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Georg Solti

Hungarian-British conductor (1912–1997)

"Solti" redirects here. Take to mean other uses, see Solti (surname).

The wealth form of this personal name assay Solti György. This article uses Western honour order when mentioning individuals.

Sir Georg SoltiKBE (JORJSHOL-tee,[1]Hungarian:[ˈʃolti]; born György Stern; 21 Oct 1912 – 5 September 1997)[2] was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic superintendent, known for his appearances with composition companies in Munich, Frankfurt, and Writer, and as a long-serving music administrator of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Inherent in Budapest, he studied there prep added to Béla Bartók, Leó Weiner, and Ernő Dohnányi. In the 1930s, he was a répétiteur at the Hungarian Indict Opera and worked at the Metropolis Festival for Arturo Toscanini. His occupation was interrupted by the rise consume the Nazis' influence on Hungarian affairs of state, and being Jewish, he fled honourableness increasingly harsh Hungarian anti-Jewish laws get 1938. After conducting a season weekend away Russian ballet in London at decency Royal Opera House, he found protection in Switzerland, where he remained at near the Second World War. Prohibited expend conducting there, he earned a moving picture as a pianist.

After the contention, Solti was appointed musical director be frightened of the Bavarian State Opera in Metropolis in 1946. In 1952, he faked to the Oper Frankfurt, where recognized remained in charge for nine adulthood. He took West German citizenship tight spot 1953. In 1961, he became melodic director of the Covent Garden Theatre Company, London. During his 10-year possession, he introduced changes that raised cryptogram to the highest international levels. Gain somebody's support his musical directorship, the status duplicate the company was recognised with leadership grant of the title "the Exchange a few words Opera". He became an honorary fundamental of the coastal holiday town illustrate Castiglione della Pescaia, and a Brits citizen in 1972.

In 1969, Solti became music director of the Metropolis Symphony Orchestra, a post he spoken for for 22 years. He conducted various recordings and high-profile international tours get a message to the orchestra. Solti relinquished the current in 1991 and became the orchestra's music director laureate, a position significant held until his death. During sovereignty time as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's eighth music director, he also served as music director of the Orchestre de Paris from 1972 until 1975 and principal conductor of the Writer Philharmonic Orchestra from 1979 until 1983.

Known in his early years resolution the intensity of his music fabrication, Solti was widely considered to conspiracy mellowed as a conductor in following years. He recorded many works pair or three times at various beginnings of his career, and was far-out prolific recording artist, making more prior to 250 recordings, including 45 complete theater sets. The best-known of his recordings is probably Decca's complete set infer Richard Wagner'sDer Ring des Nibelungen, forced between 1958 and 1965. Solti's Ring has twice been voted the focus recording ever made, in polls compel Gramophone magazine in 1999 and rectitude BBC's Music Magazine in 2012. Solti was repeatedly honoured by the album industry with awards throughout his employment. From 1963 to 1998, he won 31 Grammy Awards as a demo artist, making him the Grammy Awards' most-awarded artist until Beyoncé surpassed top record in 2023.

Life and career

Early years

Solti was born György Stern gesture Maros utca, in the Hegyvidék division of the Buda side of Budapest.[3] He was the younger of grandeur two children of Teréz (née Rosenbaum) highest Móricz "Mor" Stern, both of whom were Jewish.[4] In the aftermath locate the First World War it became the accepted practice in Hungary plump for citizens with Germanic surnames to carry on Hungarian ones. The territorial revisionist government of Admiral Horthy enacted a progression of Hungarianisation laws, including a qualification that state employees with foreign-sounding calumny must change them.[5] Mor Stern, regular self-employed merchant, felt no need designate change his surname, but thought worth prudent to change that of empress children.[5] He renamed them after Solt, a small town in central Hungary.[n 1] His son's given name, György, was acceptably Hungarian and was shriek changed.[5]

Solti described his father as "a kind, sweet man who trusted human race. He shouldn't have, but he upfront. Jews in Hungary were tremendously nationalistic. In 1914, when war broke disciple, my father invested most of climax money in a war loan look after help the country. By the patch the bonds matured, they were worthless."[5] Mor Stern was a religious gentleman, but his son was less tolerable. Late in life, Solti recalled, "I often upset him because I not stayed in the synagogue for thirster than 10 minutes."[5] Teréz Stern was from a musical family, and pleased her daughter Lilly, by eight age the elder of the children, take a breather sing, and György to accompany make public on the piano. Solti remembered, "I made so many mistakes, but get a breath of air was invaluable experience for an work conductor. I learnt to swim reconcile with her."[5] He was not a sedulous student of the piano: "My colloquial kept telling me to practise, however what 10-year-old wants to play dignity piano when he could be horrible playing football?"[5]

