Maestro or Mephisto: The Real Georg Solti

This is the story of one of the greatest

and most controversial conductors

of the 20th century.

The Hungarian-born Georg Solti.

Through a 50-year career around the world,

he scaled the peak of musical power and influence

by his extraordinary talent combined with a blazing personality

that never dimmed.

He was a man with a character with a lot of fire,

and immediately everyone is set on fire around him.

He was driven by overpowering ambition.

I would go anywhere,

I would kill my grandfather,

because I was starving for work.

His performances thrilled audiences in opera houses and concert halls...

Take 130.

..and legendary recordings made him

one of the best-selling classical artists of all.

He was loved...

He was a really great musician, a great friend.

He was also loathed.

All he did, in my opinion, was get in the way.

But he always demanded respect.

If you like quality, then I'm easy.

If you don't like to work hard, I'm difficult.

There has never been another conductor quite like him.

He was always the Maestro.

This...is the REAL Georg Solti.

WOMAN SINGS OPERATIC ARIA

This is the Hotel L'Andana, in Tuscany, near Castiglione.

Here at the Georg Solti Academy,

the internationally renowned soprano, Angela Gheorghiu,

is giving the first masterclass she's ever held.

Passing on to a new generation

the experiences of nearly two decades

at the top of her profession.

The Solti Academy has enabled her students to travel here

from across Europe to attend a three-week singers' course.

Just one part of the rich legacy that Solti left behind

when he died at the age of 84 in 1997.

OK, you have that.

-SHE SINGS A FEW NOTES

-The same, yeah?

-Listen...

-SHE SINGS

For Angela, this is repaying the debt that she owes Solti.

His belief in her propelled her to overnight stardom.

My life, it is very much related to Georg Solti.

All my interviews,

all my stories start with Georg Solti, because

everybody discovered me at the Royal Opera House, in Traviata.

APPLAUSE

She made her debut under his baton

in London, in December 1994.

QUIET STRINGS

And this production of Verdi's La Traviata

was seen on television by millions.

'The whole BBC2 schedule was swept aside,'

so we had Verdi wall to wall for one evening,

with the great Angela Gheorghiu.

And she was tremendous, but so was Solti in the pit.

The iron and the discipline

and the power and the electricity that he generated.

Solti was 82 when he conducted this production,

but his legendary style was as forceful as ever.

'He conducted almost like he was playing the piano,

'but it would be the orchestra that he was playing.

'Once you look at the man'

who's had that amount of music through his body,

you think, "I just can't let you down. I have to do the best I can."

'He was an example. To conduct at 82'

with such, um...

young spirit.

And I know that in that particular moment, I need to be...the best.

It was Solti's typically bold decision

to cast the little known Romanian soprano.

All his life he had demonstrated that instinct

for recognising musicians who shared his passion

for excellence in performance

and the importance of bringing it to the widest possible audience.

'I had one rehearsal with her in my home,

'and when she finished,'

I just couldn't speak.

It was so moving, so wonderful.

So that was the beginning of the story. I cried!

Solti's relationship with the Royal Opera House

stretched back nearly 40 years,

beginning with one of the pivotal appointments in his career.

In 1961 he became music director

of what was then known as the Covent Garden Opera Company.

APPLAUSE

'Covent Garden was a relatively young company.

'It had only begun after the war

'and was starting to brim and boom with talent.'

But it needed the final touch.

It needed somebody to bring it all together

and to put it onto the world map.

That's what Solti did.

'And he arrived, curiously enough.

'in the same year as Rudolf Nureyev.'

They both appeared like meteorites.

There was a huge explosion from both of them.

'Both highly energetic, very clear ideas of what they wanted

'and how they were going to achieve them.'

'And Solti arrived in our midst.'

"I'm coming to Covent Garden and I'm going to make the Royal Opera

"the best opera company in the world."

And he proclaimed that from the rooftops.

'He had this extraordinary ability

'to energise everything and everybody he came into contact with.

'He dwelt a great deal on rhythmic incisiveness,

'precision and excitement.'

And these were qualities

which in fact the Opera House probably needed at that point.

In fact, I knew myself, by then, we needed someone quite different

'from anybody we'd had in the past.'

'I was a very different person at that point.

'I was a sort of Prussian dictator, which was very good for them.'

Discipline they needed. There was no discipline in this house.

'Orchestra is, from slow start, coming in to get better.'

They are starting always very slow,

starting so I want to commit suicide.

'Then it gets better and it comes to something good.'

