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Szell made his New York debut in 1941 as guest conductor of Toscanini's NBC Symphony. A year later he was hired by the Metropolitan Opera, and soon he was busy as a guest conductor of all the major U.S. orchestras and a good many of the minor ones. The Cleveland appointment was offered in 1946, and after extracting an unconditional surrender on all musical matters from the Cleveland Musical Arts Association,* Szell arrived the following fall to begin the task he had dreamed of all through his gypsy years—"building and shaping an orchestra into an instrument of ideal musicality."
"Something Is Wrong." His techniques were as bold as his ambitions. Though he sacked only twelve of the 94 musicians he inherited, another dozen or so moved on to other orchestras where the pace was gentler. For two or three, the chilly sight of Szell on the podium was an inspiration to give up music for the used-car business.
Unlike Stokowski, who is adept at artful cajolery, or Toscanini. who swore so eloquently in Italian that those who understood him refused to translate for others, Szell is a surgeon of small insults; he freezes musical offenders with a long, unblinking stare. His players call him "Cyclops." He calls first-chair men by their first names, but to others he will simply say, "Clarinet, you're faltering," or "Clean up your sound. Bassoon." For all his cold-eyed demand for perfection, though, to musicians he admires, Szell can be surprisingly warm. "If I play well," says Pianist Leon Fleisher, "he calls me 'Schnozzle.' If I play very well, he calls me 'Schnozzola.' And if I play very, very well, it's 'Schnozzolone.' "
Every so often, the maestro relaxes and shares a joke with his whole orchestra. Szell's gags, when they come, delight his musicians, but more often than not they also cost him one more friend. When Canadian Pianist Glenn Gould turned up for a rehearsal in Cleveland, he went into his usual piano-bench ritual: up a millimeter, down a smidgen, up just a trifle. down a hair, up . . . Time-and-Motion-Man Szell stared on from the podium as long as he could stand it. At last he spoke: "Perhaps if I were to slice one-sixteenth of an inch off your derrière, Mr. Gould, we could begin."
But most often, it is Szell who doesn't get the joke. In 1954. the year Cleveland last won the pennant, Szell's musicians arranged to play Take Me Out to the Ball Game at rehearsal by way of celebrating. Szell marched into the hall, mounted the podium, raised his baton and said: "First, Mahler." At the downbeat, Szell was horrified. "No, no, no!" he screamed. "Something is wrong." The crestfallen concertmaster explained. "Ah, a joke," said unsmiling Szell. "Heh. heh, heh." Then right back to work. "First, Mahler."