149-486: The Salzburg Whitsun Festival ( German : Pfingstfestspiele Salzburg ), at times branded as Whitsun+Baroque ( Pfingten+Barock ) or Salzburg Festival Whitsun ( Salzburger Festspiele Pfingsten ), is a classical music and opera festival held every year in Salzburg , Austria over Pentecost ( Whitsun ) weekend in late May or early June. It was created in 1973 by the conductor Herbert von Karajan , and until
298-639: A baroque orchestra formed in 2016 at the opéra de Monte-Carlo with Bartoli as artistic director, became resident orchestra in Salzburg in 2017; Bartoli became director of the opera in January 2023. The 2020 edition, with Gaetano Donizetti ’s Don Pasquale , was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria . The festival returned in 2021, at half capacity that year. Opera productions: Since 1998,
447-465: A de facto official language of Namibia after the end of German colonial rule alongside English and Afrikaans , and had de jure co-official status from 1984 until its independence from South Africa in 1990. However, the Namibian government perceived Afrikaans and German as symbols of apartheid and colonialism, and decided English would be the sole official language upon independence, stating that it
596-402: A second language , and 75–100 million as a foreign language . This would imply the existence of approximately 175–220 million German speakers worldwide. German sociolinguist Ulrich Ammon estimated a number of 289 million German foreign language speakers without clarifying the criteria by which he classified a speaker. As of 2012 , about 90 million people, or 16% of
745-612: A "commonly used" language and the Pan South African Language Board is obligated to promote and ensure respect for it. Cameroon was also a colony of the German Empire from the same period (1884 to 1916). However, German was replaced by French and English, the languages of the two successor colonial powers, after its loss in World War I . Nevertheless, since the 21st century, German has become
894-409: A European tour in 1971, playing in 10 countries. This was the first time in its 80-year history that the orchestra had played outside of North America. The orchestra received plaudits from European critics, and was welcomed home at the end of the tour with a ticker-tape parade . The orchestra's principal flute player, Donald Peck, commented that the relationship between a conductor and an orchestra
1043-771: A German citizen for two decades. During his Frankfurt years, Solti made appearances with other opera companies and orchestras. He conducted in the Americas for the first time in 1952, giving concerts in Buenos Aires. In the same year, he made his debut at the Edinburgh Festival as a guest conductor with the visiting Hamburg State Opera . The following year, he was a guest at the San Francisco Opera with Elektra , Die Walküre , and Tristan und Isolde . In 1954, he conducted Don Giovanni at
1192-783: A bronze bust of Solti by Dame Elisabeth Frink was dedicated in Lincoln Park , Chicago, outside the Lincoln Park Conservatory . It was first displayed temporarily at the Royal Opera House in London. The sculpture was moved to Grant Park in 2006 in a new Solti Garden , near Orchestra Hall in Symphony Center . In 1997, to commemorate the 85th anniversary of his birth, the City of Chicago renamed
1341-481: A bully, and after working with Solti, Jon Vickers refused to do so again. Nevertheless, under Solti, the company was recognised as having achieved parity with the greatest opera houses in the world. Queen Elizabeth II conferred the title "the Royal Opera" on the company in 1968. By this point, Solti was, in the words of his biographer Paul Robinson, "after Karajan, the most celebrated conductor at work". By
1490-947: A conductor (nor did Walter Legge, Olof's opposite number at EMI's Columbia Records ), but Olof's younger colleague and successor, Culshaw, held Solti in high regard. As Culshaw, and later James Walker , produced his recordings, Solti's career as a recording artist flourished from the mid-1950s. Among the orchestras with whom Solti recorded were the Berlin Philharmonic , Chicago Symphony, London Philharmonic, London Symphony and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras. Soloists in his operatic recordings included Birgit Nilsson , Joan Sutherland , Régine Crespin , Plácido Domingo , Gottlob Frick , Carlo Bergonzi , Kiri Te Kanawa , Ben Heppner and José van Dam . In concerto recordings, Solti conducted for, among others, András Schiff , Julius Katchen , Clifford Curzon , Vladimir Ashkenazy , and Kyung-wha Chung . Solti's most celebrated recording
1639-559: A greater need for regularity in written conventions. While the major changes of the MHG period were socio-cultural, High German was still undergoing significant linguistic changes in syntax, phonetics, and morphology as well (e.g. diphthongization of certain vowel sounds: hus (OHG & MHG "house") → haus (regionally in later MHG)→ Haus (NHG), and weakening of unstressed short vowels to schwa [ə]: taga (OHG "days")→ tage (MHG)). A great wealth of texts survives from
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#17327838958591788-727: A long-serving music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra . Born in Budapest , he studied there with Béla Bartók , Leó Weiner , and Ernő Dohnányi . In the 1930s, he was a répétiteur at the Hungarian State Opera and worked at the Salzburg Festival for Arturo Toscanini . His career was interrupted by the rise of the Nazis ' influence on Hungarian politics, and being Jewish, he fled
1937-458: A native tongue today, mostly descendants of German colonial settlers . The period of German colonialism in Namibia also led to the evolution of a Standard German-based pidgin language called " Namibian Black German ", which became a second language for parts of the indigenous population. Although it is nearly extinct today, some older Namibians still have some knowledge of it. German remained
2086-609: A new work by Richard Rodney Bennett . The public in Munich and Berlin were, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , "beside themselves with enthusiasm". Solti's bald head and demanding rehearsal style earned him the nickname "The Screaming Skull". A music historian called him "the bustling, bruising Georg Solti – a man whose entire physical and mental attitude embodied the words 'I'm in charge'." Singers such as Peter Glossop described him as
2235-956: A number of guest conductors, such as Lorin Maazel , Seiji Ozawa , Vladimir Ashkenazy and James Levine , and for a time brought the Vienna Philharmonic for his own concerts. Following his resignation as chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic in April 1989, Karajan initially planned to invite the Vienna Philharmonic at Whitsun the next year, sharing conducting duties with Georges Prêtre ; however, he died in July 1989. The Whitsun Concerts continued after Karajan’s death. The Berlin Philharmonic returned to
2384-604: A number of opera festivals, especially those which only give a reduced number of performances like the Easter Festival, the Whitsun Festival usually works in co-production , often with the summer festival. Starting in 2007, Jürgen Flimm , the new intendant of the summer festival, decided to entrust the artistic direction of each Whitsun Festival to an artist with a thematic carte blanche . The American baritone Thomas Hampson initially accepted to take over
2533-696: A popular foreign language among pupils and students, with 300,000 people learning or speaking German in Cameroon in 2010 and over 230,000 in 2020. Today Cameroon is one of the African countries outside Namibia with the highest number of people learning German. In the United States, German is the fifth most spoken language in terms of native and second language speakers after English, Spanish , French , and Chinese (with figures for Cantonese and Mandarin combined), with over 1 million total speakers. In
2682-483: A result, the surviving texts are written in highly disparate regional dialects and exhibit significant Latin influence, particularly in vocabulary. At this point monasteries, where most written works were produced, were dominated by Latin, and German saw only occasional use in official and ecclesiastical writing. While there is no complete agreement over the dates of the Middle High German (MHG) period, it