'I'd been interested with the whole bureaucratic procedure.'

Not only conducting,

but going to the stage in rehearsal, go to the lighting rigs,

'see the sets for the first time lit.

'That was new.

'"What the bloody hell is he putting his nose into that? Why?"'

Please, on the development, the main scene, the first main scene, again.

Be so kind, come a bit later on the semiquaver. Risk a bit more.

# Eeh-ah-ta-da Tee-ah-ta-ta-ta! #

I would like to make this marvellous difference

between quaver and semiquaver.

'He'd been there for about a year and a half before I joined.

'He was like a boxer going into the ring.'

He bounced in full of energy, jumped on the rostrum and he'd be going...

MAKES POPPING SOUNDS

"Yes, my dears! Yes, my dears! Come on, come on, stop the revolution!"

Especially if it was a stage rehearsal, that was his favourite phrase -

"Stop the revolution! Stop the revolution!"

'You have to bear in mind, the orchestra wasn't like it is today.

'Today it's like a well-oiled machine.

'In those days we had an awful lot of players

'who'd learned their trade in the silent cinemas

'and the summer seasides.

'He obviously had never played in an orchestra.

'That's why he conduced a lot with his elbows.'

In fact, it took me a while,

but I finally worked out that the downbeat was on his right elbow.

He also used to get very tense.

I remember once he stabbed himself in the forehead with his baton.

He was conducting away. The leader handed him a handkerchief

and he was holding the handkerchief and conducting, turning the page.

His early years at Covent Garden were always controversial.

'Rather hard to express this,'

but the Royal Opera House was a very English establishment.

And English ways are not always understood by those who are not English.

But he did come with this reputation

of being someone who was not necessarily satisfied

with what he discovered.

He was often correcting

what we would look on nowadays as basic mistakes or problems.

Like getting rhythms together.

A classic one being the dotted rhythm.

# Da ta-ta ta-ta. #

Which is one, two, three, four, one ,two three.

And so Georg would go, "No, no. BOO BOO-BOO!"

# Pa... Pa... PAH! #

Give the main emphasis on the last note, yes? On the last note and very late.

'They hated me like anything!'

# Ba... BA! #

They called me a Prussian...

bastard, or something like that.

Or the Hungarian Disaster! All sorts of nice names.

There were some complaints from some singers about his failure,

in their view, in fact, to keep the orchestra at fortissimo down.

And they sometimes felt they were being drowned.

There was a terrible sort of campaign against him.

'Remember, Covent Garden in those days,

'was a wholesale vegetable market.'

And one night there was a cauliflower with a "Solti Must Go"

thing stuck on it got lobbed across the footlights.

All around that time thrown down vegetable baskets,

'onions and potatoes.'

'I can remember seeing from the stage door

'to the front of the house all along the wall and the outside,'

"Solti must go" stickers.

'And then it was some point somebody scratched my car.'

I had a silver Mercedes, it was.

MAKES SCRATCHING SOUND Very unpleasant.

I knew that it's some nasty young boy.

Just one or two. I mean, it's not serious.

'There were a lot of protests and I discovered who they were.

'There was a whole band of people in the gallery

'and I got somebody to get them all together for me'

and we had supper one night and we talked about it.

And I said, "Whatever else you do, stop booing. This man will go home

"and we are not going to lose him because of you."

In fact nothing would deter Solti from his mission.

From provocative productions like Schoenberg's Moses and Aaron...

..to fresh productions of loved old favourites,

like Mozart's Marriage of Figaro.

WOMAN SINGS

His relentless energy helped to transform opera in Britain.

In 1968, the Covent Garden Opera Company

would be renamed the Royal Opera.

Very sexy.

And the '60s would become the Solti era.

You thought, "This is history in the making."

We were getting international singers and marvellous new works.

And he was suddenly pushing it up into the international league.

MAN SINGS

SOLTI WHISTLES MELODY

WOMAN SINGS

He was born Georg Stern in Budapest in Hungary, in 1912.

The son of a rather unsuccessful Jewish businessman

and his music-loving wife.

Both he and his elder sister took music lessons,

and the young Georg proved to be an exceptionally talented pianist.

He'd accompany his sister's singing.

Of course it was terrible.

We just fought, because I was much more musical than she was.

I hated it and I made fun of her

and she was infuriated because I always played how she was singing.

But to learn the tricks at nine or ten, I mean, God bless her!

It was wonderful.

That gave me the sense to be an opera conductor, of course!

