Sir Georg Solti
In the Decca vaults are both Liszt concertos recorded with Sir Georg Solti and the London Philharmonic-- unedited.
7-10 July 1986 Walthamstow Assembly Hall, London
Jorge Bolet (piano), London Philharmonic Orchestra, Georg Solti
[a] LISZT Piano Concerto No.1 in E flat G124
[b] LISZT Piano Concerto No.2 in A G125
[c] SCHUBERT-LISZT Wanderer Fantasie G366
Unpublished; these recordings were considered unsatisfactory, but a planned re-make in October 1987 was cancelled and it was not possible to arrange another date before Bolet’s death. [c] was issued in November 1989.
'Shortly after Jorge recorded the Liszt with Solti, I asked him about their cooperation.
Jorge told me everything went well, and that he and Solti had a nice dinner together in order to discus all artistic issues connected with the project.
'Jorge believed the recording would be a success. Sometime later he mentioned to me that the both Liszt concertos would not be released because Solti was not happy with the balance between the piano and orchestra. I joked that it showed that the pianist did a better job then the conductor. I felt that Jorge was extremely unhappy with the decision from Decca not to bring the Liszt concertos onto the market.
'However they did issue the recorded Schubert/Liszt Wanderer Fantasy for piano and orchestra which was reviewed by Joan Chissell in 1990 where she writes:
"I was a little disappointed with the actual sound:the orchestra lacks its true warmth".'
Mattheus Smits, Netherlands
Sir Georg Solti - born György Stern; 21 October 1912 – 5 September 1997) was a Hungarian and 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 Béla Bartók, Leó Weiner, and Ernő Dohnányi.
In 1969, Solti became music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a post he held for 22 years. 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.
As I have battled to learn Hungarian on and off for many years, I give a little snippet of Solti's Magyar background.
Solti was born György Stern on Maros utca, in the Hegyvidék district of the Buda side of Budapest. He was the younger of the two children of Teréz (née Rosenbaum) and Móricz "Mór" Stern, both of whom were Jewish.
In the aftermath of the First World War it became the accepted practice in Hungary for citizens with Germanic surnames to adopt Hungarian ones. The territorial revisionist regime of Admiral Horthy enacted a series of Hungarianisation laws, including a requirement that state employees with foreign-sounding names must change them
Mór Stern, a self-employed merchant, felt no need to change his surname, but thought it prudent to change that of his children. He renamed them after Solt, a small town in central Hungary. His son's given name, György, was acceptably Hungarian and was not changed. [Sue Fox, "Georg Solti – A Childhood", The Times, 1 July 1995]
Solti enrolled at the Ernő Fodor School of Music in Budapest at the age of 10, transferring to the more prestigious Franz Liszt Academy two years later. When he was 12, he heard a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony conducted by Erich Kleiber, which gave him the ambition to become a conductor.
The faculty of the Franz Liszt Academy included some of the most eminent Hungarian musicians, including Béla Bartók, Leó Weiner, Ernő Dohnányi, and Zoltán Kodály. Solti studied under the first three, for piano, chamber music, and composition, respectively. Some sources state that he also studied with Kodály, but in his memoirs, Solti recalled that Kodály, whom he would have preferred, turned him down, leaving him to study composition first with Albert Siklós and then with Dohnányi.
After graduating from the academy in 1930, Solti was appointed to the staff of the Hungarian State Opera...
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