Rosenkavalier, Frau Ohne Schatten, Moses Und Aron, Haendel's Messiah -- there are so many recordings from Sir Georg Solti's extraordinary career that will remain for as long as people listen to music. Really, if you have to pick just one, you probably can't, and with good reason. And next Wednesday, it'll be 10 years since Georg Solti's death. Chicago Tribune critic John von Rhein, who "caught virtually every program Solti conducted at Orchestra Hall from 1978 to 1997", remembers the maestro here.
Norman Lebrecht shares his memory of the joy of Solti's last concert here:
His statue stands in a Chicago park though not, yet, in a London square. He conducted 300 recordings, launched dozens of careers and, at the time he died, was paying for scores of kids all over the world to go to college at his expense. No homeless person was ever turned away from his Hampstead door. He never forgot his wartime poverty in Switzerland, while his family were being oppressed and massacred back home.
(and yeah, we can already hear the haterZ, Solti really liked the money and the clout and the fame and made a few bad shows and a few bad records, whatevs -- as if his esteemed colleagues were instead a fraternity of happy Trappist monks, cranking out records instead of beer, just for the glory of the heavens, and as if they never missed a 3-point shot in their careers)