Memoirs - Hardcover

Solti, Sir George

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067944596X ISBN 13: 9780679445968

Publisher: Knopf, 1997

Synopsis

One of the great music makers of our time has written a memoir as rich in event and adventure as it is in its reflections on, and insights into, music.        

        
Sir Georg Solti, in these pages, relives an unparalleled musical life. He tells the story of a musical education that began in his native Budapest when his mother recognized and helped foster his talent. It continued with his studies at the rigorous Liszt Academy with Dohnányi, Kodály, Bartók, and Weiner, and a performance he heard of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, conducted by Erich Kleiber, that forever set his destiny.          

        
He recounts his prewar experience coaching opera in Budapest, his exile in Zurich during World War II, and his work as music director of the Bavarian State Opera and life in postwar Munich. He then moves on to similar posts in Frankfurt and in London at Covent Garden. We watch as he continues his journey through the top ranks of the musical world and becomes, in 1969, director of the Chicago Symphony, a post he holds with brilliance and renown for twenty-two years. We follow him from 1991 on as he pursues for the first time the challenges and joys of the freelance conductor, working in Salzburg, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, New York, and St. Petersburg.        

        
Solti expresses his feelings and thoughts about Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky, and other great composers. He writes about conducting, and about Wagner's Ring cycle as well as operas by Mozart and Verdi, and symphonies by Mahler, Beethoven, and Bruckner. We see him continuously developing as an artist, constantly probing the composer's intentions: He describes how he found new insights into Beethoven's Ninth Symphony upon returning to it after many years, and how he approached new recordings of the Mozart operas and Wagner's Die Meistersinger ("This time I would come to it with my heart as well as my head ).          

        

His memoirs are filled with both hilarious and touching scenes of rehearsal and performance, as well as with stories of musical controversies. He speaks about the great musicians he has worked with, among them Toscanini, Walter, Furtwängler, Klemperer, Nilsson, Hotter, Domingo, and Rostropovich. Throughout, he reveals the pleasure of interpreting the composer's design, and the satisfying act of making a score come to life.        

        
Writing these memoirs, Solti has created yet another splendid musical event.

About this title

About the Author

Sir Georg Solti, one of the leading conductors of the century, served as music director with orchestras in Munich, Frankfurt, London, and Chicago, and performed all over the world. He made 250 records and CDs for Decca/London, including more than forty operas, and received thirty-one Grammy Awards. He was granted honorary degrees by Oxford, Yale, Harvard, and a score of other universities. He was knighted in 1972. Solti completed his memoirs shortly before his death in the late summer of 1997.

From Kirkus Reviews

A behind-some-of-the-scenes look at the life and thoughts of one of the 20th century's greatest conductors. If memoirs are biography lite, then this one is successful indeed. A selective recollection of Sir Georg Solti's rise to musical fame, it's an entertaining if not particularly probing walk through this man's impressive musical life. Solti, who died last month at the age of 84, was born in Hungary but lived much of his life in Switzerland, where he relocated at the beginning of WW II. Solti describes his climb through the ranks, beginning his career as a r‚p‚titeur, or opera coach. Eventually, through hard work and determination, he became the conductor of the Royal Opera at Covent Garden in England and finally of the Chicago Symphony, which he directed for 22 years and where he arguably set a musical standard for professional orchestras that still stands today. The book includes some introspection, such as Solti's admission that early in his career he neglected to really listen to a group before trying to stamp his own personality on it. The book is best when Solti describes his musical philosophies and what it means to be a conductor. Conductors, he writes, ``should always remember our role as interpreters; we are there to serve with the best of our technical abilities the wishes of the composers, who are the creators. The thrill comes when we as interpreters become partners with the composers at the moment the scores comes to life in a performance.'' Conductors and musicians will find Solti's discussion of Beethoven's various symphonies especially illuminating. Unfortunately, these pithy parts are too infrequent, leaving a reader at book's end still wondering exactly what makes Solti tick. An adequate rendering by a man renowned in the musical world for his excellence. (16 pages photos, not seen) (First printing of 50,000) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 067944596X
• ISBN 13: 9780679445968
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 258