2831-522: A répétiteur at the opera in Budapest, and with his standing enhanced by his association with Toscanini, Solti was given his first chance to conduct, on 11 March 1938. The opera was Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro . During that evening, news came of the German invasion of Austria. Many Hungarians feared that Hitler would next invade Hungary; he did not do so, but Horthy, to strengthen his partnership with
2980-521: A small clique in the Covent Garden audience. Rotten vegetables were thrown at him, and his car was vandalised outside the theatre, with the words "Solti must go!" scratched on its paintwork. Some press reviews were strongly critical; Solti was so wounded by a review in The Times of his conducting of The Marriage of Figaro that he almost left Covent Garden in despair. The chief executive of
3129-479: A small town in central Hungary. His son's given name, György, was acceptably Hungarian and was not changed. Solti described his father as "a kind, sweet man who trusted everyone. He shouldn't have, but he did. Jews in Hungary were tremendously patriotic. In 1914, when war broke out, my father invested most of his money in a war loan to help the country. By the time the bonds matured, they were worthless." Mor Stern
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#17327838958593278-452: A terrible record, because the orchestra was not very good at that time and I was so excited. It is horrible, surely horrible – but by now it has vanished." He had to wait two years for his next recording as a conductor, in London, Haydn's Drum Roll symphony, in sessions produced by John Culshaw , with whose career Solti's became closely linked over the next two decades. Reviewing the record, The Gramophone said, "The performance of
3427-725: A triple bill in English of Ravel's L'heure espagnole , Schoenberg's Erwartung , and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi . As the decade went on, however, more and more productions had to be sung in the original language to accommodate international stars. [Solti] announced his intention of making Covent Garden "quite simply, the best opera house in the world", and in the opinion of many he succeeded. Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians Like his predecessor Rafael Kubelík , and his successor Colin Davis , Solti found his early days as musical director marred by vituperative hostility from
3576-430: A year they sought. He suggested giving them three and a half months a year and inviting Carlo Maria Giulini to take charge for a similar length of time. The orchestra declined to proceed on these lines. When Solti accepted the orchestra's second invitation, they agreed that Giulini should be appointed to share the conducting. Both conductors signed three-year contracts with the orchestra, effective from 1969. One of
3725-601: Is a recognized minority language in the following countries: In France, the High German varieties of Alsatian and Moselle Franconian are identified as " regional languages ", but the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of 1998 has not yet been ratified by the government. Namibia also was a colony of the German Empire, from 1884 to 1915. About 30,000 people still speak German as
3874-612: Is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects , with many varieties existing in Europe and other parts of the world. Some of these non-standard varieties have become recognized and protected by regional or national governments. Since 2004, heads of state of the German-speaking countries have met every year, and the Council for German Orthography has been the main international body regulating German orthography . German
4023-558: Is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages . The Germanic languages are traditionally subdivided into three branches: North Germanic , East Germanic , and West Germanic . The first of these branches survives in modern Danish , Swedish , Norwegian , Faroese , and Icelandic , all of which are descended from Old Norse . The East Germanic languages are now extinct, and Gothic
4172-478: Is called the "German Sprachraum ". German is the official language of the following countries: German is a co-official language of the following countries: Although expulsions and (forced) assimilation after the two World wars greatly diminished them, minority communities of mostly bilingual German native speakers exist in areas both adjacent to and detached from the Sprachraum. Within Europe, German
4321-430: Is complicated by the existence of several varieties whose status as separate "languages" or "dialects" is disputed for political and linguistic reasons, including quantitatively strong varieties like certain forms of Alemannic and Low German . With the inclusion or exclusion of certain varieties, it is estimated that approximately 90–95 million people speak German as a first language , 10–25 million speak it as
4470-402: Is difficult to explain: "Some conductors get along with some orchestras and not others. We had a good match with Solti and he with us." Peck's colleague, violinist Victor Aitay, said, "Usually conductors are relaxed at rehearsals and tense at the concerts. Solti is the reverse. He is very tense at rehearsals, which makes us concentrate, but relaxed during the performance, which is a great asset to
4619-535: Is generally seen as ending when the 1346–53 Black Death decimated Europe's population. Modern High German begins with the Early New High German (ENHG) period, which Wilhelm Scherer dates 1350–1650, terminating with the end of the Thirty Years' War . This period saw the further displacement of Latin by German as the primary language of courtly proceedings and, increasingly, of literature in
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4768-611: Is generally seen as lasting from 1050 to 1350. This was a period of significant expansion of the geographical territory occupied by Germanic tribes, and consequently of the number of German speakers. Whereas during the Old High German period the Germanic tribes extended only as far east as the Elbe and Saale rivers, the MHG period saw a number of these tribes expanding beyond this eastern boundary into Slavic territory (known as
4917-565: Is less closely related to languages based on Low Franconian dialects (e.g., Dutch and Afrikaans), Low German or Low Saxon dialects (spoken in northern Germany and southern Denmark ), neither of which underwent the High German consonant shift. As has been noted, the former of these dialect types is Istvaeonic and the latter Ingvaeonic, whereas the High German dialects are all Irminonic; the differences between these languages and standard German are therefore considerable. Also related to German are
5066-435: Is one of the major languages of the world . German is the second-most widely spoken Germanic language , after English, both as a first and as a second language . German is also widely taught as a foreign language , especially in continental Europe (where it is the third most taught foreign language after English and French), and in the United States. Overall, German is the fourth most commonly learned second language, and
5215-597: Is one of the three biggest newspapers in Namibia and the only German-language daily in Africa. An estimated 12,000 people speak German or a German variety as a first language in South Africa, mostly originating from different waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the largest communities consists of the speakers of "Nataler Deutsch", a variety of Low German concentrated in and around Wartburg . The South African constitution identifies German as
5364-401: Is partly derived from Latin and Greek , along with fewer words borrowed from French and Modern English . English, however, is the main source of more recent loanwords . German is a pluricentric language ; the three standardized variants are German , Austrian , and Swiss Standard German . Standard German is sometimes called High German , which refers to its regional origin. German
5513-525: Is the Sachsenspiegel , the first book of laws written in Middle Low German ( c. 1220 ). The abundance and especially the secular character of the literature of the MHG period demonstrate the beginnings of a standardized written form of German, as well as the desire of poets and authors to be understood by individuals on supra-dialectal terms. The Middle High German period
