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THE CLEVELANDERS
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The Ukrainian-born Nikolai Sokoloff, who served as conductor of the San Francisco People's Philharmonic immediately before assuming the Cleveland post, is not well known today, but he clearly had an ability to lay the groundwork for something permanent and valuable. The Cleveland Orchestra soon made a name for itself among American's symphonic organizations. In 1931, it moved into its own "pleasant pastures," Severance Hall, the classically elegant building that remains its permanent home.
Like Sokoloff, his successor, the Polish-born Artur Rodzinski, arrived from California (his previous post was with the Los Angeles Philharmonic). He brought to Ohio a particularly keen talent for honing an ensemble, which, according to some, was needed in Cleveland by the end of Sokoloff's term. It was Rodzinski, music director from 1933 to 1943, who really put the ensemble on the national map, both for the caliber of its playing and for the vitality of the programming, which included the American premiere of Shostakovich's searing opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" (staged operas became a significant part of the Cleveland Orchestra's activity during the Rodzinski years).
When the New York Philharmonic hired Rodzinski in 1943, the Clevelanders had a short stewardship by the dependable Erich Leinsdorf before engaging the conductor who would lead the grandest, longest chapter in the orchestra's history. George Szell, born in Hungary and trained in Vienna, was in New York in 1939 when war broke out in Europe. He stayed on this side of the Atlantic, conducting regularly at the Metropolitan Opera before being offered the Cleveland job in 1946. He remained at the head of the orchestra until his death in 1970.
The Szell years enjoy legendary status today. Part of that legacy has to do with such things as increases in the orchestra's size (to 107 players) and the number of weeks of service (year-round by the late-1960s, thanks to a summer season at the nearby Blossom Music Center). International tours were undertaken for the first time, helping to spread the ensemble's reputation.
But what counts most about the Szell era is the quality of the music-making, the uncanny precision of articulation, the expressive drive. Those elements still come through vividly in the numerous recordings that captured Szell's relationship with the Clevelanders, especially in the core German repertoire. The accounts of symphonies and concertos by Beethoven and Brahms, to name just a few, remain among the most distinguished ever committed to disc.
Szell's historic stature is also confirmed by the number of great anecdotes that still circulate about the man and his ways. He was probably the last of the podium autocrats, "an exacting, often caustic, taskmaster," as the NEW GROVE DICTIONARY puts it. Szell, who once declared that "conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra -- not choreography to the audience," left no detail to chance. One of innumerable stories about his rehearsals has him telling the violins, "I want this phrase to sound completely spontaneous -- however, as the result of meticulous planning."
Top banner photos: Soprano Dorothea Röschmann and Franz Welser-Möst with the Cleveland Orchestra (photos by Joe Sinnott); Carnegie Hall exterior (photo by Don Perdue).
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The Cleveland Orchestra (photo by Joe Sinnott). |
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The gala was hosted by Paula Zahn (photo by Joe Sinnott). |
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No CD or DVD available. |
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