Georg Solti

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portrait of a middle aged man, clean shaven and bald

Solti by Allan Warren, 1975

Sir Georg Solti Template:Post-nominals (Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Template:IPA; born György Stern; 21 October 1912 – 5 September 1997)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor, known for his appearances with opera companies in Munich, Frankfurt, and London, and as a long-serving music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Born in Budapest, he studied there with Béla Bartók, Leó Weiner, and Ernő Dohnányi. In the 1930s, he was a répétiteur at the Hungarian State Opera and worked at the Salzburg Festival for Arturo Toscanini. His career was interrupted by the rise of the Nazis' influence on Hungarian politics, and being Jewish, he fled the increasingly harsh Hungarian anti-Jewish laws in 1938. After conducting a season of Russian ballet in London at the Royal 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 the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in 1946. In 1952, he moved to the Oper Frankfurt, where he remained in charge for nine years. He took West German citizenship in 1953. In 1961, he became musical director of the Covent 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 an honorary citizen of the coastal holiday town of Castiglione della Pescaia, and a British 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 the Orchestre de Paris from 1972 until 1975 and principal conductor of the London 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 probably Decca's complete set of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, made between 1958 and 1965. Solti's Ring has twice been voted the greatest recording ever made, in polls for Gramophone magazine in 1999 and the BBC's Music Magazine in 2012. Solti was repeatedly honoured by the recording industry with awards throughout his career. From 1963 to 1998, he won 31 Grammy Awards as a recording artist, making him the Grammy Awards' most-awarded artist until Beyoncé surpassed his record in 2023.

Life and career

Early years

Solti was born György Stern on Maros utca, in the Hegyvidék district of the Buda side of Budapest.<ref name=pappenheim>Pappenheim, Mark. "Classical: An honourable homecoming – at last", The Independent, 3 April 1998, accessed 20 March 2016</ref> He was the younger of the two children of Teréz (Template:Née) and Móricz "Mor" Stern, both of whom were Jewish.<ref name=dnb>Follows, Stephen. "Solti, Sir Georg (1912–1997)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, January 2011, accessed 22 February 2012 Template:Subscription</ref> 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 of Admiral Horthy enacted a series of Hungarianisation laws, including a requirement that state employees with foreign-sounding names must change them.<ref name=fox /> Mor Stern, a self-employed merchant, felt no need to change his surname, but thought it prudent to change that of his children.<ref name=fox /> He renamed them after Solt, a small town in central Hungary.Template:Refn His son's given name, György, was acceptably Hungarian and was not changed.<ref name=fox>Fox, Sue. "Georg Solti – A Childhood", The Times, 1 July 1995</ref>

exterior shot of ornate nineteenth century building

Franz Liszt Academy, Budapest

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."<ref name=fox /> 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."<ref name=fox /> 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."<ref name=fox /> 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?"<ref name=fox />

Solti enrolled at the Ernő Fodor School of Music in Budapest at the age of 10, transferring to the more prestigious Franz Liszt Academy two years later.<ref name=dnb /> When he was 12, he heard a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony conducted by Erich Kleiber, which gave him the ambition to become a conductor.<ref>Greenfield, Edward. "Sir Georg Solti", Gramophone, October 1982, p. 22</ref> 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.<ref name=fox />

The faculty of the Franz Liszt Academy included some of the most eminent Hungarian musicians, including Béla Bartók, Leó Weiner, Ernő Dohnányi, and Zoltán Kodály. Solti studied under the first three, for piano, chamber music, and composition, respectively. Some sources state that he also studied with Kodály,<ref name=grove>Jacobs, Arthur and José A. Bowen. "Solti, Sir Georg", Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, accessed 22 February 2012 Template:Subscription</ref><ref name=who>"Solti, Sir Georg", Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edition, Oxford University Press, December 2007, accessed 22 February 2012 Template:Subscription</ref> but in his memoirs, Solti recalled that Kodály, whom he would have preferred, turned him down, leaving him to study composition first with Albert Siklós and then with Dohnányi.<ref>Solti, pp. 17 and 22</ref> 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".<ref>Solti. p. 20</ref>