5662-776: Is the most spoken native language within the European Union . It is the most widely spoken and official (or co-official) language in Germany , Austria , Switzerland , Liechtenstein , and the Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol . It is also an official language of Luxembourg , Belgium and the Italian autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia , as well as a recognized national language in Namibia . There are also notable German-speaking communities in France ( Alsace ),
5811-578: Is the only language in this branch which survives in written texts. The West Germanic languages, however, have undergone extensive dialectal subdivision and are now represented in modern languages such as English, German, Dutch , Yiddish , Afrikaans , and others. Within the West Germanic language dialect continuum, the Benrath and Uerdingen lines (running through Düsseldorf - Benrath and Krefeld - Uerdingen , respectively) serve to distinguish
5960-485: Is understood in all areas where German is spoken. Approximate distribution of native German speakers (assuming a rounded total of 95 million) worldwide: As a result of the German diaspora , as well as the popularity of German taught as a foreign language , the geographical distribution of German speakers (or "Germanophones") spans all inhabited continents. However, an exact, global number of native German speakers
6109-689: The Ostsiedlung ). With the increasing wealth and geographic spread of the Germanic groups came greater use of German in the courts of nobles as the standard language of official proceedings and literature. A clear example of this is the mittelhochdeutsche Dichtersprache employed in the Hohenstaufen court in Swabia as a standardized supra-dialectal written language. While these efforts were still regionally bound, German began to be used in place of Latin for certain official purposes, leading to
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6258-534: The Billboard charts, the sole classical album alongside best sellers by Elvis Presley and Pat Boone , and brought Solti's name to international prominence. He appeared with leading orchestras in New York City, Vienna, and Los Angeles, and at Covent Garden, he conducted Der Rosenkavalier and Britten 's A Midsummer Night's Dream . In 1960, Solti signed a three-year contract to be music director of
6407-639: The Alamanni , Bavarian, and Thuringian groups, all belonging to the Elbe Germanic group ( Irminones ), which had settled in what is now southern-central Germany and Austria between the second and sixth centuries, during the great migration. In general, the surviving texts of Old High German (OHG) show a wide range of dialectal diversity with very little written uniformity. The early written tradition of OHG survived mostly through monasteries and scriptoria as local translations of Latin originals; as
6556-568: The Czech Republic ( North Bohemia ), Poland ( Upper Silesia ), Slovakia ( Košice Region , Spiš , and Hauerland ), Denmark ( North Schleswig ), Romania and Hungary ( Sopron ). Overseas, sizeable communities of German-speakers are found in Brazil ( Blumenau and Pomerode ), South Africa ( Kroondal ), Namibia , among others, some communities have decidedly Austrian German or Swiss German characters (e.g. Pozuzo , Peru). German
6705-537: The Early Middle Ages . German is an inflected language , with four cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative); three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and two numbers (singular, plural). It has strong and weak verbs . The majority of its vocabulary derives from the ancient Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, while a smaller share
6854-417: The European Union 's population, spoke German as their mother tongue, making it the second most widely spoken language on the continent after Russian and the second biggest language in terms of overall speakers (after English), as well as the most spoken native language. The area in central Europe where the majority of the population speaks German as a first language and has German as a (co-)official language
7003-522: The German states . While these states were still part of the Holy Roman Empire , and far from any form of unification, the desire for a cohesive written language that would be understandable across the many German-speaking principalities and kingdoms was stronger than ever. As a spoken language German remained highly fractured throughout this period, with a vast number of often mutually incomprehensible regional dialects being spoken throughout
7152-664: The Glyndebourne Festival . The reviewer in The Times said that no fault could be found in Solti's "vivacious and sensitive" conducting. In the same year Solti made his first appearance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra , at the Ravinia Festival . In 1960, he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, conducting Tannhäuser , and he continued to appear there until 1964. In
7301-746: The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I , and the other being Meißner Deutsch , used in the Electorate of Saxony in the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg . Alongside these courtly written standards, the invention of the printing press led to the development of a number of printers' languages ( Druckersprachen ) aimed at making printed material readable and understandable across as many diverse dialects of German as possible. The greater ease of production and increased availability of written texts brought about increased standardisation in
7450-630: The Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1962. Even before he took the post, the philharmonic's autocratic president, Dorothy Chandler , breached his contract by appointing a deputy music director without Solti's approval. Although he admired the chosen deputy, Zubin Mehta , Solti felt he could not have his authority undermined from the outset, and he withdrew from his appointment. He accepted an offer to become musical director of Covent Garden Opera Company , London. When first sounded out about
7599-666: The Old High German language in several Elder Futhark inscriptions from as early as the sixth century AD (such as the Pforzen buckle ), the Old High German period is generally seen as beginning with the Abrogans (written c. 765–775 ), a Latin-German glossary supplying over 3,000 Old High German words with their Latin equivalents. After the Abrogans , the first coherent works written in Old High German appear in
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#17327838958597748-453: The Oper Frankfurt , where he remained in charge for nine years. He took West German citizenship in 1953. In 1961, he became musical director of the Covent Garden Opera Company , London. During his 10-year tenure, he introduced changes that raised standards to the highest international levels. Under his musical directorship, the status of the company was recognised with the grant of the title "the Royal Opera". He became an honorary citizen of
7897-546: The Oper Frankfurt . The city's opera house had been destroyed in the war, and Solti undertook to build a new company and repertoire for its recently completed replacement. He also conducted the symphony concerts given by the opera orchestra. Frankfurt's was a less prestigious house than Munich's and he initially regarded the move as a demotion, but he found the post fulfilling and remained at Frankfurt from 1952 to 1961, presenting 33 operas, 19 of which he had not conducted before. Frankfurt, unlike Munich, could not attract many of
8046-399: The Orchestre de Paris from 1972 to 1975. From 1979 until 1983, he was also principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He continued to expand his repertoire. With the London Philharmonic, he performed many of Elgar 's major works in concert and on record. Before performing Elgar's two symphonies, Solti studied the composer's own recordings made more than 40 years earlier, and
8195-427: The Sprachraum in Europe. German is used in a wide variety of spheres throughout the country, especially in business, tourism, and public signage, as well as in education, churches (most notably the German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (GELK) ), other cultural spheres such as music, and media (such as German language radio programs by the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation ). The Allgemeine Zeitung
