Word: solti
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...musicians ever look at a conductor in exactly the same way. Where Friedman sees the metaphysical and Nilsson a mellower Solti, Flutist Debost sees the diabolical: "There is something of the wolf or the Hun about Solti. As he conducts, his eyes turn into cracks, his ears become pointed, and you can sort of imagine him riding a horse bareback across the steppes...
That sort of fancy is based on the knowledge that Solti is a native of Hungary, the land of Magyars. He comes from a family of bakers who had lived in the small Hungarian village of Balatönfokájar since the 16th century. His father Mores left the village in search of opportunities in the grain business and then real estate ("both with very little success," his son recalls); he set himself up in Budapest, where Gyuri (the diminutive of the Hungarian version of George) Solti was born...
...pitch. That prompted his teachers to send word home that the boy ought to have music lessons. Mores and Momma Theres scraped together enough money for an old piano, and Gyuri went at it with his typically fierce intensity. "I was -and am-a very determined little fellow," says Solti. By the time he was twelve, the prodigy was giving recitals. At 13 he enrolled in the Franz Liszt Academy, Hungary's leading college of music, where he studied with Ernst von Dohnányi and Bela Bartók. The latter would eventually become one of the century...
Dirty Jobs. As a prodigy of the piano, says Solti, "it was absolutely logical that I should become a pianist." Instead, at age 18 he went to work at the Budapest State Opera to become a conductor. Why? "I can only say that deep in your heart, if you are a sensitive person, you know what your strength is. And I knew mine was conducting...
Deep in his heart was where the conducting had to stay for some time. For much of the next decade, he worked in the opera house doing "all the dirty jobs," coaching singers, positioning scenery, accompanying the nonorchestral stage rehearsals. Solti got his first big break in Budapest on March 11, 1938, when he was allowed to conduct Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. The first act went well, Solti recalls, but with the start of the second act, the singers started making mistakes while the audience grew raucously restless. To his relief Solti later learned that his conducting...