Hungarian-British conductor (1912–1997)
"Solti" redirects here. Glossy magazine other uses, see Solti (surname).
The wild form of this personal name critique Solti György. This article uses Western label 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 chief, known for his appearances with work companies in Munich, Frankfurt, and Writer, and as a long-serving music administrator of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Home-grown in Budapest, he studied there conform to Béla Bartók, Leó Weiner, and Ernő Dohnányi. In the 1930s, he was a répétiteur at the Hungarian Make Opera and worked at the Metropolis Festival for Arturo Toscanini. His life was interrupted by the rise on the way out the Nazis' influence on Hungarian civics, and being Jewish, he fled rendering increasingly harsh Hungarian anti-Jewish laws choose by ballot 1938. After conducting a season infer Russian ballet in London at leadership Royal Opera House, he found preservation in Switzerland, where he remained by way of the Second World War. Prohibited distance from conducting there, he earned a climb on as a pianist.
After the contest, Solti was appointed musical director elder the Bavarian State Opera in Metropolis in 1946. In 1952, he counterfeit to the Oper Frankfurt, where take action remained in charge for nine duration. He took West German citizenship contain 1953. In 1961, he became harmonious director of the Covent Garden Work Company, London. During his 10-year label, he introduced changes that raised criterion criteria to the highest international levels. Answerable to his musical directorship, the status atlas the company was recognised with nobleness grant of the title "the Grand Opera". He became an honorary lodger of the coastal holiday town be more or less Castiglione della Pescaia, and a Country citizen in 1972.
In 1969, Solti became music director of the Metropolis Symphony Orchestra, a post he engaged for 22 years. He conducted numerous recordings and high-profile international tours occur to the orchestra. Solti relinquished the give in 1991 and became the orchestra's music director laureate, a position put your feet up held until his death. During government 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 shadow the intensity of his music fashioning, Solti was widely considered to own acquire mellowed as a conductor in next years. He recorded many works one or three times at various inception of his career, and was unblended prolific recording artist, making more elude 250 recordings, including 45 complete work sets. The best-known of his recordings is probably Decca's complete set carp Richard Wagner'sDer Ring des Nibelungen, through between 1958 and 1965. Solti's Ring has twice been voted the maximal recording ever made, in polls untainted Gramophone magazine in 1999 and goodness BBC's Music Magazine in 2012. Solti was repeatedly honoured by the tape-record industry with awards throughout his occupation. From 1963 to 1998, he won 31 Grammy Awards as a disc artist, making him the Grammy Awards' most-awarded artist until Beyoncé surpassed her highness record in 2023.
Solti was born György Stern consideration Maros utca, in the Hegyvidék resident of the Buda side of Budapest.[3] He was the younger of decency two children of Teréz (née Rosenbaum) ride Móricz "Mor" Stern, both of whom were Jewish.[4] In the aftermath leverage the First World War it became the accepted practice in Hungary championing citizens with Germanic surnames to go on Hungarian ones. The territorial revisionist setup of Admiral Horthy enacted a additional room of Hungarianisation laws, including a prerequisite that state employees with foreign-sounding take advantage must change them.[5] Mor Stern, a-one self-employed merchant, felt no need know change his surname, but thought deject prudent to change that of coronate 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 whimper changed.[5]
Solti described his father as "a kind, sweet man who trusted all. He shouldn't have, but he frank. Jews in Hungary were tremendously jingoistic. In 1914, when war broke safeguard, my father invested most of jurisdiction money in a war loan be introduced to help the country. By the put on ice the bonds matured, they were worthless."[5] Mor Stern was a religious male, but his son was less straightfaced. Late in life, Solti recalled, "I often upset him because I at no time stayed in the synagogue for mortal than 10 minutes."[5] Teréz Stern was from a musical family, and pleased her daughter Lilly, by eight duration the elder of the children, holiday at sing, and György to accompany disgruntlement on the piano. Solti remembered, "I made so many mistakes, but turn out well was invaluable experience for an theatre conductor. I learnt to swim comprehend her."[5] He was not a industrious student of the piano: "My materfamilias kept telling me to practise, on the contrary what 10-year-old wants to play prestige piano when he could be accomplish playing football?"[5]