8344-422: The Standard German language in its written form, and the Duden Handbook was declared its standard definition. Punctuation and compound spelling (joined or isolated compounds) were not standardized in the process. The Deutsche Bühnensprache ( lit. ' German stage language ' ) by Theodor Siebs had established conventions for German pronunciation in theatres , three years earlier; however, this
8493-400: The Upper German dialects spoken in the southern German-speaking countries , such as Swiss German ( Alemannic dialects ) and the various Germanic dialects spoken in the French region of Grand Est , such as Alsatian (mainly Alemannic, but also Central–and Upper Franconian dialects) and Lorraine Franconian (Central Franconian). After these High German dialects, standard German
8642-431: The baroque and classical periods . Since 2012, its artistic director has been the Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli . Les Musiciens du Prince, the pit orchestra of the opéra de Monte-Carlo of which Bartoli is also artistic director, is in residence at the festival. Performances usually take place at the adjoining venues of the summer festival, the Salzburg Great Festival Theatre , the smaller Haus für Mozart and
8791-414: The increasingly harsh Hungarian anti-Jewish laws in 1938. After conducting a season of Russian ballet in London at the Royal Opera House , he found refuge in Switzerland, where he remained during the Second World War. Prohibited from conducting there, he earned a living as a pianist. After the war, Solti was appointed musical director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in 1946. In 1952, he moved to
8940-429: The musical West Side Story in 2016 in order to sing Maria, drawing public reservations from the summer festival president Helga Rabl-Stadler [ de ] over the vocal suitability of the cast as well as the use of a sound system . Despite the initial plans for short-term artistic directions, Bartoli’s was renewed for several years, with her contract eventually running until 2026. Les Musiciens du Prince,
9089-408: The pagan Germanic tradition. Of particular interest to scholars, however, has been the Hildebrandslied , a secular epic poem telling the tale of an estranged father and son unknowingly meeting each other in battle. Linguistically, this text is highly interesting due to the mixed use of Old Saxon and Old High German dialects in its composition. The written works of this period stem mainly from
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#17327838958599238-408: The 1997 edition called the Salzburg Whitsun Concerts ( Pfingstkonzerte Salzburg ). The short concert series initially served as a complement to the Salzburg Easter Festival , founded in 1967 by Karajan with the Berlin Philharmonic . In 1998, production was transferred to the organisation which puts out the (summertime) Salzburg Festival , and augmented with an opera performance, with a focus on
9387-422: The 2007 edition, but withdrew a few months later due to other commitments. The first artistic director under the new system was the Italian conductor Riccardo Muti , a frequent guest at the summer festival. His project, initially for three years but extended to five, was a partnership with the Ravenna Festival , founded by his wife, to rediscover and revive the legacy of the 18th-century Neapolitan School , under
9536-550: The 50th anniversary of the United Nations , he formed the World Orchestra for Peace, which consisted of 81 musicians from 40 nations. The orchestra has continued to perform after his death, under the conductorship of Valery Gergiev . Solti regularly returned to Covent Garden as a guest conductor in the years after he relinquished the musical directorship, greeted with "an increasingly boisterous hero's welcome" ( Grove ). From 1972 to 1997, he conducted 10 operas, some of them in several seasons. Five were operas he had not conducted at
9685-424: The British CBE (honorary), 1968, and an honorary knighthood (KBE), 1971, which became a substantive knighthood when he took British citizenship in 1972, after which he was known as Sir Georg Solti. He was also awarded honorary citizenship from the coastal town of Castiglione della Pescaia , in Tuscany , a holiday destination particularly frequented by celebrities where he owned a holiday house and used to spend
9834-443: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra's eighth music director, he also served as music director of the Orchestre de Paris from 1972 until 1975 and principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra from 1979 until 1983. Known in his early years for the intensity of his music making, Solti was widely considered to have mellowed as a conductor in later years. He recorded many works two or three times at various stages of his career, and
9983-413: The Chicago players. After relinquishing the position of music director in 1991, Solti continued to conduct the orchestra, and was given the title of music director laureate. He conducted 999 concerts with the orchestra. His 1,000th concert was scheduled for October 1997, around the time of his 85th birthday, but Solti died that September. In addition to his tenure in Chicago, Solti was music director of
10132-400: The Decca Record Company. He made more than 250 recordings, including 45 complete opera sets. During the 1950s and 1960s, Decca had an alliance with RCA Victor , and some of Solti's recordings were first issued on the RCA label. Solti was one of the first conductors who came to international fame as a recording artist before being widely known in the concert hall or opera house. Gordon Parry,
10281-427: The Decca engineer who worked with Solti and Culshaw on the Ring recordings, observed, "Many people have said 'Oh well, of course John Culshaw made Solti.' This is not true. He gave him the opportunity to show what he could do." Solti's first recordings were as a piano accompanist, playing at sessions in Zurich for violinist Georg Kulenkampff in 1947. Decca's senior producer, Victor Olof did not much admire Solti as
10430-499: The Easter Festival in 1991 after a one-year absence, but not at Whitsun, for which other international orchestras were invited. Georg Solti , who served as artistic director at Easter in 1992–1993, also took over the Whitsun Concerts until 1994 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra , of which he had been music director, sharing conducting duties with his successor Daniel Barenboim . The new chief conductor in Berlin, Claudio Abbado , also became artistic director at Easter in 1994, restoring
10579-614: The Empire. Its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Prague (German: Prag ) and Budapest ( Buda , German: Ofen ), to name two examples, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain; others, like Pressburg ( Pozsony , now Bratislava), were originally settled during the Habsburg period and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, and cities like Zagreb (German: Agram ) or Ljubljana (German: Laibach ), contained significant German minorities. In
10728-748: The Frisian languages— North Frisian (spoken in Nordfriesland ), Saterland Frisian (spoken in Saterland ), and West Frisian (spoken in Friesland )—as well as the Anglic languages of English and Scots. These Anglo-Frisian dialects did not take part in the High German consonant shift, and the Anglic languages also adopted much vocabulary from both Old Norse and the Norman language . The history of
10877-483: The German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the Migration Period , which separated Old High German dialects from Old Saxon . This sound shift involved a drastic change in the pronunciation of both voiced and voiceless stop consonants ( b , d , g , and p , t , k , respectively). The primary effects of the shift were the following below. While there is written evidence of
11026-451: The German states; the invention of the printing press c. 1440 and the publication of Luther's vernacular translation of the Bible in 1534, however, had an immense effect on standardizing German as a supra-dialectal written language. The ENHG period saw the rise of several important cross-regional forms of chancery German, one being gemeine tiutsch , used in the court of
11175-681: The Germanic dialects that were affected by the High German consonant shift (south of Benrath) from those that were not (north of Uerdingen). The various regional dialects spoken south of these lines are grouped as High German dialects, while those spoken to the north comprise the Low German and Low Franconian dialects. As members of the West Germanic language family, High German, Low German, and Low Franconian have been proposed to be further distinguished historically as Irminonic , Ingvaeonic , and Istvaeonic , respectively. This classification indicates their historical descent from dialects spoken by
