As you read this, the Chicago Symphony is winding up its latest triumphal march through the concert halls of Europe under the direction of Sir Georg Solti, the man who put the orchestra on the international map. In more ways than one.
After the final concert of that tour, Sept. 18, the maestro will return to his home in the St. John`s Wood district outside London, where he will enjoy a few weeks` well-deserved rest before celebrating his 77th birthday Oct. 12 in a quiet family gathering. On Nov. 2 he will conduct his first concert of the CSO season at Orchestra Hall, an event that will mark the beginning of his 21st and penultimate season as CSO music director.
Solti`s great rival, Herbert von Karajan, who died last July, did not have the luxury of being able to script his own retirement. Solti not only can write the entire scenario, he can give himself all the best lines. Even in the wildly improbable event that his final two seasons with the CSO are a bust, another bust, this one bearing Solti`s visage, stands in Lincoln Park as an enduring monument to one of the city`s great cultural leaders-and, with Karajan`s passing, the preeminent podium figure of his generation.
Solti already ranks second in terms of longevity of service in the 98-year history of the orchestra. First place goes to Frederick Stock, whose 37 years (1905-1942) with the CSO are rivaled in American symphonic life only by Eugene Ormandy`s 44-year stint (1936-80) in Philadelphia. Solti says he has no intention of trying to surpass Stock`s record. But, in fact, Solti conducted his first concerts with the CSO at Ravinia in 1954, which means that at his retirement at the close of the orchestra`s 100th season in the spring of 1991, he will have been associated with that ensemble for 37 years. Assuming he will continue to appear as guest after 1991, their association could easily reach the 40-year mark.
It appears likely, however, that Solti will be remembered not for how long he served in Chicago but how well. In the fall of 1991 he will be the only permanent conductor in CSO history to hold the title of music director laureate. At that time Daniel Barenboim will take over as the CSO`s ninth music director, and a new era will begin for the orchestra.
Thus, the two seasons ahead, leading up to and through the orchestra`s centenary, will be a time of transition during which Solti will be
surrendering the power and prerogatives of his position to a trusted younger successor.
It promises to be an orderly transition. In 1989-90 Solti will spend six weeks on the podium, Barenboim five, and the two men also will share conducting duties during the CSO`s third trip to Japan next April. The following year, each man will direct six weeks of concerts, a division of responsibility that will, in effect, make them co-music directors.
Solti is emphatic on one point. He is not retiring. Not from Chicago. Not from anything.
”Don`t bury me,” he insists, fixing you with a sardonic smile. ”I retire when I die. As long as God gives me health and I am able to travel, I will come back every season for as long as I can.”
Although he and his family live in London, he deplores the quality of British orchestras and has no desire to make London the base of his musical power as he did during the decade he headed the Royal Opera. Apart from conducting an occasional new production at Covent Garden or at the Salzburg
Festival and a few other major guest engagements, Solti says he is reserving his podium time in the years ahead for Chicago.
Don`t assume that simply because Solti and Barenboim are the best of friends, the former is becoming a lame-duck music director. When the trustees called a press conference last January to announce the Barenboim appointment, Solti insisted that he, Solti, make the announcement. Perhaps to make certain that he wouldn`t be upstaged by his successor, Solti vetoed the idea of Barenboim`s participating in that press conference via a live television or telephone hookup.
He`s still the boss, and don`t you forget it.
Solti says he doesn`t know, at this point, how long his annual stays in Chicago will be once he settles into his laureate position. Much of that will depend on how many weeks Barenboim chooses to allot to the guest conductors and how many recordings London/Decca will wish to make here with Solti.
For his part, the maestro, whose income from record royalties far exceeds the six-figure salary he presently draws from the CSO, says he is ”very keen” on continuing to make recordings with the orchestra that helped him win 23 of his 27 Grammy awards.
