When death caught Sir Georg Solti by surprise Friday, the conductor was looking ahead to the celebrations of his 85th birthday next month. He would conduct his 1,000th concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and later on, he would embark on a project particularly close to his heart, a new recording of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" with Ben Heppner and Deborah Voigt in the title roles.
With Leonard Bernstein, Solti was one of the first great conductors whose entire career could be traced on recordings. In 1937 he played glockenspiel in the production of Mozart's "Die Zauberfloete" conducted by Arturo Toscanini at the Salzburg Festival, a performance that was documented on a seleophone optical tape.A decade later Solti made his first recordings for London/Decca, as collaborative pianist with the German violinist Georg Kulenkampff, and soon he was making his mark on the label as a conductor; he remained an exclusive London/Decca artist for more than 50 years, and over a period of 35 years won more Grammys than any other artist in any field.
The turning point for the still-young Hungarian came with Wagner's "Ring" Cycle, begun in 1959 and completed in 1965, an achievement that no subsequent conductor has surpassed on recordings, although several have tried. The "Ring" was the most expensive project ever undertaken by the recording industry at that point. London/Decca took a big chance on Solti, and Solti came through. Later he made important recordings of the principal operas of Mozart, Verdi, Strauss, and the other works of Wagner.
Solti favored a brilliant, focused sound that was ideal for recording, and his technique, musicianship, and professionalism made him an ideal conductor for the studio. In 1959, Solti's recording of Wagner's "Das Rheingold" was a landmark in the history of recorded sound; so, again, was Strauss's "Die Frau ohne Schatten" in 1991. There's little doubt that Solti learned a lot from the process of recording and from listening to the results; the Decca/London engineers made their own contribution to the conductor's conception of orchestral sound. In the beginning, Solti's recordings of the Chicago Symphony sounded like the Chicago Symphony in live performance; later the live performances of the Chicago Symphony came to sound uncannily like their digital doppelgangers.
Solti's recordings, like those of Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan, established him as a world figure; with the deaths of Bernstein and Karajan, Solti became the undisputed old master among today's conductors. But he didn't rest on his laurels. He continued to seek out interesting young singers like Renee Fleming and Angela Gheorghiu and to work with young orchestral players at special programs at Carnegie Hall and elsewhere. In his 80s, he recorded his first film soundtracks, for "Immortal Beloved" and "Anna Karenina."
At various points in his career, Solti held important appointments at the Frankfurt Opera and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, at the Salzburg Easter Festival, and with the London Philharmonic and the Orchestre de Paris. In this country he appeared at the Metropolitan Opera and served for a season as music director of the Dallas Symphony, but he was chiefly celebrated for his 22 seasons as music director of the Chicago Symphony (1969-1991). During most of those years, the Chicago Symphony was generally regarded as the finest orchestra in America and rivaled in Europe only by the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic.
Solti's tours to New York and Europe drove the point home. At one point, an irritated Solti said, "Chicago should erect a statue to me," and it wasn't long before the city did.
Solti saw to it that every concert or operatic performance was an event, and no one remained indifferent - people either loved what they heard, or hated it, which was how Solti liked it. On the podium, he was athletic, black-browed, vigorous to the point of pugilism; circuits of electricity seemed to run from the tips of his fingers to 100 crackling points of connection in the orchestra. Musicians nicknamed him "the screaming skull."
He was admired, and deplored, for "slash-and-burn" performances that placed excitement at the summit of musical values. But Solti was not without warmth And humor; he was superb in Viennese light music, and his sense of fitness never let him go farther than that in the direction of crossover. Offstage, Solti could be witty and gracious, although he seldom seemed without edge; Valerie Solti, a real pro in the role of conductor's wife, knew how to soften the edges.
Some conductors, like Toscanini, speed up in their old age, as if they could outrun time; others, like Bernstein, slow down, as if they were trying to pour an entire lifetime's worth of experience into each performance. Solti loved going to extremes, but he avoided these two; his late performances lost none of their bite and bruising brilliance, but the qualities of his music-making came into a more fulfilling kind of balance, and took an autumnal glow as well.