11324-655: The Irminones (also known as the Elbe group), Ingvaeones (or North Sea Germanic group), and Istvaeones (or Weser–Rhine group). Standard German is based on a combination of Thuringian - Upper Saxon and Upper Franconian dialects, which are Central German and Upper German dialects belonging to the High German dialect group. German is therefore closely related to the other languages based on High German dialects, such as Luxembourgish (based on Central Franconian dialects ) and Yiddish . Also closely related to Standard German are
11473-493: The Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli became artistic director of the festival, where she had given one of her first professional performances in 1987, invited by Karajan for Bach’s Mass in B minor . It was announced that the opera produced each year for Whitsun, with two performances, would then be revived at the summer festival a few weeks later. Bartoli chose women as her broad spotlight, each year presenting “a new facet of femininity”, which she would embody herself as
11622-638: The London Philharmonic Orchestra under Georg Solti (a fine conductor who is new to me) is remarkable for rhythmic playing, richness of tone, and clarity of execution." The Record Guide compared it favourably with EMI 's rival recording by Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic . In 1951, Solti conducted at the Salzburg Festival for the first time, partly through the influence of Furtwängler, who
11771-518: The MHG period. Significantly, these texts include a number of impressive secular works, such as the Nibelungenlied , an epic poem telling the story of the dragon -slayer Siegfried ( c. thirteenth century ), and the Iwein , an Arthurian verse poem by Hartmann von Aue ( c. 1203 ), lyric poems , and courtly romances such as Parzival and Tristan . Also noteworthy
11920-588: The Met in New York, and as carefully presented as anything in Milan or Vienna ". The company's repertory in the 1960s combined the standard operatic works with less familiar pieces. Among the most celebrated productions during Solti's time in charge was Schoenberg 's Moses and Aaron in the 1965–66 and 1966–67 seasons. In 1970, Solti led the company to Germany, where they gave Don Carlos , Falstaff , and Victory ,
12069-699: The Munich appointment, Solti gained a recording contract in 1946. He signed for Decca Records , not as a conductor, but as a piano accompanist. He made his first recording in 1947, playing Brahms's First Violin Sonata with violinist Georg Kulenkampff . He was insistent that he wanted to conduct, and Decca gave him his first recording sessions as a conductor later in the same year, with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra in Beethoven's Egmont overture. Twenty years later, Solti said, "I'm sure it's
12218-659: The Nazis, instituted anti-semitic laws , mirroring the Nuremberg Laws , restricting Hungary's Jews from engaging in professions. Solti's family urged him to move away. He went first to London, where he made his Covent Garden debut, conducting the London Philharmonic for a Russian ballet season. The reviewer in The Times was not impressed with Solti's efforts, finding them "too violent, for he lashed at
12367-609: The Opera House, Sir David Webster , persuaded him to stay with the company, and matters improved, helped by changes on which Solti insisted. The chorus and orchestra were strengthened, and in the interests of musical and dramatic excellence, Solti secured the introduction of the stagione system of scheduling performances, rather than the traditional repertory system. By 1967, The Times commented that "Patrons of Covent Garden today automatically expect any new production, and indeed any revival, to be as strongly cast as anything at
12516-478: The Royal Opera House before: Bizet's Carmen , Wagner's Parsifal , Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail , Verdi's Simon Boccanegra , and a celebrated production of La traviata (1994), which propelled Angela Gheorghiu to stardom. On 14 July 1997 he conducted the last operatic music to be heard in the old house before it closed for more than two years for rebuilding. The previous day he had conducted what proved to be his last symphony concert. The work
12665-754: The Salzburg Whitsun Festival has been organised by the Salzburger Festspielfonds, the public law foundation of the Austrian state which also puts out the summer festival, although not the Easter festival. As of 2010, the Whitsun Festival had a budget of €735,000, of which €360,000 came from ticket sale; it had 6,100 visitors that year, with a 79% occupancy rate. From Riccardo Muti’s direction, Il ritorno di Don Calandrino and I due Figaro were released on CD, as
12814-574: The Whitsun concerts were created for repeat or complementary concerts by Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, intended for those who could not obtain tickets for Easter. The concerts took place at the Salzburg Grand Festival Theatre , built at Karajan’s request and opened in 1960. Karajan and the orchestra usually performed three symphony or choral concerts featuring great works of the romantic era , with an initial focus on
12963-556: The aftermath of the First World War it became the accepted practice in Hungary for citizens with Germanic surnames to adopt Hungarian ones. The territorial revisionist regime of Admiral Horthy enacted a series of Hungarianisation laws, including a requirement that state employees with foreign-sounding names must change them. Mor Stern, a self-employed merchant, felt no need to change his surname, but thought it prudent to change that of his children. He renamed them after Solt ,
13112-509: The ambition to become a conductor. His parents could not afford to pay for years of musical education, and his rich uncles did not consider music a suitable profession; from the age of 13, Solti paid for his education by giving piano lessons. The faculty of the Franz Liszt Academy included some of the most eminent Hungarian musicians, including Béla Bartók , Leó Weiner , Ernő Dohnányi , and Zoltán Kodály . Solti studied under
13261-577: The block of East Adams Street adjacent to Symphony Center as "Sir Georg Solti Place" in his memory. Record industry awards to Solti included the Grand Prix Mondial du Disque (14 times) and 31 Grammy Awards (besides a special Trustees' Grammy Award, shared with John Culshaw, for the recording of the Ring (1967) and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1996)). He held the record for most Grammy wins of all time , until Beyoncé tied and later beat
13410-493: The breach of his Los Angeles contract as a convenient pretext to abandon the philharmonic in favour of Covent Garden. In his memoirs, though, Solti wrote that he wanted the Los Angeles position very much indeed. He originally considered holding both posts in tandem, but later acknowledged that he had had a lucky escape, as he could have done justice to neither post had he attempted to hold both simultaneously. Solti took up
13559-630: The close association of the Karajan years between orchestra and festival, but they did not came back for Whitsun. Although the London Symphony Orchestra was in residence for the next three years, the event found itself with little of an artistic line. In 1998, the management passed to the Salzburg Festspielfonds, the organisation with puts out the summer festival, with Hans Landesmann [ de ] , who
13708-505: The coastal holiday town of Castiglione della Pescaia , and a British citizen in 1972. In 1969, Solti became music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a post he held for 22 years. He conducted many recordings and high-profile international tours with the orchestra. Solti relinquished the position in 1991 and became the orchestra's music director laureate, a position he held until his death. During his time as
13857-404: The conclusion of denazification proceedings against them. Under Solti's direction, the company rebuilt its repertoire and began to recover its prewar eminence. He benefited from the encouragement of the elderly Richard Strauss , in whose presence he conducted Der Rosenkavalier . Strauss was reluctant to discuss his own music with Solti, but gave him advice about conducting. In addition to