There is plenty of music he has yet to record with the CSO: Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Nielsen, more Haydn and Mozart, Schoenberg`s ”Gurrelieder.” At the rate Solti is going, he could have an Indian-summer recording career nearly as productive as Leopold Stokowski`s.
As Solti closes in on his 80th year, he is trimmer, more energetic and in better health than most septuagenarians ever hope to be. It is not unreasonable to think that he will remain active on the podium, here and elsewhere, for at least another decade.
To insure his musical longevity, Solti has been systematically cutting back his work load. He is a wealthy man, he loves nothing more than spending time with his family and he no longer is driven to make music all over the world. Continuing his love affair with the greatest orchestra in the world is, for him, enough.
Indeed, no change of professional circumstance is likely to alter Solti`s affection and respect for the Chicago Symphony. He would be the first to admit that his present reputation is linked, perhaps inextricably, to that of the CSO. And he has spent a fair amount of energy in recent years nurturing and fine-tuning his relationship with that ensemble, crowing like a happy bridegroom about the success of their ”marriage,” a metaphor he has frequently used when speaking of his 100-member musical family.
”I love this orchestra so much,” Solti declares. ”I think the CSO has never played better than today. Two-thirds of the players are new since I came in 1969, and when I leave in `91, it will be 80 percent. I inherited a fully
(Fritz) Reiner orchestra but will be leaving a Solti orchestra. I am enormously proud of that fact.
”We now have a marvelously balanced orchestra; it is very even. The Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic-they are our major rivals. It is a question of taste. With a certain megalomania, I would say that I created the best orchestra in the world. And that, I suppose, is no menial
achievement.”
Few would dispute Solti`s claim that he will have left the Chicago Symphony the most versatile group of orchestral musicians in the world. The ensemble can now play everything from Vivaldi to the most technically difficult modern music with a brilliance, smoothness and power that are unsurpassed. One of Solti`s prime achievements was to restore and build on the priceless legacy that Reiner had bequeathed him. As Solti has said, he put his ”life`s blood” into that achievement, often at great personal and family sacrifice.
At the same time, Solti continues to realize the importance of keeping his orchestra in the eyes and ears of the international musical public, through recordings, radio broadcasts and touring. It was he, after all, who in 1971 took the CSO to Europe for the first time. A triumph of music and marketing, that hugely successful tour formed the basis of the Solti/Chicago Success Story from which the institution continues to draw local sustenance and worldwide prestige and honors.
One big question with which Solti will have to grapple is that while he himself has long since passed the nominal age of retirement, the CSO has a number of veteran players, some of them occupying key chairs, who will reach retirement age during his final two seasons. Replacing these musicians when
(and sometimes if) they decide to step down will not be easy. It never is.
Solti, fortunately, has shown remarkable compassion and fairness in orchestra personnel matters. It will be interesting to see whether he intends to ”pack the court” with players who conform to his relatively aggressive style of musicmaking and what effect these personnel changes (made on the basis of ”blind” auditions held before an orchestra committee, with the music director enjoying more-or-less final say in who is hired) will produce in the orchestra`s general sound and style under Barenboim, whose own style is markedly warmer and less fierce than Solti`s.
In any case, the maestro`s list of things he hopes to accomplish with our orchestra over the next two years is long. And time, as always, is woefully short.
”I will die before touching 30 percent of the repertory,” Solti laments. ”It is a great shame, but there you are. I am only human. I cannot rush things. I have agreed to conduct new works by Michael Tippett and my friend Pierre Boulez for our 100th season. I can only learn one or two new scores a year. That is my capacity.”
The maestro has already ruled out the possibility of writing his memoirs. ”Knowing myself,” he says, heaving a fine Hungarian sigh, ”I`ll conduct until I pass away, and then it will be too late.” Still, with wife Valerie working on a book about her famous husband, posterity will not lack for authorized documentation of Solti`s golden years.
How, then, does he hope to be remembered?
”That I made good music.”
