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Cleveland, he says at every opportunity, "is my home." But the minute his schedule permits, he disappears to Europe, where he plays golf ("gladly but badly") and heckles his wife in the kitchen. He seldom entertains, but when he does his door may open on the maestro smiling absurdly from inside an apron that says "Whoopee" across the front. And there is the grand piano, the small treasury of art, the cabinet of great wines, the well-set table. Helene, his wife, is dauntlessly affable, but, try though he will, Szell in company seems to be listening to the interior music that he likes better.
Szell has built his orchestra from 94 to 105 players, extended its season from 20 to 26 weeks, signed a brisk recording contract with Epic Records, and won a large new audience for his yearly tours. Associate Conductor Robert Shaw's Cleveland Orchestra Chorus has been increased to 201 members, and it is now nearly the peer of his Chorale. The orchestra's women's committee now has 1,500 members, busies itself with sternly taught courses in music appreciation, then goes out to round up contributions to fill in the orchestra's immense deficit. The musicians, astonished at being celebrities, have largely resigned themselves to the occasional pain of Szell's whip; 67 of them now own homes in Cleveland, butchers wave to them at the supermarket, and, as one says, "even the bank knows you have roots if you're in the orchestra.''
Almost Aristotelian. Content that he at last has the glorious instrument he has heard in his inner ear all his life. Szell still works tirelessly, training young conductors, learning new scores. His pedagoguery is perfectly undiminished: he gives golf lessons to golfers who play better, teaches tailors how to cut his tails so that the coat will not flap while he conducts: tight armholes, ballooning sleeves.
Occasionally, he gets off an almost Aristotelian aphorism: "Music," he will say, pinching the bridge of his nose, "is indivisible. The dualism of feeling and thinking must be resolved to a state of unity in which one thinks with the heart and feels with the brain."
His demands on musicians are still deadly. While rehearsing the Berlin Philharmonic for a recording some time ago, he worked the players so hard that their manager said: "Come, come, Szell, you're going at this as if it were a matter of life and death." Szell looked stunned. "Don't you see?" he said. "It is! It is!"
*No small trick. When Lukas Foss was appointed musical director of the Buffalo Philharmonic last December, the orchestra's executive committee warned him that the box office demanded he play the music of the masters—''not bizarre music or just his own music.''