Sir Georg SoltiKBE (/dʒɔːrdʒˈʃɒlti/jorjSHOL-tee,[1]Hungarian:[ˈʃolti]; bornGyörgy Stern; 21 October 1912 – 5 September 1997)[2] was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operaticconductor, known for his appearances with opera companies in Munich, Frankfurt, and London, and as a long-serving music director of theChicago Symphony Orchestra. Born inBudapest, he studied there withBéla Bartók,Leó Weiner, andErnő Dohnányi. In the 1930s, he was arépétiteur at theHungarian State Opera and worked at theSalzburg Festival forArturo Toscanini. His career was interrupted by the rise of theNazis' influence on Hungarian politics, and being Jewish, he fled theincreasingly harsh Hungarian anti-Jewish laws in 1938. After conducting a season of Russian ballet in London at theRoyal Opera House, he found refuge in Switzerland, where he remained during the Second World War. Prohibited from conducting there, he earned a living as a pianist.
After the war, Solti was appointed musical director of theBavarian State Opera inMunich in 1946. In 1952, he moved to theOper Frankfurt, where he remained in charge for nine years. He tookWest German citizenship in 1953. In 1961, he became musical director of theCovent Garden Opera Company, London. During his 10-year tenure, he introduced changes that raised standards to the highest international levels. Under his musical directorship, the status of the company was recognised with the grant of the title "the Royal Opera". He became anhonorary citizen of the coastal holiday town ofCastiglione della Pescaia, and aBritish citizen in 1972.
In 1969, Solti became music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a post he held for 22 years. He conducted many recordings and high-profile international tours with the orchestra. Solti relinquished the position in 1991 and became the orchestra's music director laureate, a position he held until his death. During his time as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's eighth music director, he also served as music director of theOrchestre de Paris from 1972 until 1975 and principal conductor of theLondon Philharmonic Orchestra from 1979 until 1983.
Known in his early years for the intensity of his music making, Solti was widely considered to have mellowed as a conductor in later years. He recorded many works two or three times at various stages of his career, and was a prolific recording artist, making more than 250 recordings, including 45 complete opera sets. The best-known of his recordings is probablyDecca'scomplete set ofRichard Wagner'sDer Ring des Nibelungen, made between 1958 and 1965. Solti'sRing has twice been voted the greatest recording ever made, in polls forGramophone magazine in 1999 and theBBC'sMusic Magazine in 2012. Solti was repeatedly honoured by the recording industry with awards throughout his career. From 1963 to 1998, he won 31Grammy Awards as a recording artist, making him the Grammy Awards' most-awarded artist untilBeyoncé surpassed his record in 2023.
Solti was born György Stern on Maros utca, in theHegyvidék district of theBuda side of Budapest.[3] He was the younger of the two children of Teréz (née Rosenbaum) and Móricz "Mor" Stern, both of whom were Jewish.[4] In the aftermath of the First World War it became the accepted practice in Hungary for citizens with Germanic surnames to adopt Hungarian ones. The territorial revisionist regime ofAdmiral Horthy enacted a series ofHungarianisation laws, including a requirement that state employees with foreign-sounding names must change them.[5] Mor Stern, a self-employed merchant, felt no need to change his surname, but thought it prudent to change that of his children.[5] He renamed them afterSolt, a small town in central Hungary.[n 1] His son's given name, György, was acceptably Hungarian and was not changed.[5]
Solti described his father as "a kind, sweet man who trusted everyone. He shouldn't have, but he did. Jews in Hungary were tremendously patriotic. In 1914, when war broke out, my father invested most of his money in a war loan to help the country. By the time the bonds matured, they were worthless."[5] Mor Stern was a religious man, but his son was less so. Late in life, Solti recalled, "I often upset him because I never stayed in the synagogue for longer than 10 minutes."[5] Teréz Stern was from a musical family, and encouraged her daughter Lilly, by eight years the elder of the children, to sing, and György to accompany her on the piano. Solti remembered, "I made so many mistakes, but it was invaluable experience for an opera conductor. I learnt to swim with her."[5] He was not a diligent student of the piano: "My mother kept telling me to practise, but what 10-year-old wants to play the piano when he could be out playing football?"[5]
