(See Cover) In the gilt and white splendor of Carnegie Hall, the little ceremony seemed as homey as a washtub fiddle. "Old Buck eyes are as proud as can be of this fine, fine orchestra from Cleveland." announced the man from the Ohio Society of New York. "My gosh." answered the man from the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, "we're proud too." The Manhattan audience that had assembled for the first of the Cleveland Orchestra's current series of three New York concerts greeted this dialogue with faint, perfunctory applause. It was in no mood to encourage chatter: there was a great orchestra onstage waiting to be heard.
In seasons past. New Yorkers regularly infuriated Cleveland by suggesting that its orchestra played well in New York only because it was playing in New York; the boys from the provinces always rehearse for months to sound their best when they come to the city. But last autumn, Cleveland joined in the battle of the bands that marked the opening of Manhattan's new Philharmonic Hall and came away the master of the great orchestras from Boston, Philadelphia and New York. Home-town fans, who had been ardently convinced of Cleveland's orchestral supremacy for years, were suddenly confronted with astonishing international applause. London and Paris had already acclaimed the Cleveland—and New York was chiming in.
Charming & Terrifying. Encouraged by the acclaim, music lovers in Cleveland behave like sports fans elsewhere. They have airport rallies when the orchestra comes home from tour. They chant, "We're the best! We're the best!" and carry placards reading "Bravo!" They have a Meet Your Orchestra radio program that features chummy interviews with tuba players and treats double-bassists like second basemen. They have been known to stop musicians on the street to plead for autographs and crowd the stage door after concerts to shake the hands of fiddlers. And in store windows all over town, they mount pictures of their hero, the glowering, inescapable Maestro George Szell.
In this pep-rally atmosphere, no one is more devoutly convinced of Cleveland's orchestral supremacy than Szell himself, to whom all the excitement is a glowing reflection of his own musical genius. At 65, Szell (pronounced sell) has spent 50 years on the podium, a life cycle that began as Wunderkind in Richard Strauss's Germany, then progressed to enfant terrible in Szell's Cleveland. He arrived in Cleveland in 1946, pruned and rebuilt the orchestra, educated its audience, charmed its angels, and terrified everyone, until he reached a point of supreme control and superb accomplishment. Now, after 17 years, he calls his orchestra "this glorious instrument—an instrument that perfectly reflects my musical ideals."
To make the Cleveland the peer of the world's old and honored orchestras, he has been hard with his players, cagey with his patrons, and often unkind and intemperate with anyone who finds no place in his scheme of musical excellence. In the process, he has divided the musical world into two camps—Szellots and enemies.