Skip to main content

George szell Biography

George Szell

(Budapest, 1897-Cleveland, 1970) Hungarian American pianist, composer and conductor.A child prodigy, he gave his first concert at the young age of ten with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.He studied in Vienna under Richard Robert, Eusebius Mandyczewski and Karl Prohaska, and in Leipzig under Max Reger.

At age 17 he conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance in which one of his symphonic poems, Till Eulenspiegel , was performed.Richard Strauss took him to the Berlin Opera as his assistant; He stayed there between 1914 and 1917, when Strauss recommended Szell to succeed Otto Klemperer as the first conductor of the Strasbourg opera; He held this position from 1917 to 1919.

Subsequently, Szell was director in various centers, such as the German Theater in Prague, between 1919 and 1921, the Berlin Broadcastin Company, between 1921 and 1929, Darmstadt between 1921 and 1922, and Düsseldorf, where he was from 1922 to 1924; later he was appointed principal conductor of the Berlin Opera, a position he held between 1924 and 1929.At the same time he was conducting the Radio Symphony Orchestra and teaching at the Berlin School of Music (1927-1930).

In 1930 he conducted the San Luis Symphony Orchestra, and also attended as a guest conductor of the Scottish National Orchestra of Glasgow (Great Britain) and the Residential Orchestra of The Hague (Holland).When World War II broke out, Szell was in Australia.He returned to the United States invited by Arturo Toscanini to conduct the famous NBC Symphony Orchestra in New York.His performance attracted so much attention that he was soon showered with offers to conduct other orchestras, including the Cleveland Orchestra.He combined this activity with the teacher, at the Mannes School in New York.Between 1940 and 1942 he performed chamber music with Paul Hindemith and Rudolf Serkin.

Between 1942 and 1946 he was one of the regular conductors of the Metropolitan Opera House, before taking the leadership of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1946, a position in which he continued until 1971; in this period he managed to turn this orchestra into one of the best in the world.In 1946 he adopted American citizenship.As a conductor, his authoritarian character was not well received by the members of the orchestras, but he brought extraordinary results to some of them.He was a guest conductor at the main European music festivals, including those of Vienna, Salzburg, Milan, Paris, Florence and Lucerne.Among his compositions are the Variations for Orchestra, the Symphony in D Minor, the Lyric Overture and several pieces of chamber music.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

green Day Biography

Green Day American rock music group reminiscent of punk, formed in 1988 in Berkeley and made up of Billie Joe Armstrong (vocals, guitar), Mike Dirnt (bass) and Tre Cool (drums).Billie Joe Armstrong (born 1972 in California) and Mike Dirnt (whose real name is Mike Pritchard, born 1972), residents of the Californian town of Rodeo, formed the band in the late 1980s. Green Day Billie Joe Armstrong had grown up in a family of six siblings, whose father, a trucker and jazz musician, passed away when Billie Joe was ten years; Her mother, a waitress and country fanatic, gave her a year later a guitar that she still owns and plays.For her part, Mike Pritchard was the son of a heroin addict, which led to her being adopted by a couple who, in turn, divorced when Mike was seven.At the age of fifteen, Mike rented a room in Billie Joe's house. Tre Cool, whose real name was Frank Edwin Wright III, was born in 1972 in Germany, and grew up in Wilitis, a town north of San Francisco.Soon he ...

Harry Lloyd Hopkins Biography

Harry Lloyd Hopkins (Sioux City, 1890-New York, 1946) American politician.He was a Roosevelt collaborator from his time as governor of New York.During his presidency he was one of the promoters of economic recovery and its representative in Europe during World War II.

José Sarmiento and Valladares Biography

José Sarmiento y Valladares (17th-18th centuries) Spanish colonial administrator.He was viceroy of New Spain (1696-1701), a position he left after the death of Carlos II and the change of dynasty.During his tenure, he managed to reactivate mining activity, suspended for lack of quicksilver, and trade in the colony.He held the titles of Count of Moctezuma and Tula.