Solti enrolled at the Ernő Fodor School of Music in Budapest at the age of 10, transferring to the more prestigiousFranz Liszt Academy two years later.[4] When he was 12, he heard a performance ofBeethoven'sFifth Symphony conducted byErich Kleiber, which gave him the ambition to become a conductor.[6] His parents could not afford to pay for years of musical education, and his rich uncles did not consider music a suitable profession; from the age of 13, Solti paid for his education by giving piano lessons.[5]
The faculty of the Franz Liszt Academy included some of the most eminent Hungarian musicians, includingBéla Bartók,Leó Weiner,Ernő Dohnányi, andZoltán Kodály. Solti studied under the first three, for piano, chamber music, and composition, respectively. Some sources state that he also studied with Kodály,[7][8] but in his memoirs, Solti recalled that Kodály, whom he would have preferred, turned him down, leaving him to study composition first withAlbert Siklós and then with Dohnányi.[9] Not all the academy's tutors were equally distinguished; Solti remembered with little pleasure the conducting classes run by Ernő Unger, "who instructed his pupils to use rigid little wrist motions. I attended the class for only two years, but I needed five years of practical conducting experience before I managed to unlearn what he had taught me".[10]
After graduating from the academy in 1930, Solti was appointed to the staff of theHungarian State Opera.[n 2] He found that working as arépétiteur, coaching singers in their roles and playing at rehearsals, was a more fruitful preparation than Unger's classes for his intended career as a conductor.[4] In 1932, he went toKarlsruhe in Germany as assistant toJosef Krips, but within a year, Krips, anticipating the imminent rise to power ofHitler and theNazis, insisted that Solti should go home to Budapest, where at that time Jews were not in danger.[12] Other Jewish and anti-Nazi musicians also left Germany for Budapest. Among other musical exiles with whom Solti worked there wereOtto Klemperer,Fritz Busch, and Kleiber.[4] Before Austria fell under Nazi control, Solti was assistant toArturo Toscanini at the 1937Salzburg Festival:
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Toscanini was the first great musical impression in my life. Before I heard him live in 1936, I had never heard a great opera conductor, not in Budapest, and it was like a lightning flash. I heard hisFalstaff in 1936 and the impact was unbelievable. It was the first time I heard an ensemble singing absolutely precisely. It was fantastic. Then I never expected to meet Toscanini. It was a chance in a million. I had a letter of recommendation from the director of the Budapest Opera to the president of the Salzburg Festival. He received me and said: "Do you knowMagic Flute, because we have an influenza epidemic and two of our repetiteurs are ill? Could you play this afternoon for the stage rehearsals?"[13]
After further work as a répétiteur at the opera in Budapest, and with his standing enhanced by his association with Toscanini, Solti was given his first chance to conduct, on 11 March 1938.[n 3] The opera was Mozart'sThe Marriage of Figaro. During that evening, news came of the German invasion of Austria.[15] Many Hungarians feared that Hitler would next invade Hungary; he did not do so, but Horthy, to strengthen his partnership with the Nazis, institutedanti-semitic laws, mirroring theNuremberg Laws, restricting Hungary's Jews from engaging in professions.[16] Solti's family urged him to move away.[4] He went first to London, where he made hisCovent Garden debut, conducting theLondon Philharmonic for a Russian ballet season.[17] The reviewer inThe Times was not impressed with Solti's efforts, finding them "too violent, for he lashed at the orchestra and flogged the music so that he endangered the delicate, evocative atmosphere."[18] At about this time Solti dropped the name "György" in favour of "Georg".[19]
