Thread by @dean_frey

Remembering Georg Solti on his birthday 🎂
📷 Patrick Lichfield, 1982
@NPGLondon
"The central feature of the Solti-Chicago success was the sheer stunning quality of the playing, which few other groups could rival."
- James R. Oestreich

Georg Solti by Erich Auerbach, 1963
"Often he is greeted with more bravos for showing his face than some of his colleagues receive for showing their stuff."
- Stephen E. Rubin

Georg Solti by Erich Lessing, Palais Garnier, Paris, 1973
"When I learn a piece, I know how it *should* sound. How much I get out of that *should* is a question of talent, experience, & perseverance - just never giving up."

Paul Sequeira
Georg Solti's hands
@chicagosymphony, 1970s
"Good music is the greatest joy of my life."

Georg Solti & his wife Valerie, by Manuel Litran, 1976
"She was human when he could seem more than so, especially to musicians in the orchestra."
- Doug George

Georg Solti is on the cover of one of my favourite books: John Culshaw’s Ring Resounding, published in 1967. I re-read this every few years, & never tire of it. Solti is only one of many beautifully-drawn characters.

John Culshaw describes the recording of Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, on November 14, 1965: “It was pure music-making, pure joy.” Later that month, the final recording of The Ring, begun in September 1958, was complete.

One last special extra from the Solti-Culshaw Ring: a piece Wagner wrote for his wife Cosima, “Kinder-Katechismus zu Kosel's Geburtstag”. A very, very special ending to this!

"I still remember the performance of Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony during our first concert [at Ravinia, August 1954] – the most wonderful musical experience of my life up to that time."
Solti's marked-up score, from Harvard's Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library