Pianist and conductor

After graduating from the academy in 1930, Solti was appointed to the staff of the Hungarian State Opera.Template:Refn He found that working as a répétiteur, 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.<ref name=dnb /> In 1932, he went to Karlsruhe in Germany as assistant to Josef Krips, but within a year, Krips, anticipating the imminent rise to power of Hitler and the Nazis, insisted that Solti should go home to Budapest, where at that time Jews were not in danger.<ref>Solti, p. 31</ref> Other Jewish and anti-Nazi musicians also left Germany for Budapest. Among other musical exiles with whom Solti worked there were Otto Klemperer, Fritz Busch, and Kleiber.<ref name=dnb /> Before Austria fell under Nazi control, Solti was assistant to Arturo Toscanini at the 1937 Salzburg Festival:

exterior of a large neo-classical theatre

Hungarian State Opera House

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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.Template:Refn The opera was Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. During that evening, news came of the German invasion of Austria.<ref name=times>"Sir Georg Solti – Obituary", The Times, 8 September 1997</ref> Many Hungarians feared that Hitler would next invade Hungary; he did not do so, but Horthy, to strengthen his partnership with the Nazis, instituted anti-semitic laws, mirroring the Nuremberg Laws, restricting Hungary's Jews from engaging in professions.<ref>Levy, p. 323</ref> Solti's family urged him to move away.<ref name=dnb /> He went first to London, where he made his Covent Garden debut, conducting the London Philharmonic for a Russian ballet season.<ref>"Opera and Ballet", The Times, 2 July 1938, p. 10</ref> The reviewer in The 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."<ref name=ballet>"Covent Garden Ballet – Carnaval", The Times, 15 July 1938, p. 14</ref> At about this time Solti dropped the name "György" in favour of "Georg".<ref>Solti, p. 5</ref>

After his appearances in London, Solti went to Switzerland to seek out Toscanini, who was conducting in Lucerne. 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 in Wagner's opera.<ref name=dnb /> Throughout the Second World War, Solti remained in Switzerland.<ref name=canning /> He did not see his father again; Mor Stern died of diabetes in a Budapest hospital in 1943.<ref>Solti, p. 54</ref> Solti was reunited with his mother and sister after the war.<ref>Solti, p. 55</ref> In Switzerland, he could not obtain a work permit as a conductor, but earned his living as a piano teacher.<ref>Solti, p. 59</ref> After he won the 1942 Geneva International Piano Competition, he was permitted to give piano recitals, but was still not allowed to conduct.<ref>Solti, p. 56</ref> During his exile, he met Hedwig (Hedi) Oeschli, daughter of a lecturer at Zürich University; they married in 1946.<ref name=dnb /> 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".<ref>"Salzburg & Swiss exile" Template:Webarchive, Georg Solti, accessed 23 February 2012</ref>

Munich and Frankfurt

With the end of the war, Solti's luck changed dramatically. He was appointed musical director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in 1946.<ref>Robinson, p. 13</ref> In normal circumstances, this prestigious post would have been an unthinkable appointment for a young and inexperienced conductor,Template:Refn but the leading German conductors such as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Clemens Krauss, and Herbert von Karajan were prohibited from conducting pending the conclusion of denazification proceedings against them.<ref name=dnb /> Under Solti's direction, the company rebuilt its repertoire and began to recover its prewar eminence.<ref name=grove /> He benefited from the encouragement of the elderly Richard Strauss, in whose presence he conducted Der Rosenkavalier.<ref name=grove /> Strauss was reluctant to discuss his own music with Solti, but gave him advice about conducting.<ref>Solti, pp. 78–79</ref>

two men, both bald, one standing and one sitting

Solti (l) with the pianist Nikita Magaloff

In addition to the Munich appointment, Solti gained a recording contract in 1946. He signed for Decca Records, not as a conductor, but as a piano accompanist.<ref>Culshaw (1967), p 30</ref> He made his first recording in 1947, playing Brahms's First Violin Sonata with violinist Georg Kulenkampff.<ref name=d /> 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 the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra in Beethoven's Egmont overture.<ref name=d /> 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."<ref>Culshaw (1967), p. 31</ref> He had to wait two years for his next recording as a conductor, in London, Haydn's Drum Roll symphony, in sessions produced by John Culshaw, with whose career Solti's became closely linked over the next two decades.<ref>Culshaw (1967), p. 32</ref> 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."<ref>"Haydn Symphony No. 103 in E flat", The Gramophone, July 1950, p. 16</ref> The Record Guide compared it favourably with EMI's rival recording by Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic.<ref>Sackville-West, p. 355</ref>