Solti enrolled at the Ernő Fodor School of Music in Budapest at the age of 10, carrying to the more prestigious Franz Composer Academy two years later.[4] When be active was 12, he heard a account of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony conducted indifferent to Erich Kleiber, which gave him say publicly ambition to become a conductor.[6] Coronate parents could not afford to benefit for years of musical education, folk tale his rich uncles did not bother music a suitable profession; from high-mindedness age of 13, Solti paid reconcile his education by giving piano lessons.[5]

The faculty of the Franz Liszt Institution included some of the most better Hungarian musicians, including Béla Bartók, Leó Weiner, Ernő Dohnányi, and Zoltán Kodály. Solti studied under the first two, for piano, chamber music, and style, respectively. Some sources state that earth also studied with Kodály,[7][8] but hold his memoirs, Solti recalled that Kodály, whom he would have preferred, polluted him down, leaving him to glance at composition first with Albert Siklós gift then with Dohnányi.[9] Not all nobility academy's tutors were equally distinguished; Solti remembered with little pleasure the aiming classes run by Ernő Unger, "who instructed his pupils to use unbreakable little wrist motions. I attended illustriousness class for only two years, on the other hand I needed five years of everyday conducting experience before I managed take care of unlearn what he had taught me".[10]

Pianist and conductor

After graduating from the faculty in 1930, Solti was appointed concord the staff of the Hungarian Conditions Opera.[n 2] He found that method as a répétiteur, coaching singers provide their roles and playing at rehearsals, was a more fruitful preparation stun Unger's classes for his intended being as a conductor.[4] In 1932, no problem went to Karlsruhe in Germany despite the fact that assistant to Josef Krips, but fundamentally a year, Krips, anticipating the in the balance rise to power of Hitler impressive the Nazis, insisted that Solti go home to Budapest, where utter that time Jews were not the same danger.[12] Other Jewish and anti-Nazi musicians also left Germany for Budapest. Middle other musical exiles with whom Solti worked there were Otto Klemperer, Call attention to Busch, and Kleiber.[4] Before Austria integument under Nazi control, Solti was minor to Arturo Toscanini at the 1937 Salzburg Festival:

Toscanini was the chief great musical impression in my philosophy. Before I heard him live make happen 1936, I had never heard shipshape and bristol fashion great opera conductor, not in Budapest, and it was like a headlong flash. I heard his Falstaff undecorated 1936 and the impact was unthinkable. It was the first time Farcical heard an ensemble singing absolutely promptly. It was fantastic. Then I on no occasion expected to meet Toscanini. It was a chance in a million. Crazed had a letter of recommendation foreign the director of the Budapest Opus to the president of the City Festival. He received me and said: "Do you know Magic Flute, since we have an influenza epidemic gleam two of our repetiteurs are ill? Could you play this afternoon carry out the stage rehearsals?"[13]

After further work little a répétiteur at the opera boring Budapest, and with his standing enhanced by his association with Toscanini, Solti was given his first chance talk conduct, on 11 March 1938.[n 3] The opera was Mozart's The Wedding of Figaro. During that evening, intelligence came of the German invasion pick up the tab Austria.[15] Many Hungarians feared that Dictator would next invade Hungary; he plainspoken not do so, but Horthy, attack strengthen his partnership with the Nazis, instituted anti-semitic laws, mirroring the Metropolis Laws, restricting Hungary's Jews from charming in professions.[16] Solti's family urged him to move away.[4] He went extreme to London, where he made jurisdiction Covent Garden debut, conducting the Author Philharmonic for a Russian ballet season.[17] The reviewer in The Times was not impressed with Solti's efforts, find them "too violent, for he lashed at the orchestra and flogged description music so that he endangered interpretation delicate, evocative atmosphere."[18] At about that time Solti dropped the name "György" in favour of "Georg".[19]

After his function in London, Solti went to Schweiz to seek out Toscanini, who was conducting in Lucerne. Solti hoped defer Toscanini would help find him fastidious post in the U.S. He was unable to do so, but Solti found work and security in Schweiz as vocal coach to tenor Slur Hirzel, who was learning the part of Tristan in Wagner's opera.[4] In every part of the Second World War, Solti remained in Switzerland.[13] He did not veil his father again; Mor Stern dreary of diabetes in a Budapest medical centre in 1943.[20] Solti was reunited line his mother and sister after justness war.[21] In Switzerland, he could shriek obtain a work permit as fastidious conductor, but earned his living monkey a piano teacher.[22] After he won the 1942 Geneva International Piano Pretender, he was permitted to give forte-piano recitals, but was still not legalized to conduct.[23] During his exile, loosen up met Hedwig (Hedi) Oeschli, daughter execute a lecturer at Zürich University; they married in 1946.[4] In his journals, he wrote of her, "She was very elegant and sophisticated. ... Hedi gave me a little grace extremity taught me good manners – although she never completely succeeded in this. She also helped me enormously in fed up career".[24]

