{"id":6243,"date":"2012-07-26T01:53:34","date_gmt":"2012-07-26T05:53:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=6243"},"modified":"2012-08-02T22:04:35","modified_gmt":"2012-08-03T02:04:35","slug":"books-george-szell-the-new-york-philharmonic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=6243","title":{"rendered":"Books: George Szell; the New York Philharmonic"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Sedgwick Clark<\/strong><\/p>\n

For a couple of years I\u2019ve been putting off even mentioning some worthy books whose authors happen to be good friends. Perhaps I should have taken the old New Yorker <\/em>answer to books by its contributors and simply listed them without comment. At this late date, I suggest you simply buy these books.<\/p>\n

George Szell once told Time<\/em> magazine that no one would ever write a biography of him: \u201cI\u2019m so damned normal.\u201d No one who knew this podium tyrant believed his self-appraisal for a second. Certainly not his Cleveland Orchestra musicians, who called him \u201cCyclops,\u201d only partly due to his Coke-bottle thick glasses. Nor Rudolf Bing, famed general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, who clashed with Szell in 1953-54 when he abruptly stormed out of his contract with the company. Someone said to Bing afterwards that Szell was his own worst enemy. Bing\u2019s famous reply: \u201cNot while I\u2019m alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Charry\u2019s George Szell: A Life of Music <\/em><\/strong>(Illinois, 2011) is the first book about one of history\u2019s great conductors, and it is likely, given the current lack of commercial interest in classical music, to be the only one. So thank you Illinois Press, and thank you Michael Charry, who had a front-row-center view of this prickly musician for nine years as a member of the Cleveland Orchestra\u2019s conducting staff and apparently remembered everything. His admiration for Szell never flags, yet he allows us to see the conductor\u2019s cruelty to his players when they performed imperfectly as well as his kindness to such impressive young soloists as German violinist Edith Peinemann and American pianists Leon Fleisher, Gary Graffman, and John Browning. In the judicious balance of reported information and his own observations, Charry has crafted a biography worth waiting for. Importantly, a list of Szell\u2019s repertoire and a complete discography are included\u2014the last time in our computer age I expect to see this.<\/p>\n

New York Philharmonic concertgoers over the past six decades will want to read John Canarina\u2019s The New York Philharmonic: From Bernstein to Maazel <\/em>(Amadeus Press, 2010)<\/strong>, a sequel of sorts to critic and journalist James Huneker\u2019s The Philharmonic Society of New York and Its Seventy-Fifth Anniversary <\/em>(1917) and conductor\/teacher Howard Shanet\u2019s Philharmonic: A History of New York\u2019s Orchestra <\/em>(Doubleday, 1975). While I haven\u2019t read the Huneker book, he was reportedly rarely without strong opinions; nor is Shanet, who uses his book to combat \u201cthe vast, and largely unjustified, inferiority complex that has oppressed American music throughout its history . . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike Shanet, Canarina has no \u201cax to grind.\u201d He takes a historical tone, writing of what he considers the high points of concerts and important facts. Both authors had connections with the orchestra and conducted it\u2014Shanet was a musical assistant to Leonard Bernstein in the early 1950s, and Canarina was an assistant conductor of the Philharmonic in 1961-62, during Bernstein\u2019s tenure. Shanet ended his book before Pierre Boulez\u2019s tenure began in 1972-73. Canarina, however, instead of beginning his book with Boulez, chooses to overlap with Bernstein\u2019s directorship (1958-69), ending with Lorin Maazel\u2019s tenure (2002-09).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a fair but surprisingly dispassionate book, perhaps because conducting and teaching kept\u00a0the author\u00a0out of town\u00a0during much of that time. Hence the reliance on what critics reported. It was Bernstein\u2019s final season when I arrived in New York 44 years ago, and I enjoyed being transported back to the many Philharmonic concerts I have\u00a0heard since that time.\u00a0Canarina quotes\u00a0many reviews with which I disagreed then and which annoy me still. That\u2019s horse racing, to be sure, but I could have welcomed Canarina\u2019s book even more if it had offered completely fresh opinions.<\/p>\n