Lionel Hampton
American jazz musician (1908-2002)
Sir Georg Solti 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 Bela Bartok, Leo Weiner, and Erno Dohnanyi.
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About the Georg Solti
Sir Georg Solti 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 Bela Bartok, Leo Weiner, and Erno Dohnanyi. In the 1930s, he was a repetiteur 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 of Jewish background, 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 Beyonce surpassed his record in 2023.
13 Quotes by Georg Solti
- 1.
The stag tells him that he is the eldest of the sons – the father’s favorite – and he warns the father that if he tries to shoot any of the stags, their antlers will tear him to pieces.
Georg SoltiHungarian-British conductor (1912-1997)
- 2.
Friends are very important to me, and I have always had many of them. There are probably many reasons why this is so, but two seem to me more valid than any of the others I am a naturally friendly person, and I hate to be alone.
Georg SoltiHungarian-British conductor (1912-1997)
- 3.
The experience awakened ‘my tremendous musical ambition, which has never subsided to this day.
Georg SoltiHungarian-British conductor (1912-1997)
- 4.
My entire learning process is slow, because I have no visual memory.
Georg SoltiHungarian-British conductor (1912-1997)
- 5.
I wanted to get away from my past and everything connected with it.
Georg SoltiHungarian-British conductor (1912-1997)
- 6.
I can only hope that neither of my daughters was scarred by their upbringing.
Georg SoltiHungarian-British conductor (1912-1997)
- 7.
I would never have become music director of the Chicago Symphony, which would have been an extremely sad loss.
Georg SoltiHungarian-British conductor (1912-1997)
- 8.
The academy gave me a grounding in discipline and hard work that has sustained me throughout my life, and the lessons I learned there I now try to impress on young people.
Georg SoltiHungarian-British conductor (1912-1997)
- 9.
I was born and trained to communicate music, just as the sons were born and trained to hunt, and I was lucky to have grown up in Hungary, a country that lives and breathes music-that has a passionate belief in the power of music as a celebration of life.
Georg SoltiHungarian-British conductor (1912-1997)
- 10.
During the first six years of my life, Hungary was one of the most important components of the Habsburg dynasty’s vast Austro-Hungarian Empire, but after World War I it became an independent national entity.
Georg SoltiHungarian-British conductor (1912-1997)
- 11.
Although both sides of my family were religious, I was never forced to practice the Jewish faith. I did not really rebel against it, but then, as today, I disliked organized religion. I have a strange inhibition about praying with others.
Georg SoltiHungarian-British conductor (1912-1997)
- 12.
After about six months, I told my mother that I wanted the lessons to stop, and she was intelligent enough not to force me to continue. Besides, the lessons cost money, which was anything but abundant in our household.
Georg SoltiHungarian-British conductor (1912-1997)
- 13.
But one day, when I was still young, I was parted from my family and left my native country. I hunted and searched for music, and destiny turned me into the object of my hunt. The circumstances of life became my ‘antlers’ and prevented me from returning home.
Georg SoltiHungarian-British conductor (1912-1997)