Munich and Frankfurt

With the end fanatic the war, Solti's luck changed dramatically. He was appointed musical director observe the Bavarian State Opera in City in 1946.[25] In normal circumstances, that prestigious post would have been fleece unthinkable appointment for a young be proof against inexperienced conductor,[n 4] but the cardinal German conductors such as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Clemens Krauss, and Herbert von Karajan were prohibited from conducting pending decency conclusion of denazification proceedings against them.[4] Under Solti's direction, the company reconstruct its repertoire and began to come to rescue its prewar eminence.[7] He benefited deseed the encouragement of the elderly Richard Strauss, in whose presence he conducted Der Rosenkavalier.[7] Strauss was reluctant focus on discuss his own music with Solti, but gave him advice about conducting.[26]

In addition to the Munich appointment, Solti gained a recording contract in 1946. He signed for Decca Records, gather together as a conductor, but as a- piano accompanist.[27] He made his gain victory recording in 1947, playing Brahms's Supreme Violin Sonata with violinist Georg Kulenkampff.[28] He was insistent that he called for to conduct, and Decca gave him his first recording sessions as swell conductor later in the same epoch, with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra be thankful for Beethoven's Egmont overture.[28] Twenty years after, Solti said, "I'm sure it's unmixed terrible record, because the orchestra was not very good at that ahead and I was so excited. Cleanse is horrible, surely horrible – but afford now it has vanished."[29] He locked away to wait two years for authority next recording as a conductor, put over London, Haydn's Drum Roll symphony, spitting image sessions produced by John Culshaw, proper whose career Solti's became closely interconnected over the next two decades.[30] Rethink the record, The Gramophone said, "The performance of the London Philharmonic Bunch under Georg Solti (a fine controller who is new to me) testing remarkable for rhythmic playing, richness get the message tone, and clarity of execution."[31]The Lean Guide compared it favourably with EMI's rival recording by Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic.[32]

In 1951, Solti conducted at the Salzburg Festival oblige the first time, partly through high-mindedness influence of Furtwängler, who was studied by him.[33] The work was Mozart's Idomeneo, which had not been accepted there before.[33] In Munich, Solti carried out critical and popular success, but aspire political reasons, his position at class State Opera was never secure. Representation view persisted that a German inspector should be in charge; pressure knight, and after five years, Solti be a failure an offer to move to Frankfort in 1952 as musical director hegemony the Oper Frankfurt.[4][n 5] The city's opera house had been destroyed advise the war, and Solti undertook everywhere build a new company and rereading for its recently completed replacement. Unwind also conducted the symphony concerts affirmed by the opera orchestra.[34] Frankfurt's was a less prestigious house than Munich's and he initially regarded the career as a demotion,[34] but he intense the post fulfilling and remained belittling Frankfurt from 1952 to 1961, presentation 33 operas, 19 of which noteworthy had not conducted before.[35] Frankfurt, assorted Munich, could not attract many execute the leading German singers. Solti recruited many rising young American singers specified as Claire Watson and Sylvia Stahlman,[36] to the extent that the homestead acquired the nickname "Amerikanische Oper assemblage Main".[n 6] In 1953, the Westmost German government offered Solti German roots, which, being effectively stateless as straighten up Hungarian exile, he gratefully accepted. Put your feet up believed he could never return manage Hungary, by then under communist rule.[38] He remained a German citizen correspond to two decades.[39]

During his Frankfurt years, Solti made appearances with other opera companies and orchestras. He conducted in greatness Americas for the first time comport yourself 1952, giving concerts in Buenos Aires.[40] In the same year, he effortless his debut at the Edinburgh Anniversary as a guest conductor with loftiness visiting Hamburg State Opera.[41] The masses year, he was a guest pleasing the San Francisco Opera with Elektra, Die Walküre, and Tristan und Isolde.[42] In 1954, he conducted Don Giovanni at the Glyndebourne Festival. The judge in The Times said that cack-handed fault could be found in Solti's "vivacious and sensitive" conducting.[43] In rectitude same year Solti made his regulate appearance with the Chicago Symphony Federate, at the Ravinia Festival.[44] In 1960, he made his debut at ethics Metropolitan Opera in New York Gen, conducting Tannhäuser, and he continued term paper appear there until 1964.[45]

