The Concise Grove chronicles George Szell’s ability to achieve a “superb ensemble that embodied... strict notions of discipline in producing an orchestral sound with the clarity and balance of chamber music”. Nicolas Slonimsky commented on Szell’s “geometrically balanced sonorities” (Music Since 1900; Schirmer: 1994), but this famous set gives us the heart of the man, his feeling for style, for line and for Schumann’s warming but fragile symphonic structures. Szell loved the Schumann symphonies (his eloquent booklet annotation makes that abundantly clear), but readers in search of Urtext reportage should be warned that he attempts to correct – and here I quote the Maestro himself – “minor lapses [in orchestration] due to inexperience” with “remedies” that range from “subtle adjustments of dynamic marks to the radical surgery of re-orchestrating whole stretches”. For example, at 1'31'' into the finale of the Spring Symphony, Schumann scores a pivotal six-note semiquaver figure for clarinet, second violins and violas, whereas Szell dispenses with the strings and apportions the passage to the solo clarinet. This and other adjustments will have you either reaching for a score or busily comparing the same passage on rival versions, though I have to say that, more often than not, the musical results serve Schumann handsomely. In fact, I was more concerned that Szell had omitted first-movement repeats in Symphonies Nos. 1, 2 and 4 and that the finale of No. 4 has numerous unmarked (though musically effective) tempo changes.
Szell sometimes takes crescendo to imply accelerando (try the poco a poco crescendo from, say, 2'44'' into the First Symphony’s Larghetto), but his insistence on watertight exchanges invariably facilitates a snug fit between various instrumental choirs, the strings especially. Markings such as Animato (7'37'' into the First Symphony’s Allegro molto vivace) or piano dolce (8'24'' into the same movement) are scrupulously observed, and so are most of Schumann’s metronome markings.
Playing standards are uncommonly high, but the close-set recordings occasionally undermine Szell’s painstaking efforts to clarify Schumann’s orchestration, the Rhenish being the worst offender (paradoxically, it is also from the most recent session). The Rhenish again yields high musical dividends, with sensitively shaped central movements, but were I to single out just one track on the whole set, it would have to be the Second Symphony’s Adagio espressivo, a performance of such warmth, nobility and elasticity (the latter not a quality normally associated with Szell) that I’m tempted to grant it the accolade of ‘best ever’. The Manfred Overture is given a wildly spontaneous performance (Szell’s rostrum footwork is dramatically audible), with extreme tempos and some brilliant playing.
As to reservations, I did sometimes feel that Szell was being overprotective towards the music and that the same interpretations played live might have thrown caution to the wind (at least two unofficial ‘off the air’ recordings tend to prove my point). Still, I would certainly grant Szell equal status with his bargain stablemates Kubelik (preferably his Munich recording on Sony), Sawallisch and, for a first-rate digital alternative, Hans Vonk. All are perhaps marginally more spontaneous in the First and Third Symphonies, but Szell’s loving exegeses underline details in the music that you won’t have heard on many other recordings. Transfers and presentation are superb.'