After his appearances in London, Solti went to Switzerland to seek out Toscanini, who was conducting inLucerne. Solti hoped that Toscanini would help find him a post in the U.S. He was unable to do so, but Solti found work and security in Switzerland as vocal coach to tenor Max Hirzel, who was learning the role of Tristan inWagner's opera.[4] Throughout the Second World War, Solti remained in Switzerland.[13] He did not see his father again; Mor Stern died of diabetes in a Budapest hospital in 1943.[20] Solti was reunited with his mother and sister after the war.[21] In Switzerland, he could not obtain a work permit as a conductor, but earned his living as a piano teacher.[22] After he won the 1942Geneva International Piano Competition, he was permitted to give piano recitals, but was still not allowed to conduct.[23] During his exile, he met Hedwig (Hedi) Oeschli, daughter of a lecturer at Zürich University; they married in 1946.[4] In his memoirs, he wrote of her, "She was very elegant and sophisticated. ... Hedi gave me a little grace and taught me good manners – although she never completely succeeded in this. She also helped me enormously in my career".[24]
With the end of the war, Solti's luck changed dramatically. He was appointed musical director of theBavarian State Opera in Munich in 1946.[25] In normal circumstances, this prestigious post would have been an unthinkable appointment for a young and inexperienced conductor,[n 4] but the leading German conductors such asWilhelm Furtwängler,Clemens Krauss, andHerbert von Karajan were prohibited from conducting pending the conclusion ofdenazification proceedings against them.[4] Under Solti's direction, the company rebuilt its repertoire and began to recover its prewar eminence.[7] He benefited from the encouragement of the elderlyRichard Strauss, in whose presence he conductedDer Rosenkavalier.[7] Strauss was reluctant to discuss his own music with Solti, but gave him advice about conducting.[26]
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In addition to the Munich appointment, Solti gained a recording contract in 1946. He signed forDecca Records, not as a conductor, but as a piano accompanist.[27] He made his first recording in 1947, playing Brahms'sFirst Violin Sonata with violinistGeorg Kulenkampff.[28] He was insistent that he wanted to conduct, and Decca gave him his first recording sessions as a conductor later in the same year, with theZurich Tonhalle Orchestra in Beethoven'sEgmont overture.[28] Twenty years later, Solti said, "I'm sure it's a terrible record, because the orchestra was not very good at that time and I was so excited. It is horrible, surely horrible – but by now it has vanished."[29] He had to wait two years for his next recording as a conductor, in London, Haydn'sDrum Roll symphony, in sessions produced byJohn Culshaw, with whose career Solti's became closely linked over the next two decades.[30] Reviewing the record,The Gramophone said, "The performance of the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Georg Solti (a fine conductor who is new to me) is remarkable for rhythmic playing, richness of tone, and clarity of execution."[31]The Record Guide compared it favourably withEMI's rival recording bySir Thomas Beecham and theRoyal Philharmonic.[32]
In 1951, Solti conducted at the Salzburg Festival for the first time, partly through the influence of Furtwängler, who was impressed by him.[33] The work was Mozart'sIdomeneo, which had not been given there before.[33] In Munich, Solti achieved critical and popular success, but for political reasons, his position at the State Opera was never secure. The view persisted that a German conductor should be in charge; pressure mounted, and after five years, Solti accepted an offer to move toFrankfurt in 1952 as musical director of theOper Frankfurt.[4][n 5] The city's opera house had been destroyed in the war, and Solti undertook to build a new company and repertoire for its recently completed replacement. He also conducted the symphony concerts given by the opera orchestra.[34] Frankfurt's was a less prestigious house than Munich's and he initially regarded the move as a demotion,[34] but he found the post fulfilling and remained at Frankfurt from 1952 to 1961, presenting 33 operas, 19 of which he had not conducted before.[35] Frankfurt, unlike Munich, could not attract many of the leading German singers. Solti recruited many rising young American singers such asClaire Watson andSylvia Stahlman,[36] to the extent that the house acquired the nickname "Amerikanische Oper am Main".[n 6] In 1953, the West German government offered Solti German citizenship, which, being effectively stateless as a Hungarian exile, he gratefully accepted. He believed he could never return to Hungary, by then under communist rule.[38] He remained a German citizen for two decades.[39]
