Sir Georg Solti - Biography
Sir Georg Solti famed Hungarian born conductor was born on October 25th 1912 in Budapest and died on September 5th 1987 while vacationing in Antibes France. Solti was born into an upper middle-class Jewish family in Budapest as Gyorgy Stern. His family changed their last name to Solti after the rise in Anti-Semitism in Hungary after the First World War and Gyorgy became Georg. Solti showed great musical talent as a pianist and entered the Franz Liszt Academy at the age of 14 where he was to study with principally with composers Leo Wiener and Erno von Dohnyani but also was in contact there with the great Bela Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly.
Solti started his career as a pianist and first had an opportunity in 1938 to conduct a performance of the Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro in Budapest. He also was an assistant to t Toscanini at the 1937 Salzburg Festival. With the emergence of a fascist government in 1939 under Admiral Horthy that was allied with Hitler Solti felt that he had to leave Hungary. He moved to Switzerland where he eked out a living as a pianist. He astonishingly became the conductor of the Bavarian State Opera in 1946 as a young Jew while its long time conductor Hans Knappertsbusch awaited a De- Nazification hearing by the Allies (he was acquitted). He flourished at this major opera house with very little experience. Later on in the early 1950’s he became music director of the Frankfort Opera.
Solti was one of the first conductors whose international fane was in great part attributable to recordings he made his first recordings for Decca/London whom he was to record for 50 years when he accompanied German Violinist Georg Kulenkampff in some piano sonatas. As Decca entered the LP era he made critically well received recordings of Suppe Overtures and Beethoven’s Symphony # 4 both with the London Philharmonic. He made a number of recordings for Decca in the early and mid 1950’s. He attracted the attention of young and highly talented recording producer at Decca John Culshaw who had the ambition to record Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungen. Decca who already had the great Wagnerian Knappertsbusch under contract was felt to be not comfortable with the recording process and to old fashioned a man to accomplish what Culshaw wanted. Solti as a sort of dress rehearsal recorded the Third Act of Die Walkure with the celebrated Kirsten Flagstad in 1957 in Vienna. The success of this recording gave Culshaw and Solti the go ahead to record in 1958 Das Rheingold the prologue to the Ring at two and a half hours the shortest but also least popular of the four Ring Operas. It was predicted to become a commercial disaster but Solti’s magnificent conducting along with overwhelming orchestral effects captured in the new stereo medium made the recording a surprise best seller. It took Solti, Culshaw and the Vienna Philharmonic another seven years to complete the three other opera in the cycle with the great Wagnerian singers of the era including Birgit Nilsson, Hans Hotter and Wolfgang Windgassen. The recording is still a strong seller and is considered one of the great monuments of recording history.
Solti was scheduled to become the conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1962 but left when the board of directors named the 25 year old Zubin Mehta as assistant conductor without his knowledge or approval. Solti instead in 1961 became conductor of London’s Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. The opera house at the time was good but not of the highest international quality, Solti with his demonic energy vowed to make it the best opera house in the world. Solti’s demands and habit of shouting at them in fractured English rubbed the urbane English musicians and staff the wrong way. Solti who was prematurely bald gained the nickname the “Screaming Skull”. Eventually he raised Covent Garden to international standards at the same time making highly regarded symphonic recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic.
The Chicago Symphony had reached great heights under the great and feared conductor Fritz Reiner but upon his retirement and death in 1963 they hired the fine French conductor Jean Martinon who was a temperamental mismatch for the orchestra. In 1969 the Chicago Symphony hires Solti who would be the conductor for the next 22 years and they would create one of the greatest periods of any American orchestra. Solti was to make a celebrated series of recordings with the orchestra of nearly the entire major symphonic repertoire. A special highlight was the Mahler Symphony # 8”Symphony of a Thousand” made on tour in Vienna with the CSO and Viennese choral forces which as an astounding accomplishment. Solti continued to record opera in Europe. After Solti’s retirement from Chicago (he was named conductor emeritus) he kept a full schedule of concerts and recordings into his eighties. Solti who became a British citizen was knighted. Solti died suddenly of a heart attack while in full possession of his powers on September 5th 1997. News of his death was overshadowed by the death and funeral of Princess Diana
Solti was an enormously gifted conductor who had a knack for making extraordinary recordings. Solti had his critics who felt that his hyper energetic style that often highlighted the brass section where appropriate was insensitive and brutal but this is minority view. His temperament mellowed somewhat as he got older and was very generous with young artists. His success as a recording artist is highlighted by his 31 Grammy wins, more than anyone else in any field. He reconciled with Hungary performing there before his death and was buried in Budapest with state honors near his idol Bela Bartok.