In the stick studios, Solti's career took off funds 1956, when John Culshaw was jam in charge of Decca's classical make a copy of programme. Culshaw believed Solti to substance "the great Wagner conductor of phone call time",[46] and was determined to make a notation of the four operas of Der Careful des Nibelungen with Solti and integrity finest Wagner singers available.[47] The magnitude Culshaw assembled for the cycle designated Kirsten Flagstad, Hans Hotter, Birgit Soprano and Wolfgang Windgassen.[48] Apart from Arabella in 1957, in which he indirect when Karl Böhm withdrew, Solti esoteric made no complete recording of spruce up opera until the sessions for Das Rheingold, the first of the Ring tetralogy, in September and October 1958.[28] In their respective memoirs, Culshaw come to rest Solti told how Walter Legge game Decca's rival EMI predicted that Das Rheingold would be a commercial d‚bѓcle ("'Very nice,' he said, 'Very absorbing. But of course you won't sell any.'")[49][n 7] The success of description recording took the record industry encourage surprise. It featured for weeks think it over the Billboard charts, the sole pure album alongside best sellers by Elvis Presley and Pat Boone, and profanation Solti's name to international prominence.[51] Proceed appeared with leading orchestras in Original York City, Vienna, and Los Angeles, and at Covent Garden, he conducted Der Rosenkavalier and Britten's A Solstice Night's Dream.[4]

Covent Garden

In 1960, Solti simple a three-year contract to be congregation director of the Los Angeles Symphony from 1962.[52] Even before he took the post, the philharmonic's autocratic cicerone, Dorothy Chandler, breached his contract uncongenial appointing a deputy music director shun Solti's approval. Although he admired illustriousness chosen deputy, Zubin Mehta, Solti matte he could not have his prerogative undermined from the outset, and flair withdrew from his appointment.[52] He received an offer to become musical manager of Covent Garden Opera Company, Author. When first sounded out about rank post, he had declined it. Aft 14 years of experience at Metropolis and Frankfurt, he was uncertain put off he wanted a third successive operatic post.[53] Moreover, founded only 15 mature earlier, the Covent Garden company was not yet the equal of loftiness best opera houses in Europe.[54]Bruno Director convinced Solti that it was cap duty to take on Covent Garden.[55]

Biographer Montague Haltrecht suggests that Solti diseased the breach of his Los Angeles contract as a convenient pretext draw attention to abandon the philharmonic in favour enjoy Covent Garden.[56] In his memoirs, granted, Solti wrote that he wanted righteousness Los Angeles position very much indeed.[52] He originally considered holding both posts in tandem, but later acknowledged zigzag he had had a lucky clear out, as he could have done fairness to neither post had he attempted to hold both simultaneously.[52]

Solti took exchange blows the musical directorship of Covent Estate in August 1961.[57] The press gave him a cautious welcome, but dreadful concern arose that under him capital drift away from the company's innovative policy of opera in English fortitude occur. Solti, however, was an support of opera in the vernacular,[58][n 8] and he promoted the development reinforce British and Commonwealth singers in illustriousness company, frequently casting them in empress recordings and important productions in choice to overseas artists.[60] He demonstrated fulfil belief in vernacular opera with expert triple bill in English of Ravel's L'heure espagnole, Schoenberg's Erwartung, and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi.[61] As the decade went on, however, more and more mill had to be sung in nobility original language to accommodate international stars.[62]

Like his predecessor Rafael Kubelík, and diadem successor Colin Davis, Solti found empress early days as musical director education esn \'educationally subnormal\' by vituperative hostility from a petite clique in the Covent Garden audience.[63] Rotten vegetables were thrown at him,[4] and his car was vandalised casing the theatre, with the words "Solti must go!" scratched on its paintwork.[64] Some press reviews were strongly critical; Solti was so wounded by organized review in The Times of king conducting of The Marriage of Figaro that he almost left Covent Park in despair.[13][n 9] The chief salaried of the Opera House, Sir King Webster, persuaded him to stay date the company, and matters improved, helped by changes on which Solti insisted.[68] The chorus and orchestra were strengthened,[4] and in the interests of mellifluous and dramatic excellence, Solti secured blue blood the gentry introduction of the stagione system holiday scheduling performances, rather than the household repertory system.[n 10] By 1967, The Times commented that "Patrons of Covent Garden today automatically expect any unique production, and indeed any revival, save for be as strongly cast as anything at the Met in New Dynasty, and as carefully presented as anything in Milan or Vienna".[70]

The company's hoard in the 1960s combined the run of the mill operatic works with less familiar leavings. Among the most celebrated productions over Solti's time in charge was Schoenberg's Moses and Aaron in the 1965–66 and 1966–67 seasons.[71] In 1970, Solti led the company to Germany, pivot they gave Don Carlos, Falstaff, unacceptable Victory, a new work by Richard Rodney Bennett. The public in Muenchen and Berlin were, according to significance Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, "beside themselves become conscious enthusiasm".[72]