During his Frankfurt years, Solti made appearances with other opera companies and orchestras. He conducted in the Americas for the first time in 1952, giving concerts in Buenos Aires.[40] In the same year, he made his debut at theEdinburgh Festival as a guest conductor with the visitingHamburg State Opera.[41] The following year, he was a guest at theSan Francisco Opera withElektra,Die Walküre, andTristan und Isolde.[42] In 1954, he conductedDon Giovanni at theGlyndebourne Festival. The reviewer inThe Times said that no fault could be found in Solti's "vivacious and sensitive" conducting.[43] In the same year Solti made his first appearance with theChicago Symphony Orchestra, at theRavinia Festival.[44] In 1960, he made his debut at theMetropolitan Opera in New York City, conductingTannhäuser, and he continued to appear there until 1964.[45]
In the recording studios, Solti's career took off after 1956, when John Culshaw was put in charge of Decca's classical recording programme. Culshaw believed Solti to be "the great Wagner conductor of our time",[46] and was determined to record the four operas ofDer Ring des Nibelungen with Solti and the finest Wagner singers available.[47] The cast Culshaw assembled for the cycle includedKirsten Flagstad,Hans Hotter,Birgit Nilsson andWolfgang Windgassen.[48] Apart fromArabella in 1957, in which he substituted whenKarl Böhm withdrew, Solti had made no complete recording of an opera until the sessions forDas Rheingold, the first of theRing tetralogy, in September and October 1958.[28] In their respective memoirs, Culshaw and Solti told howWalter Legge of Decca's rival EMI predicted thatDas Rheingold would be a commercial disaster ("'Very nice,' he said, 'Very interesting. But of course you won'tsell any.'")[49][n 7] The success of the recording took the record industry by surprise. It featured for weeks in theBillboard charts, the sole classical album alongside best sellers byElvis Presley andPat Boone, and brought Solti's name to international prominence.[51] He appeared with leading orchestras in New York City, Vienna, and Los Angeles, and at Covent Garden, he conductedDer Rosenkavalier andBritten'sA Midsummer Night's Dream.[4]
In 1960, Solti signed a three-year contract to be music director of theLos Angeles Philharmonic from 1962.[52] Even before he took the post, the philharmonic's autocratic president,Dorothy Chandler, breached his contract by appointing a deputy music director without Solti's approval. Although he admired the chosen deputy,Zubin Mehta, Solti felt he could not have his authority undermined from the outset, and he withdrew from his appointment.[52] He accepted an offer to become musical director ofCovent Garden Opera Company, London. When first sounded out about the post, he had declined it. After 14 years of experience at Munich and Frankfurt, he was uncertain that he wanted a third successive operatic post.[53] Moreover, founded only 15 years earlier, the Covent Garden company was not yet the equal of the best opera houses in Europe.[54]Bruno Walter convinced Solti that it was his duty to take on Covent Garden.[55]
BiographerMontague Haltrecht suggests that Solti seized the breach of his Los Angeles contract as a convenient pretext to abandon the philharmonic in favour of Covent Garden.[56] In his memoirs, though, Solti wrote that he wanted the Los Angeles position very much indeed.[52] He originally considered holding both posts in tandem, but later acknowledged that he had had a lucky escape, as he could have done justice to neither post had he attempted to hold both simultaneously.[52] Coinciding with his first season at Covent Garden in 1961-62, he also served as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for one season.[57] In Dallas he conducted 21 concerts over two one-month periods.[58][59]
Solti took up the musical directorship of Covent Garden in August 1961.[60] The press gave him a cautious welcome, but some concern arose that under him a drift away from the company's original policy of opera in English might occur. Solti, however, was an advocate of opera in the vernacular,[61][n 8] and he promoted the development of British andCommonwealth singers in the company, frequently casting them in his recordings and important productions in preference to overseas artists.[63] He demonstrated his belief in vernacular opera with a triple bill in English of Ravel'sL'heure espagnole, Schoenberg'sErwartung, and Puccini'sGianni Schicchi.[64] As the decade went on, however, more and more productions had to be sung in the original language to accommodate international stars.[65]
[Solti] announced his intention of making Covent Garden "quite simply, the best opera house in the world", and in the opinion of many he succeeded.