At the age of 12, he became a student

at the Franz Liszt Music Academy in Budapest

and his luck was to have a piano tutor who was a genius -

the composer, Bela Bartok.

He knew Bartok and he was one of his best pupils

because he learned from Bartok so much that he could share

with thousands of other musicians,

and it was millions of people who came

and were able to hear how Bartok's music should be performed.

Half a century after he left Hungary,

at Snape Maltings in Suffolk,

he was to work with the pianist Murray Perahia

and the percussionist Evelyn Glennie to record a piece by Bartok

that took him right back to those early musical experiences.

MUSIC: "Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion" by Bela Bartok

When I had the opportunity to work with him

on Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion,

I was a young, up-and-coming musician

and it was probably the biggest lesson in every respect

as far as being a professional musician is concerned.

-Maybe we're late.

-I think so.

'That was a lot of hard work, it was very intense.'

It was two weeks of really almost gruelling rehearsals.

I was literally like a sponge.

I was taking in... I can almost smell every note of that piece,

you know, because it meant something.

Here we go. One...

Bartok composed the Sonata in the early '30s

and Solti's connection with the piece was intimate.

Bartok and his wife played the piece in the Budapest Opera.

I went to the performance because I wanted to hear the performance.

And shortly before they started, somebody said,

"Would you please turn the page for Mrs Bartok?"

I couldn't say, "I can't read music,"

so I went and turned the page for Mrs Bartok.

I never had before in my life.

And it was great excitement, very difficult to turn the page,

so if you're asking me "How did you like the piece?"

At that point, I don't know, I was too busy turning pages.

For Solti, now in his late 70s, these sessions were a test,

both of his pianistic skills honed by Bartok in childhood,

and a demonstration of his fidelity to the composer's intentions.

I mean, that speed, just about, I can make it.

Solti was so nervous before the first rehearsal with Murray

that he asked me to call Murray and say, "Murray, give me another day.

"I am still practising."

The next day, Murray Perahia called me and said,

"Charles, please tell Georg I need one more day."

I can't play that bloody thing!

I can't find any fingering for it, I just...!

I didn't realise that it was so difficult and we were having

a lot of problems because it's a very demanding piece technically.

I had wanted Chinese acrobatic fingers! Chinese acrobat!

'Lot of notes, lot of rhythm changes,

'hard to manage and hard to play.'

He was very attentive to tempo indications and tempo details,

always with a metronome. I remember him always

with this little metronome that he carried around.

'Click, click.'

Some of the speed is practically impossible. It's so fast.

You can't play it, you simply cannot play it in that speed,

but little slower it's working.

We can't do it, neither he!

Cos there is an old record which I checked with a metronome.

None of the speed is what he wrote, it's all slow, which is right.

METRONOME BEEPS

MUSIC BEGINS

Solti always believed that it was vital to pass on his experience

and be a mentor for new talent.

'I admire this boy, he's such a fantastic musician.

'I like him immensely,'

he's one of the most talented of the younger generation,

a wonderful, natural musician.

'And I think he doesn't dislike me, so therefore we're playing together.'

Solti completed his studies in 1930

and got work at the Hungarian State Opera House,

coaching singers and playing for rehearsals.

Over the next few years, he'd make steady progress

towards his gleaming goal of becoming a conductor.

In 1937, a big break.

The Salzburg Festival and an assistant's job with a giant,

the Italian Arturo Toscanini.

'I never seen him without a score, without working, without looking.

'He just worked all the time. And that, for me, that changed my life.'

I saw the point that without work, it wouldn't be anything and anywhere.

And since that point, I work.

The news of this boy working with Toscanini

made a great impression back home.

Particularly in the Hungarian press.

It gave me my big break, because until then,

no Jew had ever conducted in the Hungarian State Opera.

My debut as an opera conductor was a performance

of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, which I had to conduct with no rehearsal.

I came out here, you can imagine what a heartbeat was mine.

Double speed, I suppose.

144 instead of 72, and started the overture.

I don't know how it started, but it started,

and I felt more and more inclined to feeling happy.

It was the date of 11th of March 1938,

and I had no idea that on that night,

Hitler moved into Austria and the Anschluss began.

'I had a Jewish singer that night,'

who in the third act made one mistake after the other.

I don't know if he would be drunk.

And I was very upset, cos I knew him well. Lendvay was his name.

I was very angry, "What the hell is he doing?!"

It turned out that in the intermission he knew it,

and he was very worried what will happen to him.

This was a terrible night.

Now, Hungary was becoming

a progressively more uncomfortable place.