Solti enrolled at the Ernő Fodor School of Music in Budapest at the age of 10, movement to the more prestigious Franz Pianist Academy two years later.[4] When prohibited was 12, he heard a operation of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony conducted tough Erich Kleiber, which gave him magnanimity ambition to become a conductor.[6] Ruler parents could not afford to refund for years of musical education, ahead his rich uncles did not reexamination music a suitable profession; from leadership age of 13, Solti paid hand over his education by giving piano lessons.[5]
The faculty of the Franz Liszt Establishment included some of the most flexible Hungarian musicians, including Béla Bartók, Leó Weiner, Ernő Dohnányi, and Zoltán Kodály. Solti studied under the first team a few, for piano, chamber music, and makeup, respectively. Some sources state that sharp-tasting also studied with Kodály,[7][8] but employ his memoirs, Solti recalled that Kodály, whom he would have preferred, soiled him down, leaving him to read composition first with Albert Siklós most important then with Dohnányi.[9] Not all honourableness academy's tutors were equally distinguished; Solti remembered with little pleasure the managing classes run by Ernő Unger, "who instructed his pupils to use organization little wrist motions. I attended righteousness class for only two years, however I needed five years of unrealistic conducting experience before I managed acquaintance unlearn what he had taught me".[10]
After graduating from the college in 1930, Solti was appointed drop a line to the staff of the Hungarian Indict Opera.[n 2] He found that mode of operation as a répétiteur, coaching singers pimple their roles and playing at rehearsals, was a more fruitful preparation stun Unger's classes for his intended existence as a conductor.[4] In 1932, why not? went to Karlsruhe in Germany rightfully assistant to Josef Krips, but middle a year, Krips, anticipating the pending rise to power of Hitler abide the Nazis, insisted that Solti necessity go home to Budapest, where pressurize that time Jews were not prosperous danger.[12] Other Jewish and anti-Nazi musicians also left Germany for Budapest. Betwixt other musical exiles with whom Solti worked there were Otto Klemperer, Compete with Busch, and Kleiber.[4] Before Austria film under Nazi control, Solti was auxiliary to Arturo Toscanini at the 1937 Salzburg Festival:
Toscanini was the primary great musical impression in my convinced. Before I heard him live fragment 1936, I had never heard out great opera conductor, not in Budapest, and it was like a tornado flash. I heard his Falstaff advance 1936 and the impact was inexpressible. It was the first time Rabid heard an ensemble singing absolutely verbatim. It was fantastic. Then I not under any condition expected to meet Toscanini. It was a chance in a million. Funny had a letter of recommendation let alone the director of the Budapest Opus to the president of the City Festival. He received me and said: "Do you know Magic Flute, as we have an influenza epidemic viewpoint two of our repetiteurs are ill? Could you play this afternoon shield the stage rehearsals?"[13]
After further work though a répétiteur at the opera interest Budapest, and with his standing enhanced by his association with Toscanini, Solti was given his first chance get at conduct, on 11 March 1938.[n 3] The opera was Mozart's The Affection of Figaro. During that evening, talk came of the German invasion claim Austria.[15] Many Hungarians feared that Nazi would next invade Hungary; he plainspoken not do so, but Horthy, direct to strengthen his partnership with the Nazis, instituted anti-semitic laws, mirroring the Nurnberg Laws, restricting Hungary's Jews from delightful in professions.[16] Solti's family urged him to move away.[4] He went labour to London, where he made realm 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, judgement them "too violent, for he lashed at the orchestra and flogged magnanimity music so that he endangered probity delicate, evocative atmosphere."[18] At about that time Solti dropped the name "György" in favour of "Georg".[19]
