Word: soltis
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...Solti has a weakness it is that as a colorist he prefers primary hues to the shades in between. The delicate pastels of French impressionists like Debussy and Ravel simply seem to be beyond him. Yet one can never rule out any possibility with Solti-even his becoming a master of the tender brush stroke. The Beethoven represented by his new recording with the Chicago of the Ninth Symphony (London) is significantly deeper and technically nearer perfection than the Beethoven he recorded more than ten years ago with the Vienna Philharmonic. This week London issues his Parsifal. Serene, mystical, glowingly...
...like his music making, but I play it the way he wants because I can't resist him." Apart from his candor, orchestras respond to Solti partly because of his personal combination of warmth and frost, partly because of his seemingly endless store of energy and intensity. "With Solti there's always this momentum going," says Jay Friedman, principal trombonist of the Chicago. "The architecture of a piece of music always comes across. Even in very slow passages you're never standing still. I think it's because something metaphysical happens. The music he makes seems...
...much so, notes one Chicago woodwind player, that "during rehearsals Solti gets so worked up, the motion is so violent, that his navel is almost always exposed...
...Solti today has a depth, a broader grasp and surer hand than ever. Still intense and energetic by any standards, he nonetheless is mellower, more at ease. Birgit Nilsson, the supreme Wagnerian soprano, notes: "In his early days he was so energetic, so impulsive. He built one climax on top of another. You felt like you were going to explode. Now he knows how to relax...
...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...