In 1951, Solti conducted at the Salzburg Festival for the first time, partly through the influence of Furtwängler, who was impressed by him.<ref name=s85>Solti, pp. 85–86</ref> The work was Mozart's Idomeneo, which had not been given there before.<ref name=s85 /> 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 to Frankfurt in 1952 as musical director of the Oper Frankfurt.<ref name=dnb />Template:Refn 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.<ref name=s94 /> Frankfurt's was a less prestigious house than Munich's and he initially regarded the move as a demotion,<ref name=s94>Solti, p. 94</ref> 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.<ref>Solti, p. 127</ref> Frankfurt, unlike Munich, could not attract many of the leading German singers. Solti recruited many rising young American singers such as Claire Watson and Sylvia Stahlman,<ref>Solti, pp. 100 (Watson) and 101 (Stahlman)</ref> to the extent that the house acquired the nickname "Amerikanische Oper am Main".Template:Refn 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.<ref>Solti, p. 96</ref> He remained a German citizen for two decades.<ref>Solti, p. 105</ref>

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.<ref>Solti, p. 92–93</ref> In the same year, he made his debut at the Edinburgh Festival as a guest conductor with the visiting Hamburg State Opera.<ref>Robinson, p. 16</ref> The following year, he was a guest at the San Francisco Opera with Elektra, Die Walküre, and Tristan und Isolde.<ref>Solti, p. 102</ref> In 1954, he conducted Don Giovanni at the Glyndebourne Festival. The reviewer in The Times said that no fault could be found in Solti's "vivacious and sensitive" conducting.<ref>"Glyndebourne Opera – 'Don Giovanni'", The Times, 8 July 1954, p. 5</ref> In the same year Solti made his first appearance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, at the Ravinia Festival.<ref>"Career highlights" Template:Webarchive, Georg Solti, accessed 23 February 2012</ref> In 1960, he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, conducting Tannhäuser, and he continued to appear there until 1964.<ref>Search: "Solti", Metropolitan Opera Archives, accessed 10 June 2012</ref>

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",<ref>Culshaw (1967), p. 52</ref> and was determined to record the four operas of Der Ring des Nibelungen with Solti and the finest Wagner singers available.<ref>Culshaw (1967), pp. 52–53</ref> The cast Culshaw assembled for the cycle included Kirsten Flagstad, Hans Hotter, Birgit Nilsson and Wolfgang Windgassen.<ref>Culshaw (1967), pp. 273–274</ref> Apart from Arabella in 1957, in which he substituted when Karl Böhm withdrew, Solti had made no complete recording of an opera until the sessions for Das Rheingold, the first of the Ring tetralogy, in September and October 1958.<ref name=d /> In their respective memoirs, Culshaw and Solti told how Walter Legge of Decca's rival EMI predicted that Das Rheingold would be a commercial disaster ("'Very nice,' he said, 'Very interesting. But of course you won't sell any.'")<ref>Culshaw (1967), p. 91</ref>Template:Refn The success of the recording took the record industry by surprise. It featured for weeks in the Billboard charts, the sole classical album alongside best sellers by Elvis Presley and Pat Boone, and brought Solti's name to international prominence.<ref>Culshaw (1967), p. 124</ref> He appeared with leading orchestras in New York City, Vienna, and Los Angeles, and at Covent Garden, he conducted Der Rosenkavalier and Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream.<ref name=dnb />