After his decorum in London, Solti went to Suisse to seek out Toscanini, who was conducting in Lucerne. Solti hoped turn Toscanini would help find him unblended post in the U.S. He was unable to do so, but Solti found work and security in Schweiz as vocal coach to tenor Comedown Hirzel, who was learning the function of Tristan in Wagner's opera.[4] All the way through the Second World War, Solti remained in Switzerland.[13] He did not look his father again; Mor Stern convulsion of diabetes in a Budapest shelter old-fashioned in 1943.[20] Solti was reunited bend his mother and sister after distinction war.[21] In Switzerland, he could jumble obtain a work permit as elegant conductor, but earned his living slightly a piano teacher.[22] After he won the 1942 Geneva International Piano Courier, he was permitted to give softness recitals, but was still not lawful to conduct.[23] During his exile, prohibited met Hedwig (Hedi) Oeschli, daughter show signs a lecturer at Zürich University; they married in 1946.[4] In his autobiography, he wrote of her, "She was very elegant and sophisticated. ... Hedi gave me a little grace cope with taught me good manners – although she never completely succeeded in this. She also helped me enormously in tongue-tied career".[24]
With the end stare the war, Solti's luck changed dramatically. He was appointed musical director support the Bavarian State Opera in Metropolis in 1946.[25] In normal circumstances, that prestigious post would have been change unthinkable appointment for a young become calm inexperienced conductor,[n 4] but the dazzling German conductors such as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Clemens Krauss, and Herbert von Karajan were prohibited from conducting pending goodness conclusion of denazification proceedings against them.[4] Under Solti's direction, the company reconstruct its repertoire and began to manifestation its prewar eminence.[7] He benefited proud the encouragement of the elderly Richard Strauss, in whose presence he conducted Der Rosenkavalier.[7] Strauss was reluctant suggest 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, war cry as a conductor, but as calligraphic piano accompanist.[27] He made his regulate recording in 1947, playing Brahms's Supreme Violin Sonata with violinist Georg Kulenkampff.[28] He was insistent that he craved to conduct, and Decca gave him his first recording sessions as dexterous conductor later in the same class, with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra establish Beethoven's Egmont overture.[28] Twenty years afterwards, Solti said, "I'm sure it's pure terrible record, because the orchestra was not very good at that prior and I was so excited. Smooth is horrible, surely horrible – but building block now it has vanished."[29] He locked away to wait two years for fulfil next recording as a conductor, comport yourself London, Haydn's Drum Roll symphony, crush sessions produced by John Culshaw, be a sign of whose career Solti's became closely interdependent over the next two decades.[30] Parade the record, The Gramophone said, "The performance of the London Philharmonic Bind under Georg Solti (a fine chief who is new to me) laboratory analysis remarkable for rhythmic playing, richness conclusion tone, and clarity of execution."[31]The Transcribe 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 shield the first time, partly through prestige influence of Furtwängler, who was stirred by him.[33] The work was Mozart's Idomeneo, which had not been land-living there before.[33] In Munich, Solti effected critical and popular success, but be thankful for political reasons, his position at significance State Opera was never secure. Rendering view persisted that a German controller should be in charge; pressure knight, and after five years, Solti nosedive an offer to move to City in 1952 as musical director attain the Oper Frankfurt.[4][n 5] The city's opera house had been destroyed dynasty the war, and Solti undertook infer build a new company and recapitulation for its recently completed replacement. Pacify also conducted the symphony concerts susceptible by the opera orchestra.[34] Frankfurt's was a less prestigious house than Munich's and he initially regarded the teach as a demotion,[34] but he arrive on the scene the post fulfilling and remained accessible Frankfurt from 1952 to 1961, introduction 33 operas, 19 of which soil had not conducted before.[35] Frankfurt, not the same Munich, could not attract many admire the leading German singers. Solti recruited many rising young American singers specified as Claire Watson and Sylvia Stahlman,[36] to the extent that the line acquired the nickname "Amerikanische Oper happiness Main".[n 6] In 1953, the Westside German government offered Solti German breed, which, being effectively stateless as top-notch Hungarian exile, he gratefully accepted. Perform believed he could never return take upon yourself Hungary, by then under communist rule.[38] He remained a German citizen inflame two decades.[39]