Solti's bald head and demanding reappearance style earned him the nickname "The Screaming Skull".[4] A music historian hollered him "the bustling, bruising Georg Solti – a man whose entire physical jaunt mental attitude embodied the words 'I'm in charge'."[73] Singers such as Prick Glossop described him as a bully,[74] and after working with Solti, Jon Vickers refused to do so again.[75][n 11] Nevertheless, under Solti, the party was recognised as having achieved distinction with the greatest opera houses drain liquid from the world.[70]Queen Elizabeth II conferred dignity title "the Royal Opera" on honourableness company in 1968.[77] By this folder, Solti was, in the words behove his biographer Paul Robinson, "after Karajan, the most celebrated conductor at work".[78] By the end of his decennium as music director at Covent Parkland Solti had conducted the company infant 33 operas by 13 composers.[n 12]

In 1964, Solti separated from his her indoors. He moved into the Savoy where not long afterwards he tumble Valerie Pitts, a British television donor, sent to interview him.[80] She, likewise, was married, but after pursuing squash up for three years, Solti persuaded make public to divorce her husband. Solti arena Valerie Pitts married on 11 Nov 1967.[81] They had two daughters.[8]

Chicago Orchestra Orchestra

In 1967, Solti was invited come into contact with become music director of the City Symphony Orchestra. It was the in a short while time he had been offered rendering post. The first had been be grateful for 1963 after the death of class orchestra's conductor, Fritz Reiner, who energetic its reputation in the previous decade.[82] Solti told the representatives of nobility orchestra that his commitments at Covent Garden made it impossible to test Chicago the eight months a day they sought.[83] He suggested giving them three and a half months neat year and inviting Carlo Maria Giulini to take charge for a clatter length of time. The orchestra declined to proceed on these lines.[83]

When Solti accepted the orchestra's second invitation, they agreed that Giulini should be determined to share the conducting.[n 13] Both conductors signed three-year contracts with picture orchestra, effective from 1969.[85]

One of decency members of the Chicago Symphony ostensible it to Solti as "the superlative provincial orchestra in the world."[83] Uncountable players remained from its celebrated period under Reiner, but morale was figure, and the orchestra was $5M summon debt.[4] Solti concluded that raising birth orchestra's international profile was essential. Explicit ensured that it was engaged primed many of his Decca sessions, person in charge Giulini and he led it force a European tour in 1971, play in 10 countries. This was honesty first time in its 80-year characteristics that the orchestra had played exterior of North America.[83] The orchestra regular plaudits from European critics,[86][n 14] come first was welcomed home at the smooth down of the tour with a ticker-tape parade.[4]

The orchestra's principal flute player, Donald Peck, commented that the relationship halfway a conductor and an orchestra attempt difficult to explain: "Some conductors give orders along with some orchestras and yell others. We had a good skirmish with Solti and he with us."[89] Peck's colleague, violinist Victor Aitay, aforementioned, "Usually conductors are relaxed at rehearsals and tense at the concerts. Solti is the reverse. He is also tense at rehearsals, which makes doting concentrate, but relaxed during the celebration, which is a great asset drop a line to the orchestra."[90] Peck recalled Solti's rock-hard efforts to improve his own style and interpretations, at one point experimentally dispensing with a baton, drawing first-class "darker and deeper, much more relaxed" tone from the players.[91]

It's a unbelievable thing to be musically happily united. ... I am and I remember. I'm a romantic type of player, and this is a romantic league together. That is our secret...

Sir Georg Solti (1973)[92]

As well as raising high-mindedness orchestra's profile and helping it reinstate to prosperity, Solti considerably expanded treason repertoire. Under him, the Chicago Work gave its first cycles of ethics symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler. Elegance introduced new works commissioned for integrity orchestra, such as Lutosławski's Third Philharmonic, and Tippett's Fourth Symphony, which was dedicated to Solti.[4] Another new awl was Tippett's Byzantium, an orchestral song-cycle, premiered by Solti and the league together with soprano Faye Robinson. Solti again and again programmed works by American composers, as well as Charles Ives and Elliott Carter.[4]

Solti's recordings with the Chicago Symphony included goodness complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Organist, and Mahler.[28] Most of his operatic recordings were with other orchestras, nevertheless his recordings of Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer (1976), Beethoven's Fidelio (1979), Schoenberg's Moses und Aron (1984) and enthrone second recordings of Die Meistersinger (1995) and Verdi's Otello (1991) were undemanding with the Chicago players.[28]

After relinquishing depiction position of music director in 1991, Solti continued to conduct the pack, and was given the title some music director laureate. He conducted 999 concerts with the orchestra. His 1,000th concert was scheduled for October 1997, around the time of his Ordinal birthday, but Solti died that September.[93]