Like his predecessorRafael Kubelík, and his successorColin Davis, Solti found his early days as musical director marred by vituperative hostility from a small clique in the Covent Garden audience.[66] Rotten vegetables were thrown at him,[4] and his car was vandalised outside the theatre, with the words "Solti must go!" scratched on its paintwork.[67] Some press reviews were strongly critical; Solti was so wounded by a review inThe Times of his conducting ofThe Marriage of Figaro that he almost left Covent Garden in despair.[13][n 9] The chief executive of the Opera House,Sir David Webster, persuaded him to stay with the company, and matters improved, helped by changes on which Solti insisted.[71] The chorus and orchestra were strengthened,[4] and in the interests of musical and dramatic excellence, Solti secured the introduction of thestagione system of scheduling performances, rather than the traditional repertory system.[n 10] By 1967,The Times commented that "Patrons of Covent Garden today automatically expect any new production, and indeed any revival, to be as strongly cast as anything at the Met in New York, and as carefully presented as anything inMilan orVienna".[73]
The company's repertory in the 1960s combined the standard operatic works with less familiar pieces. Among the most celebrated productions during Solti's time in charge wasSchoenberg'sMoses and Aaron in the 1965–66 and 1966–67 seasons.[74] In 1970, Solti led the company to Germany, where they gaveDon Carlos,Falstaff, andVictory, a new work byRichard Rodney Bennett. The public in Munich and Berlin were, according to theFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, "beside themselves with enthusiasm".[75]
Solti's bald head and demanding rehearsal style earned him the nickname "The Screaming Skull".[4] A music historian called him "the bustling, bruising Georg Solti – a man whose entire physical and mental attitude embodied the words 'I'm in charge'."[76] Singers such asPeter Glossop described him as a bully,[77] and after working with Solti,Jon Vickers refused to do so again.[78][n 11] Nevertheless, under Solti, the company was recognised as having achieved parity with the greatest opera houses in the world.[73]Queen Elizabeth II conferred the title "the Royal Opera" on the company in 1968.[80] By this point, Solti was, in the words of his biographer Paul Robinson, "after Karajan, the most celebrated conductor at work".[81] By the end of his decade as music director at Covent Garden Solti had conducted the company in 33 operas by 13 composers.[n 12]
In 1964, Solti separated from his wife. He moved into theSavoy Hotel, where not long afterwards he metValerie Pitts, a British television presenter, sent to interview him.[83] She, too, was married, but after pursuing her for three years, Solti persuaded her to divorce her husband. Solti and Valerie Pitts married on 11 November 1967.[84] They had two daughters.[8]
In 1967, Solti was invited to become music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It was the second time he had been offered the post. The first had been in 1963 after the death of the orchestra's conductor,Fritz Reiner, who made its reputation in the previous decade.[85] Solti told the representatives of the orchestra that his commitments at Covent Garden made it impossible to give Chicago the eight months a year they sought.[86] He suggested giving them three and a half months a year and invitingCarlo Maria Giulini to take charge for a similar length of time. The orchestra declined to proceed on these lines.[86]
When Solti accepted the orchestra's second invitation, they agreed that Giulini should be appointed to share the conducting.[n 13] Both conductors signed three-year contracts with the orchestra, effective from 1969.[88]
One of the members of the Chicago Symphony described it to Solti as "the best provincial orchestra in the world."[86] Many players remained from its celebrated decade under Reiner, but morale was low, and the orchestra was $5M in debt.[4] Solti concluded that raising the orchestra's international profile was essential. He ensured that it was engaged for many of his Decca sessions, and Giulini and he led it in a European tour in 1971, playing in 10 countries. This was the first time in its 80-year history that the orchestra had played outside of North America.[86] The orchestra received plaudits from European critics,[89][n 14] and was welcomed home at the end of the tour with aticker-tape parade.[4]
The orchestra's principal flute player, Donald Peck, commented that the relationship between a conductor and an orchestra is difficult to explain: "Some conductors get along with some orchestras and not others. We had a good match with Solti and he with us."[92] Peck's colleague, violinist Victor Aitay, said, "Usually conductors are relaxed at rehearsals and tense at the concerts. Solti is the reverse. He is very tense at rehearsals, which makes us concentrate, but relaxed during the performance, which is a great asset to the orchestra."[93] Peck recalled Solti's constant efforts to improve his own technique and interpretations, at one point experimentally dispensing with a baton, drawing a "darker and deeper, much more relaxed" tone from the players.[94]
It's a marvelous thing to be musically happily married. ... I am and I know. I'm a romantic type of musician, and this is a romantic orchestra. That is our secret...
