Georg Solti

Sir Georg Solti was born in Budapest in October 1912, into a Jewish family. He studied piano with Béla Bartók, Ernő Dohnányi and Leó Weiner at the Liszt Academy from 1924, and worked as Toscanini’s assistant at the 1936 and 1937 Salzburg Festivals. He fled Hungary in 1939 with the introduction of anti-Jewish laws and spent the war years in Switzerland working as a pianist — he won the Geneva International Piano Competition in 1942 — before his post-war return to conducting.

He served as music director of the Bavarian State Opera from 1946 to 1952 and the Frankfurt Opera from 1952 to 1961. The Covent Garden music directorship from 1961 to 1971 transformed the Royal Opera into one of the leading international opera houses, and his Chicago Symphony Orchestra music directorship from 1969 to 1991 — twenty-two years — established the Chicago as one of the leading post-war American orchestras. His Decca *Ring* cycle with the Vienna Philharmonic (recorded 1958–65 with John Culshaw producing) was the first complete studio recording of the cycle and remained reference material for decades; his Mahler, Wagner and Strauss recordings with Chicago and Vienna defined his international reputation.

Solti won 31 Grammy Awards, more than any other recording artist of any genre at the time of his death. He was knighted in 1971 and made a Companion of Honour in 1972. He died in Antibes in September 1997. Music Preserved’s archive includes a substantial range of his work with the Royal Opera, Chicago Symphony, Vienna Philharmonic and other major orchestras.