George Szell
Szell’s strictness in his conducting was well known. He was, however, an excellent musician, and the members of the orchestra who managed to keep their jobs were delighted with the standard of their playing. They said that he praised them when they were good, and did not keep on rehearsing once the piece was perfect. Szell never showed off when conducting, he never made the music sound sentimental. Like Toscanini, he thought that a conductor should do exactly what the composer had written in the score, without adding his own personal feelings to the music. Some critics thought that his Mozart sounded a bit too lacking in feeling, but Szell said “I cannot pour chocolate sauce over asparagus”. He conducted music by the main central-European composers: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler and Strauss. He also conducted some modern music, particularly by Dutilleux, Walton, Prokofiev, Hindemith and Bartók. He encouraged Pierre Boulez to conduct the Cleveland Orchestra.