Georg Solti

Hungarian conductor Georg Solti ranked among the foremost interpreters of Romantic and Modern repertoire throughout the twentieth century. Across a six-decade career he amassed a discography exceeding 250 recordings and collected thirty-two Grammy Awards.

Born in Budapest in 1912, Solti grew up with an older sister. His mother, who belonged to a musical household, fostered his early interest in music. As a boy he studied piano and accompanied his sister, herself a singer, yet he often lacked the discipline to practice consistently. At age ten he entered the Ernö Fodor School of Music in Budapest; two years later he transferred to the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, where his teachers included Béla Bartók for piano, Leó Weiner for chamber music, and Ernö Dohnányi for composition. Around 1925 Solti began offering piano lessons to finance his training after his immediate family could no longer support him and more affluent relatives declined assistance, regarding music as an unreliable livelihood.

Following graduation in 1930, he took his first professional post as répétiteur at the Hungarian State Opera. Two years later he moved to Karlsruhe, Germany, to serve as assistant to Josef Krips. In 1933 Krips urged him to return to Hungary ahead of Hitler’s ascent, advice Solti heeded by resuming his duties at the Hungarian State Opera. Budapest had become a refuge for other Jewish and anti-Nazi artists, among them Otto Klemperer, Fritz Busch, and Erich Kleiber. Although Solti benefited from working alongside these senior conductors, his decisive encounter occurred in 1936 with Arturo Toscanini, who led Verdi’s Falstaff; Solti attended the performances and met the maestro afterward. That meeting produced an appointment as Toscanini’s assistant in 1937 and Solti’s own conducting debut the following year in Budapest. As Hungary grew increasingly hostile toward Jews, he relocated to London, where he was named conductor at the Royal Opera House for a series of Russian ballet programs.

In 1939 Solti established himself in Switzerland, supporting himself as a pianist because he could not obtain a labor permit to conduct. He returned to the podium in 1944 with the Swiss Radio Orchestra and, two years later, was appointed musical director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. From 1952 to 1961 he led Oper Frankfurt, then spent a decade at the Covent Garden Opera in London, where he elevated the CGO Orchestra to world-class stature. During this period he recorded Wagner’s Ring Cycle, the achievement for which he remains best known; Gramophone magazine named it the greatest recording ever made in 1999, and BBC Music Magazine repeated the accolade in 2011. In 1969 he added the music directorship of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a post he retained for twenty-two years. He also served as music director of the Orchestre de Paris from 1972 to 1975, of the Paris Opera from 1971 to 1973, and of the London Philharmonic Orchestra from 1979 to 1983. After 1983 he appeared frequently as a guest conductor in France, Germany, and London, though Chicago remained the center of his activities. On 5 September 1997 Solti died in his sleep while vacationing in Antibes, France.