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Refined Art. Beyond all that, a conductor has to be alert to troubles within his orchestra. Men who have gone too far in an effort to make music a democracy (as Charles Munch did in Boston and Dimitri Mitropoulos did before he was shooed away from New York in 1958) may find themselves watching helplessly as their musicians betray them in a thousand ways. The New York Philharmonic has made a refined art of ignoring any inept visitors among the conductors who substitute for Leonard Bernstein each year: the players keep all eyes studiously away from the podium in hopes of informing the audience that it is hearing their performance, not the maestro's.
The class warfare of musician and conductor is as old as ego. But to Szell, the whole scrap is an empty one. "We are all in the service of music," he says, "and we must approach it with all the good will possible." Because he is the most authoritarian man now conducting, this means play it his way, or else.
Szell harbors a hidden fondness for musicians, but he keeps it under perfect control. At work with his orchestra, he is so immaculately severe that a few players complain of his cruelty, hinting darkly that he has driven a musician or two into emergency mental care. Others feel that he is so coldly unresponsive to their feelings that he pushes them past the point of artistic aspiration, rehearsing so much that they pass their peak before concert time. "If you really want to hear how good we are, come to rehearsal," says a Cleveland violinist.
Szell also offends players by being so devoutly musical that at times he is scantily human. When a violinist took a bone-jouncing spill down a long flight of stairs, Szell heard about it and asked in horror,' "Did he crush his fiddle?" When a visiting member of the Berlin Philharmonic expressed astonishment that Cleveland's musicians would put up with a man like Szell, a Szell man mused: "It's ironic. Over there, they have democracy. Here we have the Third Reich." To most of the players though, particularly the first-chair men. Szell's demands are justified by Szell's achievements: genius, they are convinced, is its own excuse.
Sculptor's Hand. On the podium, Szell is formal and correct—his beat firm, his style understated. His baton moves stolidly. but his left hand—often called the most graceful in music—is a sculptor's hand, shaping and molding each sound, grasping the fortissimos, summoning the dominant voices and, for excited counterrhythms and violent colors, fluttering like a bird caught in a storm. "Between conductor and orchestra," Szell says, "a great deal must occur below the conscious level. There must be an understanding that is mystical and even occult. The freshness of the eyes, the mood—each movement must transmit itself to the players as an unmistakable musical signal."