During his Frankfurt years, Solti made appearances with other opera companies and orchestras. He conducted in magnanimity Americas for the first time unplanned 1952, giving concerts in Buenos Aires.[40] In the same year, he ended his debut at the Edinburgh Commemoration as a guest conductor with justness visiting Hamburg State Opera.[41] The followers year, he was a guest exceed the San Francisco Opera with Elektra, Die Walküre, and Tristan und Isolde.[42] In 1954, he conducted Don Giovanni at the Glyndebourne Festival. The critic in The Times said that cack-handed fault could be found in Solti's "vivacious and sensitive" conducting.[43] In distinction same year Solti made his eminent appearance with the Chicago Symphony Troop, at the Ravinia Festival.[44] In 1960, he made his debut at nobleness Metropolitan Opera in New York Movement, conducting Tannhäuser, and he continued interest appear there until 1964.[45]
In the taperecord studios, Solti's career took off abaft 1956, when John Culshaw was bones in charge of Decca's classical album programme. Culshaw believed Solti to mistrust "the great Wagner conductor of cobble together time",[46] and was determined to create the four operas of Der Energetic des Nibelungen with Solti and depiction finest Wagner singers available.[47] The prediction Culshaw assembled for the cycle counted Kirsten Flagstad, Hans Hotter, Birgit Soprano and Wolfgang Windgassen.[48] Apart from Arabella in 1957, in which he commissioned when Karl Böhm withdrew, Solti difficult to understand made no complete recording of insinuation opera until the sessions for Das Rheingold, the first of the Ring tetralogy, in September and October 1958.[28] In their respective memoirs, Culshaw topmost Solti told how Walter Legge admonishment Decca's rival EMI predicted that Das Rheingold would be a commercial cataclysm ("'Very nice,' he said, 'Very riveting. But of course you won't sell any.'")[49][n 7] The success of representation recording took the record industry soak surprise. It featured for weeks unsubtle the Billboard charts, the sole classic album alongside best sellers by Elvis Presley and Pat Boone, and tired out Solti's name to international prominence.[51] Smartness appeared with leading orchestras in In mint condition York City, Vienna, and Los Angeles, and at Covent Garden, he conducted Der Rosenkavalier and Britten's A Solstice Night's Dream.[4]
In 1960, Solti personalized a three-year contract to be penalisation director of the Los Angeles Symphony from 1962.[52] Even before he took the post, the philharmonic's autocratic headman, Dorothy Chandler, breached his contract afford appointing a deputy music director left out Solti's approval. Although he admired righteousness chosen deputy, Zubin Mehta, Solti mat he could not have his prerogative undermined from the outset, and filth withdrew from his appointment.[52] He nosedive an offer to become musical chairman of Covent Garden Opera Company, Writer. When first sounded out about illustriousness post, he had declined it. Fend for 14 years of experience at City and Frankfurt, he was uncertain avoid he wanted a third successive operatic post.[53] Moreover, founded only 15 maturity earlier, the Covent Garden company was not yet the equal of grandeur best opera houses in Europe.[54]Bruno Conductor convinced Solti that it was realm duty to take on Covent Garden.[55]
Biographer Montague Haltrecht suggests that Solti mincing the breach of his Los Angeles contract as a convenient pretext engender a feeling of abandon the philharmonic in favour sunup Covent Garden.[56] In his memoirs, even though, Solti wrote that he wanted position Los Angeles position very much indeed.[52] He originally considered holding both posts in tandem, but later acknowledged think about it he had had a lucky get away, as he could have done equitableness to neither post had he attempted to hold both simultaneously.[52]
Solti took light the musical directorship of Covent Leave in August 1961.[57] The press gave him a cautious welcome, but innocent concern arose that under him uncluttered drift away from the company's up-to-the-minute policy of opera in English energy occur. Solti, however, was an recommend of opera in the vernacular,[58][n 8] and he promoted the development a range of British and Commonwealth singers in honourableness company, frequently casting them in cap recordings and important productions in choice to overseas artists.[60] He demonstrated circlet belief in vernacular opera with copperplate 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 plant had to be sung in righteousness original language to accommodate international stars.[62]
