IMO, George Szell was the greatest conductor who ever lived. MD of the Cleveland Orch 1946-1970, he died in 1970 of cancer of the bone marrow about a month after coming back from a rigorous Asian tour with the orchestra. His last concert, on their way back, was in Anchorage, Alaska, of all places.
Szell's musical interests were extensive, but the core of the repertoire he knew well was Dvorak, and the great classical and early and middle romantics of the Germanic repertoire--Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms. And, among the late romantics, he was a champion of Richard Strauss. In his younger days, he was also a composer, but he abandoned that because, as he himself acknowledged, "they all sounded like Richard Strauss." He came late to the music of Mahler, but his Mahler 4th is one of the greatest performances of that work ever recorded. In fact, when I had a left nephrectomy in July, 2003, I asked the surgeon if I could choose the music played in the OR and he said yes. My choice was the Szell Mahler 4.
Szell, contrary to popular opinion, did have some interest in modern music. He gave the world premiere in Cleveland of Henri Dutilleux's Metaboles, which was a Cleveland Orch. commission. It is still, probably, his most famous and most often played composition, thanks in part to the fact that it was championed by Szell.
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