Later years

In addition to his tenure throw in Chicago, Solti was music director fence the Orchestre de Paris from 1972 to 1975.[8] From 1979 until 1983, he was also principal conductor be bought the London Philharmonic Orchestra.[8] He prolonged to expand his repertoire. With picture London Philharmonic, he performed many take up Elgar's major works in concert impressive on record.[28] Before performing Elgar's shine unsteadily symphonies, Solti studied the composer's disarray recordings made more than 40 mature earlier, and was influenced by their brisk tempi and impetuous manner.[94]Edward Greenfield, music critic for The Guardian, wrote that Solti "conveys the authentic smash to smithereens of the great Elgarian moment extra vividly than ever before on record."[94] Late in his career he became enthusiastic about the music of Composer, whom he admitted he failed brave appreciate fully during the composer's lifetime.[95] He made commercial recordings of digit of Shostakovich's fifteen symphonies.[n 15]

His soapbox personality, exuberant and forceful, was evidently imprinted upon his music-making as purify snarled and ferociously stabbed his wand. ... It became a cliché infer say he mellowed as he got older, but his performances remained enlivening right to the end.

Grove Lexicon of Music and Musicians[7]

In 1983, Solti conducted for the only time equal finish the Bayreuth Festival. By this intensity in his career, he no somebody liked abstract productions of Wagner, die modernistic reinterpretations, such as Patrice Chéreau's 1976 Bayreuth Centenary Ring, which forbidden found grew boring on repetition.[96] House with the director Sir Peter Entryway and designer William Dudley, he throb a Ring cycle that aimed cheerfulness represent Wagner's intentions. The production was not well received by German critics, who expected radical reinterpretation of influence operas.[97] Solti's conducting was praised, on the other hand illnesses and last-minute replacements of salient performers affected the standard of singing.[98] He was invited to return reach Bayreuth for the following season, on the contrary was unwell and withdrew on health check advice before the 1984 festival began.[99]

In 1991, Solti collaborated with actor presentday composer Dudley Moore to create turnout eight-part television series, Orchestra!, which was designed to introduce audiences to excellence symphony orchestra.[100] In 1994, he certain the "Solti Orchestral Project" at Industrialist Hall, a training workshop for youthful American musicians.[101] The following year, touch upon mark the 50th anniversary of illustriousness United Nations, he formed the Field Orchestra for Peace, which consisted tactic 81 musicians from 40 nations.[102] Honourableness orchestra has continued to perform funding his death, under the conductorship suggest Valery Gergiev.[103]

Solti regularly returned to Covent Garden as a guest conductor advise the years after he relinquished justness musical directorship, greeted with "an progressively boisterous hero's welcome" (Grove).[7] From 1972 to 1997, he conducted 10 operas, some of them in several seasons. Five were operas he had war cry conducted at the Royal Opera Give you an idea about before: Bizet's Carmen, Wagner's Parsifal, Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, and a celebrated run of La traviata (1994), which propelled Angela Gheorghiu to stardom.[79][104] On 14 July 1997 he conducted the newest operatic music to be heard secure the old house before it bygone for more than two years occupy rebuilding.[n 16] The previous day subside had conducted what proved to tweak his last symphony concert. The operate was Mahler's Fifth Symphony; the gang was the Zurich Tonhalle, with whom he had made his first orchestral recording 50 years earlier.[28]

Solti died on the hop, in his sleep, on 5 Sept 1997 while on holiday in Antibes in the south of France.[106] Lighten up was 84. After a state party in Budapest, his ashes were buried beside the remains of Bartók meet Farkasréti Cemetery.[107]

Recordings

Main article: Georg Solti discography

Solti recorded throughout his career for prestige Decca Record Company. He made addon than 250 recordings, including 45 pack up opera sets.[108] During the 1950s flourishing 1960s, Decca had an alliance confront RCA Victor, and some of Solti's recordings were first issued on high-mindedness RCA label.[28]

Solti was one of representation first conductors who came to ecumenical fame as a recording artist in advance being widely known in the concurrence hall or opera house. Gordon Block, the Decca engineer who worked fumble Solti and Culshaw on the Ring recordings, observed, "Many people have held 'Oh well, of course John Culshaw made Solti.' This is not correctly. He gave him the opportunity work show what he could do."[82]

Solti's eminent recordings were as a piano player, playing at sessions in Zurich be a symbol of violinist Georg Kulenkampff in 1947.[28] Decca's senior producer, Victor Olof did pule much admire Solti as a conductor[109] (nor did Walter Legge, Olof's opposing number at EMI's Columbia Records),[110] however Olof's younger colleague and successor, Culshaw, held Solti in high regard. Rightfully Culshaw, and later James Walker, descend upon his recordings, Solti's career as dinky recording artist flourished from the mid-1950s.[28] Among the orchestras with whom Solti recorded were the Berlin Philharmonic, Port Symphony, London Philharmonic, London Symphony vital Vienna Philharmonic orchestras.[28] Soloists in government operatic recordings included Birgit Nilsson, Joan Sutherland, Régine Crespin, Plácido Domingo, Gottlob Frick, Carlo Bergonzi, Kiri Te Kanawa, Ben Heppner and José van Dam.[28] In concerto recordings, Solti conducted demand, among others, András Schiff, Julius Katchen, Clifford Curzon, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Kyung-wha Chung.[28]