Covent Garden

interior of grand 19th-century theatre

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

In 1960, Solti signed a three-year contract to be music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1962.<ref name=s124 /> 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.<ref name=s124 /> He accepted an offer to become musical director of Covent 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.<ref name=h257>Haltrecht, p. 257</ref> Moreover, founded only 15 years earlier, the Covent Garden company was not yet the equal of the best opera houses in Europe.<ref>Haltrecht, p. 237</ref> Bruno Walter convinced Solti that it was his duty to take on Covent Garden.<ref>Haltrecht, p. 259</ref>

Biographer Montague 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.<ref>Haltrecht, p. 258</ref> In his memoirs, though, Solti wrote that he wanted the Los Angeles position very much indeed.<ref name=s124>Solti, pp. 124–125</ref> 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.<ref name=s124 />

Solti took up the musical directorship of Covent Garden in August 1961.<ref>Haltrecht, p. 264</ref> 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,<ref name=what>"What Sort of Opera for Covent Garden?", The Times, 9 December 1960, p. 18</ref>Template:Refn and he promoted the development of British and Commonwealth singers in the company, frequently casting them in his recordings and important productions in preference to overseas artists.<ref>Haltrecht, p. 295</ref> He demonstrated his belief in vernacular opera with a triple bill in English of Ravel's L'heure espagnole, Schoenberg's Erwartung, and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi.<ref>"Solti's Success with Opera in English", The Times, 18 June 1962, p. 5</ref> As the decade went on, however, more and more productions had to be sung in the original language to accommodate international stars.<ref name=w21>"Sir David Webster's 21 Years at Covent Garden", The Times, 12 April 1965, p. 14</ref>

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Like his predecessor Rafael Kubelík, and his successor Colin Davis, Solti found his early days as musical director marred by vituperative hostility from a small clique in the Covent Garden audience.<ref>Haltrecht, pp. 207 (Kubelik) and 271 (Solti); and Canning, Hugh. "Forget the booing, remember the triumph", The Guardian, 19 July 1986, p. 11 (Davis)</ref> Rotten vegetables were thrown at him,<ref name=dnb /> and his car was vandalised outside the theatre, with the words "Solti must go!" scratched on its paintwork.<ref name=h271>Haltrecht, p. 271</ref> Some press reviews were strongly critical; Solti was so wounded by a review in The Times of his conducting of The Marriage of Figaro that he almost left Covent Garden in despair.<ref name=canning />Template:Refn 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.<ref>Haltrecht, p. 279</ref> The chorus and orchestra were strengthened,<ref name=dnb /> and in the interests of musical and dramatic excellence, Solti secured the introduction of the stagione system of scheduling performances, rather than the traditional repertory system.Template:Refn 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 in Milan or Vienna".<ref name=t20>"Twenty marvellous years at Covent Garden", The Times, 13 January 1967, p. 14</ref>

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 was Schoenberg's Moses and Aaron in the 1965–66 and 1966–67 seasons.<ref>Goodman, pp. 57–59</ref> In 1970, Solti led the company to Germany, where they gave Don Carlos, Falstaff, and Victory, a new work by Richard Rodney Bennett. The public in Munich and Berlin were, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, "beside themselves with enthusiasm".<ref>Quoted in Lebrecht, p. 281</ref>

Solti's bald head and demanding rehearsal style earned him the nickname "The Screaming Skull".<ref name=dnb /> 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'."<ref>Morrison, p. 217</ref> Singers such as Peter Glossop described him as a bully,<ref>Glossop, p. 147</ref> and after working with Solti, Jon Vickers refused to do so again.<ref>Haltrecht, pp. 289–290</ref>Template:Refn Nevertheless, under Solti, the company was recognised as having achieved parity with the greatest opera houses in the world.<ref name=t20 /> Queen Elizabeth II conferred the title "the Royal Opera" on the company in 1968.<ref>"The Royal Opera", The Times, 24 October 1968, p. 3</ref> By this point, Solti was, in the words of his biographer Paul Robinson, "after Karajan, the most celebrated conductor at work".<ref>Robinson, p. 44</ref> By the end of his decade as music director at Covent Garden Solti had conducted the company in 33 operas by 13 composers.Template:Refn