As well as raising the orchestra's profile and helping it return to prosperity, Solti considerably expanded its repertoire. Under him, the Chicago Symphony gave its first cycles of the symphonies ofBruckner andMahler. He introduced new works commissioned for the orchestra, such as Lutosławski'sThird Symphony, and Tippett'sFourth Symphony, which was dedicated to Solti.[4] Another new work was Tippett'sByzantium, an orchestral song-cycle, premiered by Solti and the orchestra withsoprano Faye Robinson. Solti frequently programmed works by American composers, includingCharles Ives andElliott Carter.[4]
Solti's recordings with the Chicago Symphony included the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, and Mahler.[28] Most of his operatic recordings were with other orchestras, but his recordings of Wagner'sDer fliegende Holländer (1976), Beethoven'sFidelio (1979), Schoenberg'sMoses und Aron (1984) and his second recordings ofDie Meistersinger (1995) and Verdi'sOtello (1991) were made with the Chicago players.[28]
After relinquishing the position of music director in 1991, Solti continued to conduct the orchestra, and was given the title of music director laureate. He conducted 999 concerts with the orchestra. His 1,000th concert was scheduled for October 1997, around the time of his 85th birthday, but Solti died that September.[96]
In addition to his tenure in Chicago, Solti was music director of theOrchestre de Paris from 1972 to 1975.[8] From 1979 until 1983, he was also principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra.[8] He continued to expand his repertoire. With the London Philharmonic, he performed many ofElgar's major works in concert and on record.[28] Before performing Elgar's two symphonies, Solti studied the composer's own recordings made more than 40 years earlier, and was influenced by their brisk tempi and impetuous manner.[97]Edward Greenfield, music critic forThe Guardian, wrote that Solti "conveys the authentic frisson of the great Elgarian moment more vividly than ever before on record."[97] Late in his career he became enthusiastic about the music ofShostakovich, whom he admitted he failed to appreciate fully during the composer's lifetime.[98] He made commercial recordings of seven of Shostakovich's fifteen symphonies.[n 15]
His podium personality, exuberant and forceful, was clearly imprinted upon his music-making as he snarled and ferociously stabbed his baton. ... It became a cliché to say he mellowed as he got older, but his performances remained thrilling right to the end.
In 1983, Solti conducted for the only time at theBayreuth Festival. By this stage in his career, he no longer liked abstract productions of Wagner, or modernistic reinterpretations, such as Patrice Chéreau's 1976 BayreuthCentenary Ring, which he found grew boring on repetition.[99] Together with the directorSir Peter Hall and designerWilliam Dudley, he presented aRing cycle that aimed to represent Wagner's intentions. The production was not well received by German critics, who expected radical reinterpretation of the operas.[100] Solti's conducting was praised, but illnesses and last-minute replacements of leading performers affected the standard of singing.[101] He was invited to return to Bayreuth for the following season, but was unwell and withdrew on medical advice before the 1984 festival began.[102]
In 1991, Solti collaborated with actor and composerDudley Moore to create an eight-part television series,Orchestra!, which was designed to introduce audiences to the symphony orchestra.[103] In 1994, he directed the "Solti Orchestral Project" atCarnegie Hall, a training workshop for young American musicians.[104] The following year, to mark the 50th anniversary of theUnited Nations, he formed the World Orchestra for Peace, which consisted of 81 musicians from 40 nations.[105] The orchestra has continued to perform after his death, under the conductorship ofValery Gergiev.[106]
Solti regularly returned to Covent Garden as a guest conductor in the years after he relinquished the musical directorship, greeted with "an increasingly 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 not conducted at the Royal Opera House before: Bizet'sCarmen, Wagner'sParsifal, Mozart'sDie Entführung aus dem Serail, Verdi'sSimon Boccanegra, and a celebrated production ofLa traviata (1994), which propelledAngela Gheorghiu to stardom.[82][107] On 14 July 1997 he conducted the last operatic music to be heard in the old house before it closed for more than two years for rebuilding.[n 16] The previous day he had conducted what proved to be his last symphony concert. The work was Mahler'sFifth Symphony; the orchestra was the Zurich Tonhalle, with whom he had made his first orchestral recording 50 years earlier.[28]
Solti died suddenly, in his sleep, on 5 September 1997 while on holiday inAntibes in the south of France.[109] He was 84. After a state ceremony in Budapest, his ashes were interred beside the remains of Bartók inFarkasréti Cemetery.[110]