Edouard Manet Biography

Édouard Manet (Paris, 1832-id., 1883) French painter and printmaker.Son of an important civil servant of the Ministry of Justice, Édouard Manet was a mediocre student interested only in drawing.Faced with paternal resistance to starting an artistic career, he tried unsuccessfully to enter the Naval Academy until, after a second failed attempt, his family reluctantly agreed to finance his artistic studies, which began in 1850 in the workshop of the classical painter Thomas Couture. Édouard Manet After six years of apprenticeship, Édouard Manet established himself in his own studio.In those early days he established a relationship with artists and writers such as Henri Fantin-Latour, Edgar Degas and Charles Baudelaire.At the beginning of 1860 some of his works began to be recognized, which deserved, among others, the warm reception of the critic and writer Théophile Gautier. In his production at the end of the 1870s he accentuated the naturalism of his subject matter, to give th...

Guillaume Briçonnet Biography

Guillaume Briçonnet (Paris, 1472-Esmans, 1534) French prelate.He was Bishop of Meaux (1516) and, influenced by the doctrine of Erasmus, was a supporter of the Reformation (1518).Around him, a group of humanists and theologians was formed, the Cenacle of Meaux , whose tendencies were closer to Luther, whom Briçonnet condemned.

Jose Luis Abellán Biography

José Luis Abellán (Madrid, 1933) Spanish thinker and essayist.He studied high school at the Ramiro de Maeztu Institute and a degree in Philosophy and Letters at the University of Madrid, from which he graduated in 1957; three years later he received his doctorate in philosophy from the same university.He taught in Puerto Rico, Northern Ireland and, later, as a professor at the Complutense University of Madrid. José Luis Abellán His most important work is the Critical History of Spanish Thought (in seven volumes, 1979-1992), in which he synthesizes the evolution of ideas and philosophy in Spain since Roman times, taking into account the Latin, Arab and Hebrew substratum that shapes peninsular thought and the birth and development of national identity.In 1981 he received the National Essay Award for the first three volumes of this work, the edition of which ended in 1992. He dealt with the subject of Spain in works such as Culture in Spain.Essay for a diagnosis (1971) and V...

John sloan Biography

John Sloan (Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, 1871-Hannover, New Hampshire, 1951) American painter.A member of the Ashcan School and the Group of Eight, he captured the frenetic urban life with a spontaneous and immediate style, in neutral colors.

Edward jenner Biography

Edward Jenner (Berkeley, Great Britain, 1749-id., 1823) English physician who is responsible for the discovery of the smallpox vaccine, which was the first fully effective and reliable vaccine in medical history.At thirteen he entered the service of a local surgeon, with whom he remained until he was twenty-one, at which point he moved to London and became a ward of John Harvey.In 1773 he returned to Berkeley to open a local practice, in which he acquired notable prestige. Edward Jenner In the 18th century, smallpox was one of the epidemic diseases with the highest mortality rate.The only known treatment at the time was of a preventive nature, and consisted of inoculating a healthy subject with infected matter from a patient suffering from a mild attack of smallpox.This principle was based on empirical evidence that a subject who had overcome the disease did not contract it again.However, the inoculated person did not always develop a mild version of the disease and died often; ...

Hans Holbein the Elder Biography

Hans Holbein the Elder (Augsburg, c .1465-Issenheim, 1524) German painter and draftsman.An exponent of the transition from late Gothic to the Renaissance in southern Germany, the relationship with contemporary Flemish painting allowed him to overcome the incipient archaism of his early works.Apparently he trained in Ulm, later settling in his hometown.From 1490 he carried out intense activity through his Augsburg workshop.In 1517 he settled in Isenheim, where he spent the last years of his life. The martyrdom of Saint Sebastian (c.1516), of Hans Holbein the Elder Influenced by Dutch art (especially by Rogier Van der Weyden) and Italian painting, his late Gothic style was characterized by compositional balance and bright colors.He painted portraits (among them, several portraits of women and those of his sons Ambrosius and Hans, known as Hans Holbein the Younger) and, above all, altarpieces: the one in the Weingarten convent, the one of the Dominicans in Frankfurt, Kaisheim Ab...