. To give an example, Charry gives the impression that Szell was a major champion of Hindemith -- he conducted lots of Hindemith pieces when they were still brand new. But the appendix reveals that with the exception of "Symphonic Metamorphosis," Szell conducted them each just that one time (he did conduct Concert Music for String Orchestra and Brass Instruments twice). And this is the case for most 20th century music Szell conducted -- he did conduct a lot of 20th century music and made numerous premiers, but he rarely conducted any of those pieces a second time. I would have liked to hear why Szell was so conservative in his programming (and one theory I've heard is that a component of making Cleveland a great orchestra was that he monopolized repertoire -- lots of pieces and composers were off-limits to guest conductors, resulting in 24 years of the Orchestra only playing Beethoven, Brahms and R. Strauss, etc. his way).

I do have to give credit to Charry for reminding us that Szell had a long career -- and in some senses many lives -- before he came to Cleveland. So much attention has been given to the last 24 years of his life that we forget for a period Szell was a composer, pianist, and for several decades he was best known as an opera conductor. Today we think of Szell has a genius of the orchestra, but had he died in 1950, he'd be remembered as one of the preeminent conductors of German opera.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Charry does talk about Szell's wife, Helene, and aspects of his personal life, such as extensive details on his summer vacationing habits, which was actually pretty interesting. Szell's conducting activity in the summer was very limited so he could spend a lot of time simply relaxing and playing golf in Europe. Part of his summer ritual included extensive driving from one city to the next. Charry even (briefly) mentions Szell's relationship with his stepson -- despite his temper with an orchestra, it actually sounds like Szell was a pretty good step-dad.

Despite my qualms, I'm sure that Szell fans will still want to buy the book, and it is worth getting just for extensive listing of Szell's discography (which includes 78-rpm recordings from the 1920s) as well as repertoire (with dates of when he conducted each piece). Getting to see a conductor's career laid out like this is fascinating. It reveals who were Szell's favorite composers and his favorite pieces. For instance, Brahms and Beethoven totally dominate season after season. The surprises are the most interesting. Szell is known as one of the great Dvorak conductors, yet he never conducted the 9th after the '58-'59 season when he recorded it (but he continued to conduct the 8th every other season). Whiles he's not remembered for french music, "La Mer" and "Daphnis et Chloe" Suite No.2 were routinely programmed. And despite his devotion to Haydn on recording, he only conducted most of the symphonies once or twice, and most performances were pre-1960. Another cool fact: Szell loved Walton's "Hindemith Variations." From the season it was premiered ('62-'63) until his death (1970), Szell conducted it all but two seasons. It's hard to imagine many 20th century pieces today being programmed with such regularity. Finally, even Szell's opera repertoire has been included. To give you an idea of his opera activity, at the Berlin State Opera, between 1924 and 1929, he led 371 performances of 34 operas. "Tosca" was among the post performed -- just imagine what Szell conducting "Tosca" must have sounded like!

Final thought: the real missed opportunity here was to aggregate all the various audio and video interviews Szell made, and for the first time ever, make them widely available to the public. It's a shame that there is all of this multimedia out there featuring Szell reflecting on his life, his conducting style, his thoughts on music, etc., and it is languishing in obscurity. If there was ever a biography which should have been an electronic book with embedded multimedia, this was it.
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Beth Holscher
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book on Szell
Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2013
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Micael Cherry has done the musical world a great service in his biography of the great conductor George Szell. Those who knew Szell are becoming fewer and fewer as the years pass, and Michael Cherry worked closely with him for years. Nobody is better placed to do this biography. The research is extensive and impeccable, and it is well written with many interesting stories and little-known bits of information. A trasure trove of information about one of my favorite conductors.

I would have liked to know more about Szell's inner thoughts, but Szell really wasn't that kind of share-all guy, and probably that kind of biography just couldn't be written. But Cherry wrote as good a biography as I think could have been done. Bravo.
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Galtee More
3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but could have been great.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 15, 2013
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`George Szell A Life of Music' is quite a chunky tome, it's full of detail about Szell's movements and concerts: overall one gets a fair picture of the man's huge energy, confidence and meticulousness, as well as his musical connections. Perhaps as much as anything the later part of the book gives an insight into how (and at what costs) the Cleveland Orchestra was forged into the magnificent orchestra of the 1950s to date. (I've heard the Cleveland in London with Maazel, Edinburgh with Dohnanyi and in Birmingham under Welser-Most and was transfixed each time, even in the Royal Festival Hall.)

And yet, despite Charry's methodical research among the Szell family papers and the Cleveland archives, the book is incomplete. Certainly we learn of Szell's youth as a musical prodigy, his work as Richard Strauss' assistant, his other pre-war posts and even something of his more `unbuttoned' side while with the Scottish Orchestra. There are factual accounts of his post-war touring work in Europe but material from the writings of other men from the music industry would have helped the detail considerably. For example, John Culshaw wrote about the circumstances that brought about the blazing LSO recording of Tchaikovsky's 4th symphony but there's no mention of any of the European recordings, what recording sessions were like or how they came about. Readers interested in Szell will want to know about recording the Strauss 'Four Last Songs' with Schwarzkopf or how Szell was coaxed into one more take of the last movement of Mahler 4 at a more fluent tempo than he had hitherto adopted: it's scattered in sleeve notes and journalism but not brought to the book where it surely belongs.
If the book's supposed to be a life of music then gossipy stuff from his letters about having the carburettor af his car adjusted before setting off on a European motoring holiday seems strangely out of place. The same goes for descriptions of Szell's mentoring of his stepson and probably his visits to health spas.
Possibly the misnomer of the title can be partly explained by the small print on the back of the dust jacket which suggests that the book is `A volume in the series "Music in American Life" ', but why, then, choose to give the book an all-embracing title?

It's a book I'm pleased to have and to read, but it's far from being the last word.
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Mr. P. W. Myers
3.0 out of 5 stars A long-deserved biography
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 22, 2012
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For George Szell fans, this biography has long been called for. There are many who believe that Dr. Szell was among the greatest conductors, and that the Cleveland Orchestra,under his guidance, became one of the world's finest musical organizations.
Szell was an old-school maestro, unconcerned with popularity with either his players or the public but, as the years pass, the true qualities of his musicianship have grown in recognition, just as each of his recordings has become a collector's item.
Charry gives a faithful documentation of Szell's long musical life, starting as a boy pianist/composer in Vienna, moving to be Richard Strauss' assistant as a teenager, and continuing on to a long and successful career on the podium. The book is an important addition to musical history of the 20th Century. For a while, I was his record prodcer (in the 1960's, when his orchestra was at its prime), and I have long awaited this biography which traces his masterly career.
Paul Myers
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BRIAN
4.0 out of 5 stars George szell a life of music
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 15, 2013
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I found the book very informative the only reason I did not give it 5 stars was because it has too much unnecessary data.
and the print is too small. otherwise a must for any George Szell admirers
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B. Nigel
2.0 out of 5 stars Two Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 16, 2015
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Brilliant Biography
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