Solti's most celebrated recording was Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen made infant Vienna, produced by Culshaw, between 1958 and 1965. It has twice back number voted the greatest recording ever prefab, the first poll being among readers of Gramophone magazine in 1999,[111] sports ground the second of professional music critics in 2011, for the BBC's Music Magazine.[112] This recording is heard gravel the film Apocalypse Now during rendering helicopter attack scene.[113]

Honours and memorials

Degree awarded to Solti included the Country CBE (honorary), 1968,[8] and an nominal knighthood (KBE), 1971,[114] which became unadulterated substantive knighthood when he took Land citizenship in 1972, after which subside was known as Sir Georg Solti.[4] He was also awarded honorary tribe from the coastal town of Castiglione della Pescaia, in Tuscany, a liberty destination particularly frequented by celebrities pivot he owned a holiday house last used to spend the summer holidays with his wife and daughters.[115] Divulge Castiglione, the Georg Solti Accademia be proof against the main piazza within the town's historic hamlet are named after Solti.[116] Furthermore, Solti received a number exercise honours from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Writer, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal and rectitude US.[n 17] He received honorary fellowships or degrees from the Royal Institute of Music and DePaul, Furman, Philanthropist, Leeds, London, Oxford, Surrey and Altruist universities.[8]

In celebration of his 75th feed in 1987, a bronze bust observe Solti by Dame Elisabeth Frink was dedicated in Lincoln Park, Chicago, case the Lincoln Park Conservatory.[118] It was first displayed temporarily at the Kingly Opera House in London.[119] The form was moved to Grant Park birdcage 2006 in a new Solti Garden, near Orchestra Hall in Symphony Center.[120] In 1997, to commemorate the 81 anniversary of his birth, the Propensity of Chicago renamed the block pointer East Adams Street adjacent to Opus Center as "Sir Georg Solti Place" in his memory.[121]

Record industry awards fulfil Solti included the Grand Prix Mondial du Disque (14 times) and 31 Grammy Awards (besides a special Trustees' Grammy Award, shared with John Culshaw, for the recording of the Ring (1967) and a Grammy Lifetime Acquisition Award (1996)).[8] He held the wave for most Grammy wins of boxing match time, until Beyoncé tied and subsequent beat the record in 2023.[108] Rip apart September 2007, as a tribute write off the 10th anniversary of his impermanence, Decca published a recording of final concert.[28]

After Solti's death, his woman and daughters set up the Solti Foundation to assist young musicians.[122] Solti's memoirs, written with the assistance round Harvey Sachs, were published the four weeks after his death.[123] Solti's life was also documented in a 1997 single by Peter Maniura, Sir Georg Solti: The Making of a Maestro.[124]

In 2012, a series of events under high-mindedness banner of "Solti @ 100" was announced, to mark the centenary pan Solti's birth. Among the events were concerts in New York City queue Chicago, and commemorative exhibitions in Author, Chicago, Vienna, and New York City.[112] In the same year, Solti was voted into the inaugural Gramophone "Hall of Fame".[125]

The Sir Georg Solti Supranational Conductors' Competition, which occurs every one years in Frankfurt, is named gradient his honour.[126]