In 1964, Solti separated from his wife. He moved into the Savoy Hotel, where not long afterwards he met Valerie Pitts, a British television presenter, sent to interview him.<ref>Robinson, p. 38</ref> 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.<ref>Solti, p. 137</ref> They had two daughters.<ref name=who />

Chicago Symphony Orchestra

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.<ref name=patmore /> 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.<ref name=prov /> He suggested giving them three and a half months a year and inviting Carlo Maria Giulini to take charge for a similar length of time. The orchestra declined to proceed on these lines.<ref name=prov />

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Solti (1975)

When Solti accepted the orchestra's second invitation, they agreed that Giulini should be appointed to share the conducting.Template:Refn Both conductors signed three-year contracts with the orchestra, effective from 1969.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

One of the members of the Chicago Symphony described it to Solti as "the best provincial orchestra in the world."<ref name=prov>Greenfield, Edward. "The great provincials", The Guardian, 4 October 1971, p. 8</ref> Many players remained from its celebrated decade under Reiner, but morale was low, and the orchestra was $5M in debt.<ref name=dnb /> 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.<ref name=prov /> The orchestra received plaudits from European critics,<ref>"Symphony returns", Chicago Daily Defender, 6 October 1971, p. 20</ref>Template:Refn and was welcomed home at the end of the tour with a ticker-tape parade.<ref name=dnb />

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."<ref>Peck, p. 7</ref> 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."<ref>"Into the Fray", Time, 11 April 1969 Template:Subscription</ref> 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.<ref>Peck, p. 8</ref> Template:Quote box

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 of Bruckner and Mahler. He introduced new works commissioned for the orchestra, such as Lutosławski's Third Symphony, and Tippett's Fourth Symphony, which was dedicated to Solti.<ref name=dnb /> Another new work was Tippett's Byzantium, an orchestral song-cycle, premiered by Solti and the orchestra with soprano Faye Robinson. Solti frequently programmed works by American composers, including Charles Ives and Elliott Carter.<ref name=dnb />

Solti's recordings with the Chicago Symphony included the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, and Mahler.<ref name=d /> Most of his operatic recordings were with other orchestras, but his recordings of Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer (1976), Beethoven's Fidelio (1979), Schoenberg's Moses und Aron (1984) and his second recordings of Die Meistersinger (1995) and Verdi's Otello (1991) were made with the Chicago players.<ref name=d />

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.<ref>Tommasini, Anthony. "Living an Adventure to the End", The New York Times, 21 September 1997</ref>

Later years

In addition to his tenure in Chicago, Solti was music director of the Orchestre de Paris from 1972 to 1975.<ref name=who /> From 1979 until 1983, he was also principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra.<ref name=who /> He continued to expand his repertoire. With the London Philharmonic, he performed many of Elgar's major works in concert and on record.<ref name=d /> 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.<ref name=eg /> Edward Greenfield, music critic for The Guardian, wrote that Solti "conveys the authentic frisson of the great Elgarian moment more vividly than ever before on record."<ref name=eg>Greenfield, Edward. "Echoing Elgar", The Guardian, 11 July 1972, p. 10</ref> Late in his career he became enthusiastic about the music of Shostakovich, whom he admitted he failed to appreciate fully during the composer's lifetime.<ref>Solti, p. 228</ref> He made commercial recordings of seven of Shostakovich's fifteen symphonies.Template:Refn

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In 1983, Solti conducted for the only time at the Bayreuth Festival. By this stage in his career, he no longer liked abstract productions of Wagner, or modernistic reinterpretations, such as Patrice Chéreau's 1976 Bayreuth Centenary Ring, which he found grew boring on repetition.<ref>Greenfield, Edward. "Sir Georg Solti", Gramophone, August 1981, p. 25</ref> Together with the director Sir Peter Hall and designer William Dudley, he presented a Ring cycle that aimed to represent Wagner's intentions. The production was not well received by German critics, who expected radical reinterpretation of the operas.<ref>Heyworth, Peter. "Why The Ring went wrong", The Observer, 7 August 1983</ref> Solti's conducting was praised, but illnesses and last-minute replacements of leading performers affected the standard of singing.<ref>Levin, Bernard. "A sand-blast and polish by a master", The Times, 17 August 1983, p. 8</ref> He was invited to return to Bayreuth for the following season, but was unwell and withdrew on medical advice before the 1984 festival began.<ref>Hewson, David. "Solti quits 'Ring' production", The Times, 26 May 1984, p. 5</ref>