14006-467: The conducting classes run by Ernő Unger, "who instructed his pupils to use rigid little wrist motions. I attended the class for only two years, but I needed five years of practical conducting experience before I managed to unlearn what he had taught me". After graduating from the academy in 1930, Solti was appointed to the staff of the Hungarian State Opera . He found that working as a répétiteur , coaching singers in their roles and playing at rehearsals,
14155-406: The conductor Herbert von Karajan . A Salzburg native and nearby resident, Karajan was in charge of the summer festival since 1957, and in 1967 had created a separate Salzburg Easter Festival in order to produce opera with complete artistic and managerial independence, bringing the Berlin Philharmonic , of which he was chief conductor. Due to the high demand for the relatively short Easter festival,
14304-430: The development of non-local forms of language and exposed all speakers to forms of German from outside their own area. With Luther's rendering of the Bible in the vernacular, German asserted itself against the dominance of Latin as a legitimate language for courtly, literary, and now ecclesiastical subject-matter. His Bible was ubiquitous in the German states: nearly every household possessed a copy. Nevertheless, even with
14453-456: The dialect so as to make the work as natural and accessible to German speakers as possible. Copies of Luther's Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region, translating words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Luther said the following concerning his translation method: One who would talk German does not ask the Latin how he shall do it; he must ask the mother in
14602-416: The director Sir Peter Hall and designer William Dudley , he presented a Ring cycle that aimed to represent Wagner's intentions. The production was not well received by German critics, who expected radical reinterpretation of the operas. Solti's conducting was praised, but illnesses and last-minute replacements of leading performers affected the standard of singing. He was invited to return to Bayreuth for
14751-519: The eastern provinces of Banat , Bukovina , and Transylvania (German: Banat, Buchenland, Siebenbürgen ), German was the predominant language not only in the larger towns—like Temeschburg ( Timișoara ), Hermannstadt ( Sibiu ), and Kronstadt ( Brașov )—but also in many smaller localities in the surrounding areas. In 1901, the Second Orthographic Conference ended with a (nearly) complete standardization of
14900-562: The end of his decade as music director at Covent Garden Solti had conducted the company in 33 operas by 13 composers. In 1964, Solti separated from his wife. He moved into the Savoy Hotel , where not long afterwards he met Valerie Pitts , a British television presenter, sent to interview him. She, too, was married, but after pursuing her for three years, Solti persuaded her to divorce her husband. Solti and Valerie Pitts married on 11 November 1967. They had two daughters. In 1967, Solti
15049-490: The end of the war, Solti's luck changed dramatically. He was appointed musical director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in 1946. In normal circumstances, this prestigious post would have been an unthinkable appointment for a young and inexperienced conductor, but the leading German conductors such as Wilhelm Furtwängler , Clemens Krauss , and Herbert von Karajan were prohibited from conducting pending
15198-562: The female lead. Although each edition has a particular theme, her overall direction displayed a less academic approach than her predecessors’, as her star appeal became the festival’s centre of interest, echoing that of Karajan in its founding years and returning to what she called “the old recipe of organizing beautiful programs and inviting great artists”. The operas put in production have been from her core personal repertoire ranging from baroque to bel canto , with several works of George Frideric Handel and Gioachino Rossini . She even chose
15347-403: The first three, for piano, chamber music, and composition, respectively. Some sources state that he also studied with Kodály, but in his memoirs, Solti recalled that Kodály, whom he would have preferred, turned him down, leaving him to study composition first with Albert Siklós and then with Dohnányi. Not all the academy's tutors were equally distinguished; Solti remembered with little pleasure
15496-447: The following season, but was unwell and withdrew on medical advice before the 1984 festival began. In 1991, Solti collaborated with actor and composer Dudley Moore to create an eight-part television series, Orchestra! , which was designed to introduce audiences to the symphony orchestra. In 1994, he directed the "Solti Orchestral Project" at Carnegie Hall , a training workshop for young American musicians. The following year, to mark
15645-435: The home, the children on the streets, the common man in the market-place and note carefully how they talk, then translate accordingly. They will then understand what is said to them because it is German. When Christ says ' ex abundantia cordis os loquitur ,' I would translate, if I followed the papists, aus dem Überflusz des Herzens redet der Mund . But tell me is this talking German? What German understands such stuff? No,
15794-481: The influence of Luther's Bible as an unofficial written standard, a widely accepted standard for written German did not appear until the middle of the eighteenth century. German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire , which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe . Until the mid-nineteenth century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of
15943-535: The largest concentrations of German speakers are in the states of Rio Grande do Sul (where Riograndenser Hunsrückisch developed), Santa Catarina , and Espírito Santo . Georg Solti Sir Georg Solti KBE ( / dʒ ɔːr dʒ ˈ ʃ ɒ l t i / JORJ SHOL -tee , Hungarian: [ˈʃolti] ; born György Stern ; 21 October 1912 – 5 September 1997) was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor , known for his appearances with opera companies in Munich, Frankfurt, and London, and as
16092-508: The leading German singers. Solti recruited many rising young American singers such as Claire Watson and Sylvia Stahlman , to the extent that the house acquired the nickname "Amerikanische Oper am Main". In 1953, the West German government offered Solti German citizenship, which, being effectively stateless as a Hungarian exile, he gratefully accepted. He believed he could never return to Hungary, by then under communist rule. He remained
16241-467: The members of the Chicago Symphony described it to Solti as "the best provincial orchestra in the world." Many players remained from its celebrated decade under Reiner, but morale was low, and the orchestra was $ 5M in debt. Solti concluded that raising the orchestra's international profile was essential. He ensured that it was engaged for many of his Decca sessions, and Giulini and he led it in
16390-402: The mother in the home and the plain man would say, Wesz das Herz voll ist, des gehet der Mund über . Luther's translation of the Bible into High German was also decisive for the German language and its evolution from Early New High German to modern Standard German. The publication of Luther's Bible was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy in early modern Germany , and promoted
16539-591: The motto “Naples: A City in Retrospect”. The Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra ( Italian : Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini ), a youth orchestra he had founded in Piacenza with a summer residence in Ravenna, also took residence in Salzburg. The debut production in 2007 was Domenico Cimarosa ’s Il ritorno di Don Calandrino , which had not been performed for two centuries. Opera productions: In 2012,
16688-573: The musical directorship of Covent Garden in August 1961. The press gave him a cautious welcome, but some concern arose that under him a drift away from the company's original policy of opera in English might occur. Solti, however, was an advocate of opera in the vernacular, and he promoted the development of British and Commonwealth singers in the company, frequently casting them in his recordings and important productions in preference to overseas artists. He demonstrated his belief in vernacular opera with