Solti recorded throughout his career for the Decca Record Company. He made more than 250 recordings, including 45 complete opera sets.[111] During the 1950s and 1960s, Decca had an alliance withRCA Victor, and some of Solti's recordings were first issued on the RCA label.[28]
Solti was one of the first conductors who came to international fame as a recording artist before being widely known in the concert hall or opera house. Gordon Parry, the Decca engineer who worked with Solti and Culshaw on theRing recordings, observed, "Many people have said 'Oh well, of course John Culshaw made Solti.' This is not true. He gave him the opportunity to show what he could do."[85]
Solti's first recordings were as a piano accompanist, playing at sessions in Zurich for violinist Georg Kulenkampff in 1947.[28] Decca's senior producer,Victor Olof did not much admire Solti as a conductor[112] (nor did Walter Legge, Olof's opposite number at EMI'sColumbia Records),[113] but Olof's younger colleague and successor, Culshaw, held Solti in high regard. As Culshaw, and laterJames Walker, produced his recordings, Solti's career as a recording artist flourished from the mid-1950s.[28] Among the orchestras with whom Solti recorded were theBerlin Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, London Philharmonic,London Symphony andVienna Philharmonic orchestras.[28] Soloists in his operatic recordings includedBirgit Nilsson,Joan Sutherland,Régine Crespin,Plácido Domingo,Gottlob Frick,Carlo Bergonzi,Kiri Te Kanawa,Ben Heppner andJosé van Dam.[28] In concerto recordings, Solti conducted for, among others,András Schiff,Julius Katchen,Clifford Curzon,Vladimir Ashkenazy, andKyung-wha Chung.[28]
Solti's most celebrated recording was Wagner'sDer Ring des Nibelungen made in Vienna, produced by Culshaw, between 1958 and 1965. It has twice been voted the greatest recording ever made, the first poll being among readers ofGramophone magazine in 1999,[114] and the second of professional music critics in 2011, for theBBC'sMusic Magazine.[115] This recording is heard in the filmApocalypse Now during the helicopter attack scene.[116]
Honours awarded to Solti included the BritishCBE (honorary), 1968,[8] and an honorary knighthood (KBE), 1971,[117] which became a substantive knighthood when he took British citizenship in 1972, after which he was known as Sir Georg Solti.[4] He was also awardedhonorary citizenship from the coastal town ofCastiglione della Pescaia, inTuscany, a holiday destination particularly frequented by celebrities where he owned a holiday house and used to spend the summer holidays with his wife and daughters.[118] In Castiglione, the Georg Solti Accademia and the main piazza within the town's historic hamlet are named after Solti.[119] Furthermore, Solti received a number of honours from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal and the US.[n 17] He received honorary fellowships or degrees from theRoyal College of Music andDePaul,Furman,Harvard,Leeds,London,Oxford,Surrey andYale universities.[8]
In celebration of his 75th birthday in 1987, a bronzebust of Solti byDame Elisabeth Frink was dedicated inLincoln Park, Chicago, outside theLincoln Park Conservatory.[121] It was first displayed temporarily at the Royal Opera House in London.[122] The sculpture was moved toGrant Park in 2006 in a newSolti Garden, near Orchestra Hall inSymphony Center.[123] In 1997, to commemorate the 85th anniversary of his birth, the City of Chicago renamed the block of East Adams Street adjacent to Symphony Center as "Sir Georg Solti Place" in his memory.[124]
Record industry awards to Solti included the Grand Prix Mondial du Disque (14 times) and 31Grammy Awards (besides a special Trustees' Grammy Award, shared with John Culshaw, for the recording of theRing (1967) and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1996)).[8] He held the record formost Grammy wins of all time, until Beyoncé tied and later beat the recordin 2023.[111] In September 2007, as a tribute on the 10th anniversary of his death, Decca published a recording of his final concert.[28]
After Solti's death, his widow and daughters set up the Solti Foundation to assist young musicians.[125] Solti's memoirs, written with the assistance ofHarvey Sachs, were published the month after his death.[126] Solti's life was also documented in a 1997 film by Peter Maniura,Sir Georg Solti: The Making of a Maestro.[127]
In 2012, a series of events under the banner of "Solti @ 100" was announced, to mark the centenary of Solti's birth. Among the events were concerts in New York City and Chicago, and commemorative exhibitions in London, Chicago, Vienna, and New York City.[115] In the same year, Solti was voted into the inauguralGramophone "Hall of Fame".[128]
TheSir Georg Solti International Conductors' Competition, which occurs every two years in Frankfurt, is named in his honour.[129]
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