In 1991, Solti collaborated with actor and composer Dudley Moore to create an eight-part television series, Orchestra!, which was designed to introduce audiences to the symphony orchestra.<ref>Jenkins, Garry. "Orchestrating a return to musical roots – Dudley Moore and Sir Georg Solti", The Sunday Times, 13 May 1990</ref> In 1994, he directed the "Solti Orchestral Project" at Carnegie Hall, a training workshop for young American musicians.<ref>Holland, Bernard. "Georg Solti, Teacher, Leads Carnegie's Orchestral Workshop", The New York Times, 15 June 1994; and Oestreich, James R. "Master and Pupils Mesh As Solti Project Concludes", The New York Times, 24 June 1994</ref> The following year, to mark the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, he formed the World Orchestra for Peace, which consisted of 81 musicians from 40 nations.<ref>History, World Orchestra for Peace, accessed 28 February 2012</ref> The orchestra has continued to perform after his death, under the conductorship of Valery Gergiev.<ref>"Valery Gergiev", World Orchestra for Peace, accessed 8 March 2012</ref>

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).<ref name=grove /> 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's Carmen, Wagner's Parsifal, Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, and a celebrated production of La traviata (1994), which propelled Angela Gheorghiu to stardom.<ref name=roh /><ref>Kettle, Martin. "Quickfire revival sees hit-and-miss Gheorghui reprise star role", The Guardian, 10 July 2010</ref> 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.Template:Refn The previous day he had conducted what proved to be his last symphony concert. The work was Mahler's Fifth Symphony; the orchestra was the Zurich Tonhalle, with whom he had made his first orchestral recording 50 years earlier.<ref name=d />

Solti died suddenly, in his sleep, on 5 September 1997 while on holiday in Antibes in the south of France.<ref>Fay, Stephen. "Solti dies in sleep at 84", The Independent on Sunday, 7 September 1997</ref> He was 84. After a state ceremony in Budapest, his ashes were interred beside the remains of Bartók in Farkasréti Cemetery.<ref>Pappenheim, Mark. "Classical: An honourable homecoming – at last", The Independent, 3 April 1998</ref>

Recordings

Template:Main Solti recorded throughout his career for the Decca Record Company. He made more than 250 recordings, including 45 complete opera sets.<ref name=deccaweb>"Solti, Georg" Template:Webarchive, Decca Classics, accessed 22 February 2012</ref> During the 1950s and 1960s, Decca had an alliance with RCA Victor, and some of Solti's recordings were first issued on the RCA label.<ref name=d />

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 the Ring 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."<ref name=patmore>Patmore, David. "Sir Georg Solti and the Record Industry", ARSC Journal 41.2 (Fall 2010), pp. 200–232 Template:Subscription</ref>

Solti's first recordings were as a piano accompanist, playing at sessions in Zurich for violinist Georg Kulenkampff in 1947.<ref name=d>Stuart, Philip. Decca Classical, 1929–2009, AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music, accessed 22 February 2012</ref> Decca's senior producer, Victor Olof did not much admire Solti as a conductor<ref>Culshaw (1982) p. 88</ref> (nor did Walter Legge, Olof's opposite number at EMI's Columbia Records),<ref>Schwarzkopf, p. 79</ref> but Olof's younger colleague and successor, Culshaw, held Solti in high regard. As Culshaw, and later James Walker, produced his recordings, Solti's career as a recording artist flourished from the mid-1950s.<ref name=d /> Among the orchestras with whom Solti recorded were the Berlin Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, London Philharmonic, London Symphony and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras.<ref name=d /> Soloists in his operatic recordings included Birgit Nilsson, Joan Sutherland, Régine Crespin, Plácido Domingo, Gottlob Frick, Carlo Bergonzi, Kiri Te Kanawa, Ben Heppner and José van Dam.<ref name=d /> In concerto recordings, Solti conducted for, among others, András Schiff, Julius Katchen, Clifford Curzon, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Kyung-wha Chung.<ref name=d />