16837-653: The ninth century, chief among them being the Muspilli , Merseburg charms , and Hildebrandslied , and other religious texts (the Georgslied , Ludwigslied , Evangelienbuch , and translated hymns and prayers). The Muspilli is a Christian poem written in a Bavarian dialect offering an account of the soul after the Last Judgment , and the Merseburg charms are transcriptions of spells and charms from
16986-534: The open-air Felsenreitschule , as well as at the Mozarteum . The founder of the Salzburg Festival in 1920, Hugo von Hofmannsthal , envisioned extending it, with editions “every year in the summer, but also now and then at other times, such as around Christmas, or elsewhen in the winter, also at Easter and Pentecost”. The festival was founded in 1973, as the Salzburg Whitsun Concerts, by
17135-579: The orchestra and flogged the music so that he endangered the delicate, evocative atmosphere." At about this time Solti dropped the name "György" in favour of "Georg". After his appearances in London, Solti went to Switzerland to seek out Toscanini, who was conducting in Lucerne . Solti hoped that Toscanini would help find him a post in the U.S. He was unable to do so, but Solti found work and security in Switzerland as vocal coach to tenor Max Hirzel, who
17284-574: The orchestra with soprano Faye Robinson. Solti frequently programmed works by American composers, including Charles Ives and Elliott Carter . Solti's recordings with the Chicago Symphony included the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, and Mahler. Most of his operatic recordings were with other orchestras, but his recordings of Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer (1976), Beethoven's Fidelio (1979), Schoenberg's Moses und Aron (1984) and his second recordings of Die Meistersinger (1995) and Verdi's Otello (1991) were made with
17433-457: The orchestra's profile and helping it return to prosperity, Solti considerably expanded its repertoire. Under him, the Chicago Symphony gave its first cycles of the symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler . He introduced new works commissioned for the orchestra, such as Lutosławski's Third Symphony , and Tippett's Fourth Symphony , which was dedicated to Solti. Another new work was Tippett's Byzantium , an orchestral song-cycle, premiered by Solti and
17582-450: The orchestra." Peck recalled Solti's constant efforts to improve his own technique and interpretations, at one point experimentally dispensing with a baton, drawing a "darker and deeper, much more relaxed" tone from the players. It's a marvelous thing to be musically happily married. ... I am and I know. I'm a romantic type of musician, and this is a romantic orchestra. That is our secret... Sir Georg Solti (1973) As well as raising
17731-416: The post, he had declined it. After 14 years of experience at Munich and Frankfurt, he was uncertain that he wanted a third successive operatic post. Moreover, founded only 15 years earlier, the Covent Garden company was not yet the equal of the best opera houses in Europe. Bruno Walter convinced Solti that it was his duty to take on Covent Garden. Biographer Montague Haltrecht suggests that Solti seized
17880-462: The pronunciation of the ending -ig as [ɪk] instead of [ɪç]. In Northern Germany, High German was a foreign language to most inhabitants, whose native dialects were subsets of Low German. It was usually encountered only in writing or formal speech; in fact, most of High German was a written language, not identical to any spoken dialect, throughout the German-speaking area until well into the 19th century. However, wider standardization of pronunciation
18029-606: The recording studios, Solti's career took off after 1956, when John Culshaw was put in charge of Decca's classical recording programme. Culshaw believed Solti to be "the great Wagner conductor of our time", and was determined to record the four operas of Der Ring des Nibelungen with Solti and the finest Wagner singers available. The cast Culshaw assembled for the cycle included Kirsten Flagstad , Hans Hotter , Birgit Nilsson and Wolfgang Windgassen . Apart from Arabella in 1957, in which he substituted when Karl Böhm withdrew, Solti had made no complete recording of an opera until
18178-489: The sessions for Das Rheingold , the first of the Ring tetralogy, in September and October 1958. In their respective memoirs, Culshaw and Solti told how Walter Legge of Decca's rival EMI predicted that Das Rheingold would be a commercial disaster ("'Very nice,' he said, 'Very interesting. But of course you won't sell any.'") The success of the recording took the record industry by surprise. It featured for weeks in
18327-546: The states of North Dakota and South Dakota , German is the most common language spoken at home after English. As a legacy of significant German immigration to the country , German geographical names can be found throughout the Midwest region , such as New Ulm and Bismarck (North Dakota's state capital), plus many other regions. A number of German varieties have developed in the country and are still spoken today, such as Pennsylvania Dutch and Texas German . In Brazil,
18476-710: The summer holidays with his wife and daughters. In Castiglione, the Georg Solti Accademia and the main piazza within the town's historic hamlet are named after Solti. Furthermore, Solti received a number of honours from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal and the US. He received honorary fellowships or degrees from the Royal College of Music and DePaul , Furman , Harvard , Leeds , London , Oxford , Surrey and Yale universities. In celebration of his 75th birthday in 1987,
18625-500: The third most commonly learned second language in the United States in K-12 education. The language has been influential in the fields of philosophy, theology, science, and technology. It is the second most commonly used language in science and the third most widely used language on websites . The German-speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of annual publication of new books, with one-tenth of all books (including e-books) in
18774-518: The works of Anton Bruckner , paralleling those on Richard Wagner at Easter and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Richard Strauss in the summer. Anne-Sophie Mutter , Karajan’s favourite violinist in his last decade, first performed with him at the age of 13 at the 1977 edition, playing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto . Starting in 1983, Karajan, due to his degrading relation with the Berlin Philharmonic as well as to his declining state of health, invited
18923-555: The world being published in German. German is most closely related to other West Germanic languages, namely Afrikaans , Dutch , English , the Frisian languages , and Scots . It also contains close similarities in vocabulary to some languages in the North Germanic group , such as Danish , Norwegian , and Swedish . Modern German gradually developed from Old High German , which in turn developed from Proto-Germanic during
19072-600: The written form of German. One of the central events in the development of ENHG was the publication of Luther's translation of the Bible into High German (the New Testament was published in 1522; the Old Testament was published in parts and completed in 1534). Luther based his translation primarily on the Meißner Deutsch of Saxony , spending much time among the population of Saxony researching
19221-612: Was Mahler's Fifth Symphony ; the orchestra was the Zurich Tonhalle, with whom he had made his first orchestral recording 50 years earlier. Solti died suddenly, in his sleep, on 5 September 1997 while on holiday in Antibes in the south of France. He was 84. After a state ceremony in Budapest, his ashes were interred beside the remains of Bartók in Farkasréti Cemetery . Solti recorded throughout his career for
19370-549: Was Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen made in Vienna, produced by Culshaw, between 1958 and 1965. It has twice been voted the greatest recording ever made, the first poll being among readers of Gramophone magazine in 1999, and the second of professional music critics in 2011, for the BBC 's Music Magazine . This recording is heard in the film Apocalypse Now during the helicopter attack scene. Honours awarded to Solti included
