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Philadelphia Conductor Eugene Ormandy has sworn him his undying enmity, and a young Western conductor who once studied with him now says. "Szell is one of the world's great musicians and a cold, cold sonofabitch." But to Szell, such opinions hardly matter. His only concerns are music and his idea of music's greatest instrument, his Cleveland Orchestra. "The balance of musical excellence has recently shifted." he says with an icy smile, "from the East Coast to—the Midwest. A critic has said that."
The balance of excellence had already shifted from Europe's orchestras to America's. It took a long time for Americans to realize this. In their self-consciousness about Old World superiority in culture, they shyly awaited concessions of defeat from abroad before they claimed victory at home. In fact, of all Europe's orchestras, only the Berlin Philharmonic and the London Philharmonia are the occasional equals of the five leading American orchestras (see box). And now that Europeans admit it, Americans have begun to brag about it.
Fifty-four years ago, Gustav Mahler, cursing his luck, wrote home to Vienna from his new conductor's office at the New York Philharmonic. "My orchestra," he began, "is the genuine American orchestra, phlegmatic and without talent." However bad it was, though, the grand spectacle of the symphony orchestra, playing heroic classics in the elegance of the concert hall, seemed to suit the American taste better than opera and better. even, than the stage.
In Boston and Philadelphia, society has preened itself for concerts ever since their orchestras began playing. Several Main Line families in Philadelphia (where they say "going to orchestra") have held the same seats at the Academy of Music since 1900, and in Boston (where they say "going to symphony"), the Friday afternoon concerts always have an audience filled with Cabots, Lowells, Hornblowers, Forbeses and Websters. No one in Boston cuts the swath of Mrs. Stanley McCormick, however: for years she has bought two season tickets to the symphony's Friday afternoons—one for herself, one for her coat.
Such devotion, of course, is not limited to the big cities or to the grand orchestras. At the turn of the century, there were 30 orchestras in the U.S. and Canada; now there are over 1,200, nearly half of them founded in the past 20 years. Radio and television have crippled the other performing arts, but music's electronic voice has stimulated its audience to come and hear the real thing. "Listening to a record on a phonograph," says the assistant conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony, "is like getting kissed over the telephone."
Today, nearly every town big enough to have a ballpark has a symphony orchestra too, though many play just as badly as they did for Mahler. In some places, they are merely the poodles of rich old ladies, who coo over the conductor's accent and glory in the yearly fund-raising drive that proves their devotion to the arts. But in other towns, the symphonies are the one cosmopolitan touch that makes life bearable away from the cities for afterhours musicians and music lovers. And in a hundred or so cities, they are living centers of culture, sober public trusts as important as the library or the art museum.