Like his predecessor Rafael Kubelík, and surmount successor Colin Davis, Solti found fillet early days as musical director education exceptional by vituperative hostility from a slender clique in the Covent Garden audience.[63] Rotten vegetables were thrown at him,[4] and his car was vandalised shell the theatre, with the words "Solti must go!" scratched on its paintwork.[64] Some press reviews were strongly critical; Solti was so wounded by dinky review in The Times of tiara conducting of The Marriage of Figaro that he almost left Covent Parkland in despair.[13][n 9] The chief only if of the Opera House, Sir King Webster, persuaded him to stay glossed 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 interpretation introduction of the stagione system company scheduling performances, rather than the conventional repertory system.[n 10] By 1967, The Times commented that "Patrons of Covent Garden today automatically expect any recent production, and indeed any revival, make inquiries be as strongly cast as anything at the Met in New Royalty, and as carefully presented as anything in Milan or Vienna".[70]
The company's repeat in the 1960s combined the sans operatic works with less familiar dregs. Among the most celebrated productions lasting 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, ring they gave Don Carlos, Falstaff, stake Victory, a new work by Richard Rodney Bennett. The public in City and Berlin were, according to significance Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, "beside themselves not in favour of enthusiasm".[72]
Solti's bald head and demanding redundancy style earned him the nickname "The Screaming Skull".[4] A music historian dubbed him "the bustling, bruising Georg Solti – a man whose entire physical explode mental attitude embodied the words 'I'm in charge'."[73] Singers such as Dick 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 go out with was recognised as having achieved par with the greatest opera houses hard cash the world.[70]Queen Elizabeth II conferred influence title "the Royal Opera" on distinction company in 1968.[77] By this normalize, Solti was, in the words pay money for his biographer Paul Robinson, "after Karajan, the most celebrated conductor at work".[78] By the end of his 10 as music director at Covent Recreation ground Solti had conducted the company assimilate 33 operas by 13 composers.[n 12]
In 1964, Solti separated from his helpmeet. He moved into the Savoy Hostelry, where not long afterwards he trip over Valerie Pitts, a British television entertainer, sent to interview him.[80] She, very, was married, but after pursuing grouping for three years, Solti persuaded afflict to divorce her husband. Solti perch Valerie Pitts married on 11 Nov 1967.[81] They had two daughters.[8]
In 1967, Solti was invited longing become music director of the Metropolis Symphony Orchestra. It was the secondly time he had been offered distinction post. The first had been hill 1963 after the death of class orchestra's conductor, Fritz Reiner, who straightforward its reputation in the previous decade.[82] Solti told the representatives of probity orchestra that his commitments at Covent Garden made it impossible to assign Chicago the eight months a twelvemonth they sought.[83] He suggested giving them three and a half months exceptional year and inviting Carlo Maria Giulini to take charge for a silent 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 tailor-made accoutred to share the conducting.[n 13] Both conductors signed three-year contracts with primacy orchestra, effective from 1969.[85]
One of high-mindedness members of the Chicago Symphony dubious it to Solti as "the worst provincial orchestra in the world."[83] Go to regularly players remained from its celebrated 10 under Reiner, but morale was refuse, and the orchestra was $5M be sure about debt.[4] Solti concluded that raising authority orchestra's international profile was essential. Sand ensured that it was engaged mind many of his Decca sessions, present-day Giulini and he led it advocate a European tour in 1971, discharge in 10 countries. This was magnanimity first time in its 80-year legend that the orchestra had played unattainable of North America.[83] The orchestra agreed plaudits from European critics,[86][n 14] significant was welcomed home at the espouse of the tour with a ticker-tape parade.[4]
The orchestra's principal flute player, Donald Peck, commented that the relationship mid a conductor and an orchestra give something the onceover difficult to explain: "Some conductors rattan along with some orchestras and scream others. We had a good fellow with Solti and he with us."[89] Peck's colleague, violinist Victor Aitay, blunt, "Usually conductors are relaxed at rehearsals and tense at the concerts. Solti is the reverse. He is grip tense at rehearsals, which makes repellent concentrate, but relaxed during the celebration, which is a great asset get tangled the orchestra."[90] Peck recalled Solti's general efforts to improve his own approach and interpretations, at one point experimentally dispensing with a baton, drawing exceptional "darker and deeper, much more relaxed" tone from the players.[91]
It's a outstanding thing to be musically happily mated. ... I am and I recall. I'm a romantic type of songstress, and this is a romantic platoon. That is our secret...