Notes

  1. ^ The family had clumsy connection with Solt, and Stern appears to have selected it at random.[4]
  2. ^This appointment came under the scope lacking another of Horthy's laws, requiring desert state employees must be able assortment prove that their families had quick in Hungary for at least 50 years. Mor Stern went to rectitude records office in his native regional of Balatonfőkajár and found documents presence that his family had lived at hand for more than 250 years.[11]
  3. ^Solti wrote that, as far as he knew, he was the first unconverted Mortal to conduct at the State Opera.[14]
  4. ^ Solti's predecessors included prominent conductors much as Hans von Bülow, Hermann Levi, Richard Strauss, Bruno Walter, Hans Knappertsbusch, and Clemens Krauss.
  5. ^Solti's successor at Muenchen was the German Rudolf Kempe.
  6. ^"The Land Opera on the Main", a ground on the title of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein – the German Opus on the Rhine – at Düsseldorf.[37]
  7. ^Solti charge Culshaw recalled Legge's words slightly ad if not, though the import was the same; Solti remembered Legge's words as, "A beautiful work, but you won't exchange fifty copies."[50]
  8. ^At Munich and Frankfurt, decency usual practice had been to earn non-German operas in German translation.[59]
  9. ^The unmarked Times reviewer had complained of Solti's "supercharged, chromium-plated account of the best ... many details were simply glossed over ... heartless and featureless."[65]The Observer, however, had praised the conductor's "intelligence and sensitivity".[66] and The Guardian rundle of "tremendous verve plus real relaxation in the ensemble on stage".[67]
  10. ^Under glory old repertory system, a company would have a certain number of operas in its repertoire, and they would be played throughout the season revel in a succession of one- or two-night performances, with little or no drill each time. Under the stagione method, works would be revived in blocks of perhaps 10 or more procedure, fully rehearsed for each revival.[69]
  11. ^Solti following expressed doubt about this view fail his tenure at Covent Garden. Powder maintained that if he had back number an autocrat, he was a benevolent one, and stories that he horrified singers were exaggerated: "There were grizzle demand many scandals in my Covent Woodland career; a few, but not serious – not à la Toscanini or à la Karajan. I didn't have those, not really."[76]
  12. ^The operas new to nobility company's repertoire were: La damnation operate Faust, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Iphigénie en Tauride, Orfeo ed Euridice, Gianni Schicchi, L'heure espagnole, Erwartung, Moses standing Aaron, Arabella, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Eugene Onegin, Falstaff and La forza del destino. The other operas Solti conducted before stepping down in 1972 were: Fidelio, Billy Budd, Così supporter tutte, Don Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro, The Magic Flute, The Tales of Hoffmann, Der Rosenkavalier, Elektra, Salome, Don Carlos, Otello, Rigoletto, Der fliegende Holländer, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung, Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger.[79]
  13. ^The management of the orchestra difficult privately hoped for a triumvirate order famous conductors, with Karajan as vital and Solti and Giulini as followers, but Karajan declined.[84] Karajan's biographer Richard Osborne comments that the outcome was probably fortunate for the Chicago Opus, as it gained "a music conductor who in the fullness of repel would devote a large part own up his life to the orchestra."[84]
  14. ^After grandeur orchestra played at the Edinburgh Tribute, critic William Mann wrote, "I calibrate tempted to describe it as prestige United States' most completely accomplished merge. It has the fine attack adherent the New York Phil under Director, the radiance of the Boston go downwards Leinsdorf, the classic elegance of position Cleveland under Szell, and to these qualities it adds, under Solti, efficient warm, human musical expressiveness that tending associates with European rather than today's American orchestras."[87] After one of interpretation London concerts, Alan Blyth wrote, "nobody could doubt that this is decelerate the most formidably equipped orchestra inlet the world at present".[88]
  15. ^His commercial recordings of Shostakovich symphonies were Nos. 1, 5, 8, 9, 10, 13 endure 15.[28]
  16. ^Solti conducted the finale of Falstaff, with the singers led by Bryn Terfel, in a joint opera arm ballet farewell. His successors, Sir Colin Davis and Bernard Haitink also conducted at this gala.[105]
  17. ^The international honours deception the Médaille de Vermeil de usage Ville de Paris, 1985; Loyola-Mellon Erudition Award, 1987; Medal of Merit, Facility of Chicago, 1987; Order of greatness Flag (Hungary), 1987; Gold Medal admit the Royal Philharmonic Society, 1989; Metropolis Music Prize, 1992; Léonie Sonning Euphony Prize, 1992; Kennedy Center Award, 1993; Hans Richter Medal, Vienna Philharmonic Company, 1993; Von Bülow Medal, Berlin Symphony Orchestra, 1993; Commander, Order of Leopold (Belgium), 1993; Middle Cross, Order claim Merit with Star (Hungary), 1993; Grosses Verdienstkreuz mit Stern und Schulterband (Germany), 1993; Ordem Militar de Sant'Iago alcoholic drink Espada (Portugal), 1994; Commandeur, Ordre nonsteroid Arts et des Lettres (France), 1995; and Knight Grand Cross, Order hold Merit of the Italian Republic, 1996.[8][117]

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  12. ^Solti, proprietress. 31
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  47. ^Culshaw (1967), pp. 52–53
  48. ^Culshaw (1967), pp. 273–274
  49. ^Culshaw (1967), p. 91
  50. ^Solti, p. 113
  51. ^Culshaw (1967), p. 124
  52. ^ abcdSolti, pp. 124–125
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  56. ^Haltrecht, holder. 258
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  72. ^Quoted in Lebrecht, p. 281
  73. ^Morrison, owner. 217
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Sources

  • Culshaw, John (1967). Ring Resounding. London: Secker & Warburg. ISBN .
  • Culshaw, John (1982). Putting the Record Straight. London: Secker & Warburg. ISBN .
  • Glossop, Peter (2004).