With a box Solti Europe. The Orchestral RecordingsDecca comes full circle with its orchestral reissues dedicated to Georg Solti (1912-1997), Hungarian conductor whom Yannick Nézet-Séguin has in his sights since he holds the record for the greatest number of victories at the Grammy Awards, a prize which he won 31 times between 1963 and 1998, making him the most honored artist, until Beyoncé took this title from him in 2023.
The safe Solti Europewhich follows Solti. Chicago Complete Recordingspublished in 2017, and flamboyant Solti London. The Orchestral Recordingswhich encouraged us to do a first portrait of the chef in February 2022covers the conductor’s entire career over fifty years.
A visionary distributor
It is, in a symbolic and moving way, in Zurich, that everything comes together and unravels, in CDs 1 and 4 of this box set. The first CD brings together recordings from January and July 1947. Georg Solti, born György Stern in Budapest in 1912 (as with Ormandy, the surname Solti refers to a Hungarian town, Solt), was at the time still known as a pianist in Switzerland, where his family took refuge after fleeing Hungary in 1939 and where György won the Geneva Piano Competition in 1942.
Solti had, however, already clearly oriented his career towards conducting, having been, in Salzburg, assistant to Bruno Walter in 1935 and Arturo Toscanini in 1937, then conductor at the Budapest Opera from 1938.
In the immediate post-war period, Solti was helped by two decisive figures: Edward Kilenyi, an American of Hungarian ancestry, pianist and music steward of the Allied Armed Forces in Bavaria, who opened the doors of operas in 1946 to him. Germany, and Moritz Rosengarten, Swiss businessman. By combining the biography of Solti and that of producer John Culshaw, we can understand the profile of the discreet Rosengarten, who became artistic director of Decca Classics. Then the Swiss distributor of Decca records, Rosengarten had the vision that Decca could emerge from England and become a company that recorded throughout Europe, and then the world.
It was Rosengarten who signed an exclusive contract with Georg Solti and first had him record, as pianist, the three sonatas for violin and piano by Brahms with Georg Kulenkampff, material from CD 1. In his biography, Solti comments on his first recordings as follows: “I was to be paid five hundred Swiss francs for each of the three sessions, and the contract was valid until the end of 1948… I still played the piano well at the time and naturally lent myself to registration process. I wasn’t nervous and the recordings were successful. »
What we find on the first two CDs are the only recordings with Kulenkampff, who died prematurely at the age of 50 in October 1948. On CD 2, we will also find two Schubert lieder sung by tenor Max Lichtegg, a little “return elevator”, this Lichtegg having been the one who had introduced Solti to Rosengarten.
Rosengarten would then attract the Vienna Philharmonic to Decca, which would pave the way ten years later for the legendary Ring by Wagner, conducted by the same Solti.
Sanguine Chief
It is an incredible coincidence that, chronologically, the journey ends, on July 13, 1997, with a 5e Symphony by Mahler, a work so emblematic of Solti’s career, recorded in Zurich with the Tonhalle Orchestra. This final engraving (CD 4) is very little known. From CD 5 to CD 44, we therefore have a route which brings together a number of orchestras, except Chicago and the London orchestras.
What is fascinating here is the breadth of the double spectrum: that of partnerships and that of time. The two sometimes intersect. Let’s take the major block: “Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic”, which represents about half of the box set (23 CDs). We have the late engravings of the digital era, with for example theSymphonies nbone 5, 8 And 9 by Schubert, famous but less decisive than we think, the Requiem and the Mass in C by Mozart. But there are above all the symphonic records from the period of Wagner recordings (1959-1966): Symphonies nbone 3, 5 And 7 by Beethoven, notbone 7 And 8 by Bruckner, overtures by Wagner, symphonies by Schumann (the first two, in particular, are fantastic). It all culminated, in 1967, in the legendary Requiem by Verdi with the shock quartet: Sutherland, Horne, Pavarotti, Talvela. The jewel of jewels here is the disc of the four overtures by Franz von Suppé in 1959. We have never done better and no one conducts like this anymore. Listen The Queen of Spades.
This serious Solti, with the Société des concerts du Conservatoire, in Paris, in 1956, the Symphonies nbone 2 And 5 by Tchaikovsky. Briefly appointed musical director of the Paris Orchestra, in 1974 he recorded a disc of symphonic poems by Liszt there.
At the same level of interest as the Parisian discs of 1956 and the Viennese discs of the turn of the 1960s, there are 3 CDs with the Israel Philharmonic in 1957 and 1958, with one of the most beautiful Tchaikovsky serenades in history and a sparkling coupling of Symphony no 4 by Mendelssohn (one of the best of the 1950s) and the Symphony noto 5 by Schubert. Last ancient wonder: the 4e Symphony by Mahler engraved in Amsterdam with Sylvia Stahlman in February 1961.
Insignificant prices
Several records document Solti the methodical, but not very expressive leader. This is how it isA hero’s life by Strauss, little known from 1978 in Vienna, to which we would very little prefer the Alpine Symphony on Bavarian Radio the following year. Solti also recorded three discs with the Berlin Philharmonic. A program of famous Russian works (Night on Bald Mountainetc.) where it is difficult to recognize the orchestra and two impressive late CDs (1994 and 1996): a remake of Zarathustra and the Missa solemnis by Beethoven.
None of the discs in the box set, even the most brilliant, earned Solti any of his 31 Grammy awards, and only the one that was sold at the time as his “latest recording”, a Hungarian program with the Psalmus hungaricus recorded with the Budapest Festival Orchestra in 1997, is one of 74 nominations obtained over time.
This does not detract from the artistic quality of this box. Indeed, one day it will be necessary to clearly explain that if this box set has nothing to do with the Grammy Awards, it is because the Grammy Awards have, in “niche” disciplines like classical, nothing to do with music or any artistic valorization.
Explanation. The statuettes are awarded by the members of an “academy”, the former National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, a very large organization organized into geographical sections by major urban crossroads (New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, etc.) . Any member of this academy is free to vote in any category, even those that almost no one cares about or knows about. In classical music, those who haven’t heard a note all year and don’t have the decency to abstain vote for “those they’ve heard of”, the artists who appear on TV, those which have already had prices (and therefore must be good) or push local preferences. The Chicago section was very important, supportive and effective during Solti’s tenure, who found himself breaking records with recordings that were sometimes among his worst (Requiem aGerman and symphonies of Brahms, remake of the 2e And 9e by Mahler, 9e by Beethoven) which did not deserve the slightest rattle.
On the other hand, what the Grammy Awards recognized from the start was Solti’s eminence as an opera conductor. This is what now remains for Decca to reissue systematically (and it will be flamboyant). As such, it is impossible not to mention the brilliant reissue throughout this year 2023 of the four parts of the legendary Ring of the Nibelungs by Solti in a very luxurious remastered version published in hybrid SACD (stereo), in boxes with a format corresponding to the old LP boxes. Anyone equipped with a SACD player will fully benefit, thanks to DSD technology, from tape work that even surpasses the latest one, which was only around ten years old.
It was in Antibes, on the night of September 5, 1997, a week before directing The Marriage of Figaro in London, that this prolific chef died in his sleep at the age of 84. A surprisingly peaceful disappearance for a hyperactive musician with a now complete symphonic musical profile, often exciting and very well outlined here.