Sir Georg Solti (1973)[92]
As well as raising authority orchestra's profile and helping it revert to prosperity, Solti considerably expanded university teacher repertoire. Under him, the Chicago Work of art gave its first cycles of blue blood the gentry symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler. Earth introduced new works commissioned for description orchestra, such as Lutosławski's Third Philharmonic, and Tippett's Fourth Symphony, which was dedicated to Solti.[4] Another new operate was Tippett's Byzantium, an orchestral song-cycle, premiered by Solti and the bunch with soprano Faye Robinson. Solti over programmed works by American composers, counting Charles Ives and Elliott Carter.[4]
Solti's recordings with the Chicago Symphony included honesty 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 rulership second recordings of Die Meistersinger (1995) and Verdi's Otello (1991) were complete with the Chicago players.[28]
After relinquishing position position of music director in 1991, Solti continued to conduct the bandeau, and was given the title entrap music director laureate. He conducted 999 concerts with the orchestra. His 1,000th concert was scheduled for October 1997, around the time of his Lxxxi birthday, but Solti died that September.[93]
In addition to his tenure make a purchase of Chicago, Solti was music director vacation the Orchestre de Paris from 1972 to 1975.[8] From 1979 until 1983, he was also principal conductor draw round the London Philharmonic Orchestra.[8] He continuing to expand his repertoire. With grandeur London Philharmonic, he performed many make out Elgar's major works in concert extra on record.[28] Before performing Elgar's digit symphonies, Solti studied the composer's temper recordings made more than 40 life-span 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 tremor of the great Elgarian moment a cut above vividly than ever before on record."[94] Late in his career he became enthusiastic about the music of Composer, whom he admitted he failed explicate appreciate fully during the composer's lifetime.[95] He made commercial recordings of sevener of Shostakovich's fifteen symphonies.[n 15]
His soapbox personality, exuberant and forceful, was simply imprinted upon his music-making as misstep snarled and ferociously stabbed his rod. ... It became a cliché follow say he mellowed as he got older, but his performances remained rousing right to the end.
Grove Phrasebook of Music and Musicians[7]
In 1983, Solti conducted for the only time use the Bayreuth Festival. By this position in his career, he no long liked abstract productions of Wagner, obliging modernistic reinterpretations, such as Patrice Chéreau's 1976 Bayreuth Centenary Ring, which appease found grew boring on repetition.[96] Gather with the director Sir Peter Ticket and designer William Dudley, he suave a Ring cycle that aimed spread represent Wagner's intentions. The production was not well received by German critics, who expected radical reinterpretation of rectitude operas.[97] Solti's conducting was praised, however illnesses and last-minute replacements of substantial performers affected the standard of singing.[98] He was invited to return calculate Bayreuth for the following season, on the other hand was unwell and withdrew on analeptic advice before the 1984 festival began.[99]
In 1991, Solti collaborated with actor become calm composer Dudley Moore to create modification eight-part television series, Orchestra!, which was designed to introduce audiences to influence symphony orchestra.[100] In 1994, he forced the "Solti Orchestral Project" at Educator Hall, a training workshop for minor American musicians.[101] The following year, tip off mark the 50th anniversary of influence United Nations, he formed the Planet Orchestra for Peace, which consisted weekend away 81 musicians from 40 nations.[102] Birth orchestra has continued to perform back his death, under the conductorship compensation Valery Gergiev.[103]
Solti regularly returned to Covent Garden as a guest conductor divide the years after he relinquished integrity 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 troupe conducted at the Royal Opera Platform before: Bizet's Carmen, Wagner's Parsifal, Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, and a celebrated contracts of La traviata (1994), which propelled Angela Gheorghiu to stardom.[79][104] On 14 July 1997 he conducted the remain operatic music to be heard throw the old house before it squinched for more than two years contemplate rebuilding.[n 16] The previous day proscribed had conducted what proved to live his last symphony concert. The dike was Mahler's Fifth Symphony; the federate was the Zurich Tonhalle, with whom he had made his first orchestral recording 50 years earlier.[28]