19519-429: Was a "neutral" language as there were virtually no English native speakers in Namibia at that time. German, Afrikaans, and several indigenous languages thus became "national languages" by law, identifying them as elements of the cultural heritage of the nation and ensuring that the state acknowledged and supported their presence in the country. Today, Namibia is considered to be the only German-speaking country outside of
19668-633: Was a more fruitful preparation than Unger's classes for his intended career as a conductor. In 1932, he went to Karlsruhe in Germany as assistant to Josef Krips , but within a year, Krips, anticipating the imminent rise to power of Hitler and the Nazis , insisted that Solti should go home to Budapest, where at that time Jews were not in danger. Other Jewish and anti-Nazi musicians also left Germany for Budapest. Among other musical exiles with whom Solti worked there were Otto Klemperer , Fritz Busch , and Kleiber. Before Austria fell under Nazi control, Solti
19817-413: Was a prolific recording artist, making more than 250 recordings, including 45 complete opera sets. The best-known of his recordings is probably Decca 's complete set of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen , made between 1958 and 1965. Solti's Ring has twice been voted the greatest recording ever made, in polls for Gramophone magazine in 1999 and the BBC 's Music Magazine in 2012. Solti
19966-464: Was a religious man, but his son was less so. Late in life, Solti recalled, "I often upset him because I never stayed in the synagogue for longer than 10 minutes." Teréz Stern was from a musical family, and encouraged her daughter Lilly, by eight years the elder of the children, to sing, and György to accompany her on the piano. Solti remembered, "I made so many mistakes, but it was invaluable experience for an opera conductor. I learnt to swim with her." He
20115-596: Was a talk by Muti about Calandrino with piano accompaniment on DVD. From Cecilia Bartoli’s direction, Giulio Cesare , Ariodante , and L'italiana in Algeri were released on DVD. German language German (German: Deutsch , pronounced [dɔʏtʃ] ) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family , mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe . It
20264-547: Was an artificial standard that did not correspond to any traditional spoken dialect. Rather, it was based on the pronunciation of German in Northern Germany, although it was subsequently regarded often as a general prescriptive norm, despite differing pronunciation traditions especially in the Upper-German-speaking regions that still characterise the dialect of the area today – especially
20413-400: Was assistant to Arturo Toscanini at the 1937 Salzburg Festival : Toscanini was the first great musical impression in my life. Before I heard him live in 1936, I had never heard a great opera conductor, not in Budapest, and it was like a lightning flash. I heard his Falstaff in 1936 and the impact was unbelievable. It was the first time I heard an ensemble singing absolutely precisely. It
20562-632: Was clearly imprinted upon his music-making as he snarled and ferociously stabbed his baton. ... It became a cliché to say he mellowed as he got older, but his performances remained thrilling right to the end. Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians In 1983, Solti conducted for the only time at the Bayreuth Festival . By this stage in his career, he no longer liked abstract productions of Wagner, or modernistic reinterpretations, such as Patrice Chéreau's 1976 Bayreuth Centenary Ring , which he found grew boring on repetition. Together with
20711-492: Was established on the basis of public speaking in theatres and the media during the 20th century and documented in pronouncing dictionaries. Official revisions of some of the rules from 1901 were not issued until the controversial German orthography reform of 1996 was made the official standard by governments of all German-speaking countries. Media and written works are now almost all produced in Standard German which
20860-475: Was fantastic. Then I never expected to meet Toscanini. It was a chance in a million. I had a letter of recommendation from the director of the Budapest Opera to the president of the Salzburg Festival. He received me and said: "Do you know Magic Flute , because we have an influenza epidemic and two of our repetiteurs are ill? Could you play this afternoon for the stage rehearsals?" After further work as
21009-473: Was impressed by him. The work was Mozart's Idomeneo , which had not been given there before. In Munich, Solti achieved critical and popular success, but for political reasons, his position at the State Opera was never secure. The view persisted that a German conductor should be in charge; pressure mounted, and after five years, Solti accepted an offer to move to Frankfurt in 1952 as musical director of
21158-422: Was in charge of concert programming in the summer, as artistic director. Now called a Whitsun Festival and branded as Whitsun+Baroque, it was expanded to opera with a complement of concerts, with a focus on baroque music , which is not traditionally played at the summer festival but had gained new interest from mainstream musical institutions following the historically informed performance movement. One inspiration
21307-519: Was influenced by their brisk tempi and impetuous manner. Edward Greenfield , music critic for The Guardian , wrote that Solti "conveys the authentic frisson of the great Elgarian moment more vividly than ever before on record." Late in his career he became enthusiastic about the music of Shostakovich , whom he admitted he failed to appreciate fully during the composer's lifetime. He made commercial recordings of seven of Shostakovich's fifteen symphonies. His podium personality, exuberant and forceful,
21456-400: Was invited to become music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It was the second time he had been offered the post. The first had been in 1963 after the death of the orchestra's conductor, Fritz Reiner , who made its reputation in the previous decade. Solti told the representatives of the orchestra that his commitments at Covent Garden made it impossible to give Chicago the eight months
21605-569: Was learning the role of Tristan in Wagner's opera . Throughout the Second World War, Solti remained in Switzerland. He did not see his father again; Mor Stern died of diabetes in a Budapest hospital in 1943. Solti was reunited with his mother and sister after the war. In Switzerland, he could not obtain a work permit as a conductor, but earned his living as a piano teacher. After he won the 1942 Geneva International Piano Competition , he
21754-502: Was not a diligent student of the piano: "My mother kept telling me to practise, but what 10-year-old wants to play the piano when he could be out playing football?" Solti enrolled at the Ernő Fodor School of Music in Budapest at the age of 10, transferring to the more prestigious Franz Liszt Academy two years later. When he was 12, he heard a performance of Beethoven 's Fifth Symphony conducted by Erich Kleiber , which gave him
21903-434: Was permitted to give piano recitals, but was still not allowed to conduct. During his exile, he met Hedwig (Hedi) Oeschli, daughter of a lecturer at Zürich University; they married in 1946. In his memoirs, he wrote of her, "She was very elegant and sophisticated. ... Hedi gave me a little grace and taught me good manners – although she never completely succeeded in this. She also helped me enormously in my career". With
22052-650: Was repeatedly honoured by the recording industry with awards throughout his career. From 1963 to 1998, he won 31 Grammy Awards as a recording artist, making him the Grammy Awards' most-awarded artist until Beyoncé surpassed his record in 2023. Solti was born György Stern on Maros utca, in the Hegyvidék district of the Buda side of Budapest. He was the younger of the two children of Teréz ( née Rosenbaum ) and Móricz "Mor" Stern, both of whom were Jewish. In
22201-486: Was the International Baroque Days held for Whitsun at Melk Abbey . The first opera production was Francesco Cavalli ’s La Calisto (1651). That same year, the newly-opened Festspielhaus Baden-Baden , Germany’s largest opera house, created a Herbert von Karajan Whitsun Festival, with Salzburg’s agreement. The event relied on prominent guest conductors, orchestras and singers. As is common for
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