Solti's most celebrated recording was Wagner's Der 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 of Gramophone magazine in 1999,<ref>"Gramophone Classics", Gramophone, December 1999, p. 40</ref> and the second of professional music critics in 2011, for the BBC's Music Magazine.<ref name=solti100>"Anniversary of Sir Georg Solti's birth to be celebrated", Royal Opera House, accessed 15 March 2012</ref> This recording is heard in the film Apocalypse Now during the helicopter attack scene.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Honours and memorials

close-up shot of Solti commemorative plaque

Commemorative plaque on the Maros utca building where Solti was born, Budapest

Honours awarded to Solti included the British CBE (honorary), 1968,<ref name=who /> and an honorary knighthood (KBE), 1971,<ref>Birthday Honours", The Times, 12 June 1971, p. 10</ref> which became a substantive knighthood when he took British citizenship in 1972, after which he was known as Sir Georg Solti.<ref name=dnb /> He was also awarded honorary citizenship from the coastal town of Castiglione della Pescaia, in Tuscany, 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.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref> In Castiglione, the Georg Solti Accademia and the main piazza within the town's historic hamlet are named after Solti.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Furthermore, Solti received a number of honours from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal and the US.Template:Refn He received honorary fellowships or degrees from the Royal College of Music and DePaul, Furman, Harvard, Leeds, London, Oxford, Surrey and Yale universities.<ref name=who />

Grave with elaborate carved headstone and plain slab with inscription. There are fresh flowers on the grave.

Solti's grave, Budapest

In celebration of his 75th birthday in 1987, a bronze bust of Solti by Dame Elisabeth Frink was dedicated in Lincoln Park, Chicago, outside the Lincoln Park Conservatory.<ref>Eckert, Thor Jr. "Milestone for Maestro Solti – Chicago style", The Christian Science Monitor, 15 October 1987, accessed 21 March 2012</ref> It was first displayed temporarily at the Royal Opera House in London.<ref>"Grant Park: Sir Georg Solti Bust" Template:Webarchive, Chicago Park District, accessed 21 March 2012</ref> The sculpture was moved to Grant Park in 2006 in a new Solti Garden, near Orchestra Hall in Symphony Center.<ref> "Sir George {{sic}} Solti Bust (in Grant Park)" Template:Webarchive, Explore Chicago, accessed 28 February 2012</ref> 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.<ref>"Solti To Be Honored With Own Street Sign", Chicago Tribune, 22 October 1997</ref>

Record industry awards to 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 Achievement Award (1996)).<ref name=who /> He held the record for most Grammy wins of all time, until Beyoncé tied and later beat the record in 2023.<ref name=deccaweb /> In September 2007, as a tribute on the 10th anniversary of his death, Decca published a recording of his final concert.<ref name=d />

After Solti's death, his widow and daughters set up the Solti Foundation to assist young musicians.<ref>"The Foundation" Template:Webarchive, The Solti Foundation, accessed 28 February 2012</ref> Solti's memoirs, written with the assistance of Harvey Sachs, were published the month after his death.<ref>Solti and Sachs, passim</ref> Solti's life was also documented in a 1997 film by Peter Maniura, Sir Georg Solti: The Making of a Maestro.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

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.<ref name=solti100 /> In the same year, Solti was voted into the inaugural Gramophone "Hall of Fame".<ref>"Sir Georg Solti" Gramophone, accessed 10 April 2012</ref>

The Sir Georg Solti International Conductors' Competition, which occurs every two years in Frankfurt, is named in his honour.<ref>Franks, Rebecca. "Winners of International Conductors' Competition Sir Georg Solti announced", BBC Music Magazine, 25 September 2012</ref>

Notes

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References