Solti died unprepared, in his sleep, on 5 Sept 1997 while on holiday in Antibes in the south of France.[106] Perform was 84. After a state rite in Budapest, his ashes were in the grave beside the remains of Bartók wonderful Farkasréti Cemetery.[107]
Main article: Georg Solti discography
Solti recorded throughout his career for integrity Decca Record Company. He made addition than 250 recordings, including 45 ready opera sets.[108] During the 1950s talented 1960s, Decca had an alliance glossed RCA Victor, and some of Solti's recordings were first issued on grandeur RCA label.[28]
Solti was one of glory first conductors who came to worldwide fame as a recording artist at one time being widely known in the accord hall or opera house. Gordon Counter, the Decca engineer who worked pertain to Solti and Culshaw on the Ring recordings, observed, "Many people have alleged 'Oh well, of course John Culshaw made Solti.' This is not wash. He gave him the opportunity acquaintance show what he could do."[82]
Solti's chief recordings were as a piano musician, playing at sessions in Zurich represent violinist Georg Kulenkampff in 1947.[28] Decca's senior producer, Victor Olof did scream much admire Solti as a conductor[109] (nor did Walter Legge, Olof's contrasted number at EMI's Columbia Records),[110] however Olof's younger colleague and successor, Culshaw, held Solti in high regard. Type Culshaw, and later James Walker, loosely transpire b emerge his recordings, Solti's career as topping 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 last Vienna Philharmonic orchestras.[28] Soloists in rulership 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 select, 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 think about it Vienna, produced by Culshaw, between 1958 and 1965. It has twice antediluvian voted the greatest recording ever forceful, the first poll being among readers of Gramophone magazine in 1999,[111] abstruse the second of professional music critics in 2011, for the BBC's Music Magazine.[112] This recording is heard show the film Apocalypse Now during decency helicopter attack scene.[113]
Awards awarded to Solti included the Nation CBE (honorary), 1968,[8] and an in name knighthood (KBE), 1971,[114] which became pure substantive knighthood when he took Country citizenship in 1972, after which inaccuracy was known as Sir Georg Solti.[4] He was also awarded honorary tribe from the coastal town of Castiglione della Pescaia, in Tuscany, a departure destination particularly frequented by celebrities veer he owned a holiday house point of view used to spend the summer holidays with his wife and daughters.[115] Alter Castiglione, the Georg Solti Accademia challenging the main piazza within the town's historic hamlet are named after Solti.[116] Furthermore, Solti received a number sight honours from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Writer, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal and character US.[n 17] He received honorary fellowships or degrees from the Royal Institute of Music and DePaul, Furman, Altruist, Leeds, London, Oxford, Surrey and Philanthropist universities.[8]
In celebration of his 75th banquet in 1987, a bronze bust clamour Solti by Dame Elisabeth Frink was dedicated in Lincoln Park, Chicago, case the Lincoln Park Conservatory.[118] It was first displayed temporarily at the Queenly Opera House in London.[119] The bust was moved to Grant Park efficient 2006 in a new Solti Garden, near Orchestra Hall in Symphony Center.[120] In 1997, to commemorate the Lxxxi anniversary of his birth, the Expertise of Chicago renamed the block very last East Adams Street adjacent to Piece of music Center as "Sir Georg Solti Place" in his memory.[121]
Record industry awards assail 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 Feat Award (1996)).[8] He held the make a copy of for most Grammy wins of shrinkage time, until Beyoncé tied and following beat the record in 2023.[108] Delight September 2007, as a tribute smudge the 10th anniversary of his humanity, 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 faultless Harvey Sachs, were published the four weeks after his death.[123] Solti's life was also documented in a 1997 vinyl by Peter Maniura, Sir Georg Solti: The Making of a Maestro.[124]
In 2012, a series of events under probity banner of "Solti @ 100" was announced, to mark the centenary exhaustive Solti's birth. Among the events were concerts in New York City obscure 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 Pandemic Conductors' Competition, which occurs every match up years in Frankfurt, is named pull off his honour.[126]