Sir Georg Solti

[Petrushka]

I know someone who went to that Prom and was equally enthusiastic. No DVD of that night?

My own copy, on videotape, deteriorated and had to be thrown out. A year or two ago a fellow Forum member kindly sent me a copy. One of my most memorable evenings at the Proms which sadly turned out to be Solti's last. A cluster of people waited outside the stage door at the Royal Albert Hall after the concert and when Sir Georg appeared and, despite having just conducted one of the mightiest works in the repertoire at the age of 84, he invited everyone in and happily autographed programmes and chatted. I've still got mine somewhere.

[Petrushka]

Has the later ninth and for that matter the digital Symphony set been available at a reasonable price on CD? I had the 1972 set on LP and also now on CD. It was reputed to be the first set with all repeats included. That Prom ovation must have been long as Solti was not one to hurry that third movement.

The later Ninth is available as a Presto CD if you don't want to get a used copy. I'm not sure if Presto CDs are cheap at £12.75 but I've bought several and am happy enough.

[vinteuil]

The later Ninth is available as a Presto CD if you don't want to get a used copy. I'm not sure if Presto CDs are cheap at £12.75 but I've bought several and am happy enough.

... the 1986 Beethoven 9th is included in this box -

http://amzn.eu/1QBcDt3

[Cockney Sparrow]

... the 1986 Beethoven 9th is included in this box -

http://amzn.eu/1QBcDt3

Or (at the moment) £32.20 plus delivery from

https://www.amazon.it/dp/B00AYABIV6/?tag=curiua0a-21

[bluestateprommer]

I never saw him live, as I was too young to think about traipsing to NYC and Carnegie Hall for Chicago SO concerts there when I was living on the east coast of the US during the tail end of his CSO tenure. This NYT remembrance of Solti a few years back by Harvey Sachs, the co-author (ghostwriter, what have you) of Solti's memoirs has this bit that people here might find interesting. One has to keep in mind that Sachs, as he notes, only got to know Solti well in the conductor's last years, so any stories of bad behavior in the early days wouldn't have factored in Sachs' memories:

".....where music was concerned he was dead serious, not only because the music itself demanded his devotion but also because he would have considered himself lacking in respect toward his musicians had he come ill-prepared to a rehearsal.

He was anything but a quick study: he told me his visual memory was poor and that he had to learn every piece slowly and painfully, and his scores were covered in multicolored annotations in pencil and crayon."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/arts/music/memories-of-georg-solti-as-his-orchestra-comes-to-town.html

There was also an old BBC Music Magazine review of a DVD of Solti in rehearsal in the 1960's with a German orchestra, which said to the effect that Solti was pretty condescending to the orchestra, and his rehearsals were all about rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, and rhythm. But then jump forward a few years in the same decade, and Solti had definitely started to mellow out in terms of his manner. One presumes that finding happiness in his relationship with Valerie Pitts had something to do with that.

I have an acquaintance in Chicago who remembered singing a CSO concert with Solti conducting when she was a young'un in the children's chorus. She remembered being nervous, but after the concert, she also remembered that Solti smiled at her and the chorus.