Maestros and their motor cars (11): Georg Szell and his Buick
UncategorizedComes with the job in Cleveland, where no maestro ever walked to work.
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I see that Wikipedia is including this vital info in all biographies they are publishing, right after the date of birth. NOT!
There are some photos of Szell in which he looks like Stravinsky. There are other photos of Szell in which he doesn’t look like Stravinsky. This is the first photo of Szell in which he doesn’t look like Szell or Stravinsky.
Have any of Szell’s three successors ever lived in Clevelend?
I believe CVD did for a while. I had a colleague years ago who was in school with one of his children.
Yes, he did; we had an interior decorator here in CLE who worked on his place. And FWM has an apartment here.
How many of Reiner’s lived in Chicago? (Reiner lived in Connecticut and commuted, bringing tapes for radio broadcasts back to NYC)………
Hoping Maestro Szell slapped some big, wide whitewall tires on that big Buick, as soon as the post-war shortages ended.
You really should include George Weldon in your retrospective of conductors with their cars. He made two LPs where he appeared on the front cover with his E type Jag. Snazzy photos which seemed somewhat incongruous with the music he was conducting on the records. https://www.discogs.com/release/3254913-George-Weldon-and-Pro-Arte-Orchestra-British-Light-Music-Of-The-20th-Century
Yes, I noted this in one of the earlier threads!
BWs
I think he later upgraded to a Cadillac.
Would’ve been better if he’d had an Olds.
I am 100% certain that Mr. Szell would be ready to tell any mechanic exactly what was wrong and how to fix it
In addition to the missing whitewalls mentioned in the earlier comment, the absence of portholes in the hood is curious for a Buick. But it is indeed a Buick, evidently a 1946 Super Series 50. Szell started in Cleveland in January 1946, so perhaps he treated himself to a “Welcome to Ohio” gift: the first new post-war Buick. BTW if you stroll ten minutes north from Severance Hall and the Szell Library, you’ll find more fantastic antique cars at the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum, part of the Cleveland History Center. A big Ferrari show there thru next month. Great permanent collection too; not surprising as 100 years ago Cleveland was home to about thirty automobile start-ups.
https://www.instagram.com/crawfordmuseum/
Someone with access to this material should create a book! Karajan would merit many pictures with his collection. I always wondered how Kleiber, as tall as he was, fit into his little sports cars.
How did Kleiber fit in? He made cuts.
I remember in the film “Annie Hall” Alvy complained to Annie that “you have a spider the size of a Buick in your bathroom”. That was some mental image!!
The car came with the job. Severance pay.