Sir Georg Solti was one of the greatest recording artists who ever lived – not only his still unequalled record of 31 Grammys® attests to that: the present documentary illluminates the life and work of Sir Georg Solti on the 100th anniversary of his birth. We follow the Hungarian-Jewish conductor’s career: as Toscanini’s assistant at the Salzburg Festival, as music director in Munich and Frankfurt after the war, achieving worldwide fame with his legendary Vienna Philharmonic recording of Wagner’s Ring cycle. It was as the long-serving music director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra that Solti became an international star of classical music, one
whose musical ardour and perfectionism remain unsurpassed to this day.
Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony begins with a burst of pure sunlight. Shostakovich’s Tenth opens under altogether darker skies. But both composers are burning to communicate, and for Sir Georg Solti – a conductor who never compromised on energy, integrity or pure, heartfelt commitment to the music he performed – that was enough. In this live recording from the Philharmonie am Gasteig in Munich he conducts one of his favourite orchestras: the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, renowned (then as now) for the lustre of its sound and its profound, instinctive understanding of the symphonic tradition. This is great music making at its most spontaneous – and masterful.
Two very different Russian symphonies, each with a powerful story to tell. Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” Symphony was his final masterpiece, an impassioned outpouring of melody and sorrow whose very name means “full of emotion”. Shostakovich’s Ninth might seem like its polar opposite: crisp, playful and bristling with pitch-black humour. But in Stalin’s Russia, those were dangerous qualities. Few conductors felt the tug of history like Sir Georg Solti, and few drove more directly for a piece’s heart. This recording with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, captured live at Munich’s Philharmonie am Gasteig, finds both conductor and orchestra at their uncompromising best.
Haydn’s oratorio Die Schöpfung (The Creation) is one of the enduring miracles of classical music: a work of visionary scope and life-affirming freshness, created by a composer approaching his 70th birthday. Sir Georg Solti was nearing the end of his long and extraordinary career when he made this unique recording under studio conditions in the Herkulessaal, Munich – and in the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, he could hardly have had more inspirational collaborators. With a trio of handpicked soloists, the result is a performance with an unforgettable atmosphere: a deeply moving meeting of two of music’s most irrepressible spirits.
It’s almost a cliché to describe Bruckner’s symphonies as “cathedrals in sound”, and especially when the symphony in question is the Second: perhaps Bruckner’s most personal homage to the Viennese classical tradition. But there’s an unmistakable synergy between visuals and music in this live performance from the magnificent Romanesque cathedral at Speyer in Bavaria, with Sir Georg Solti conducting the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra in a setting steeped in the south German Catholic tradition that Bruckner loved so much. Solti brought an irrepressible energy to everything he conducted, and this is no exception. The result is a near-perfect meeting of music and architecture.
Few of Bruckner’s symphonies cost Bruckner more dearly than his Third – and after his hero Richard Wagner praised its inspiration, few brought him more pride. In the last decade of his long and remarkable career Sir Georg Solti was conducting with more insight than ever, bringing an energy and an imaginative fire that was the envy of maestros half his age. This live recording from the Philharmonie am Gasteig in Munich finds him paired with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra – an ensemble perfectly in tune with Bruckner’s sound world, but every bit as brilliant (and as communicative) in Stravinsky’s dazzling, American-inspired Symphony in Three Movements.