The Fascist government was becoming more anti-Semitic

and the openings for Jews were shutting down one by one.

So he goes to Lucerne Festival

and it's 1939 and war breaks out

and he gets a telegram from his mother saying "Don't come back,"

and he is stranded in Switzerland without a work permit.

He was a refugee so he didn't have the right to work,

but he was given the chance to give piano lessons.

But I never for a second forgotten that I'm doing temporary business

and I don't know when,

because in '41 and '42, by God it didn't look very well.

God knows when I will conduct again! I never gave up that hope.

He then married Hedi Oechsli, who was his first wife,

who ran away from her family with him, sort of caused a great scandal.

She was actually pregnant with her second child

when she met Solti and fell in love with him

and that's a pretty astonishing story,

to actually leave your husband if you're actually pregnant

with one of his children, but she did.

And she turned out to be the most marvellous support for him.

With the end of the Second World War, Solti's exile

in Switzerland was over, and out of the blue,

he was invited to help to rebuild German cultural life

from the ruins of war,

as the music director of the Bavarian Opera in Munich.

People said, "How could he go to Germany?"

But it was all about moving forward.

He had to survive as a person but also as a musician.

I would go to Hell to work.

I would feel like Goethe's Mephistopheles, a pact with Faust.

I would go anywhere.

I would kill my grandfather, because I was starving for work.

And what was wonderful, I received with open arms.

I was afraid.

I thought the Nazis were shooting and killing left and right. None of it.

First of all, in Germany, '46 was no more Nazis. Nobody was ever Nazi!

The others be Nazis!

Secondly, the young generation until today is very much on my side

because I was the first Jewish musician who went to Germany.

The opera house that Solti inherited

had been virtually destroyed in an air raid in 1943.

They had no costume, no sets, nothing.

Everything was burnt except, I think it was

an old Fidelio, an old Fidelio set, it was there

and some other old opera, I think Hoffman.

That was the repertory at first, Hoffman and Fidelio

because that was the only two pieces which were there.

For Georg Solti, the musician

who'd only conducted one opera in his life,

it was the perfect opportunity.

If I had arrived in opera house which has a normal repertory,

I couldn't cope with it.

I wouldn't have had time to learn the pieces,

but as every single opera had to be new study

I just got as much space to jump off the one single opera.

I was there six years, and I would think

about 25 or 26 operas I conducted, all the first time.

And it was here, in Munich,

that Solti had one of the most significant encounters of his life.

He met the composer Richard Strauss.

In '47, he had his 85th birthday,

and for that occasion he came back to Germany.

'I conducted my first Rosenkavalier in my life and he came to a rehearsal.

'They made some film, it still exists, a little film,

'in which he conducts the second act in Der Rosenkavalier.

'I stand behind him.'

He asked, "Where are the horns?" I said, "Dr Strauss, there." "OK."

"Where are trumpets?" "There." "All right."

The old fox. When it came to cues, he couldn't see,

he couldn't hear, but the cue was there. Absolutely marvellous.

'He asked me to come and visit his house.

'I went up to his house, 11 o'clock, enormous palpitation.

'He was wonderful.

'He immediately called me a colleague and talked business, shop, you know?

'I thought it was the greatest time of my life,'

I enjoyed the few hours with him immensely, enormously.

And I would stay for ever, except his wife Pauline throw me out

and said, "Solti, you must go now.

"He must go to sleep."

But in very early September, the message came that he died.

It's a really enormously great distinction,

I played music for his funeral.

He had one wish in his testament that said,

the Trio from the Rosenkavalier, he wants to hear that piece of music.

'An immense crowd, there was 100,000 people.

'I never forget as long as I live,

'because we started all together and finally, I finished by myself

'because all the singers broke down, they couldn't sing.

'The famous Pauline was broken down.

'You barely recognised her and you know, two months later she died.

'Without him, she couldn't live.'

Munich was a great triumph

and everybody thought that they'd never heard anything like me ever,

but within two, three years, it was quite obvious that

this young man has no experience, does everything the first time.

I didn't make any secret about it, but still,

it was something which began to be an irritation.

And he managed to stick it, despite the fact

that he was a Jew in Catholic Bavaria

and whatever the Germans had learned, they hadn't learned

to forget about the instinctive suspicion of outsiders of any kind.

Not just because you're a Jew, but because you're not a Catholic, you're not Bavarian,

you can't be the right person to run the Munich Opera.

His flair had been spotted, and early in the 1950s,

he moved to Frankfurt to help rebuild the opera company there.

International success was coming in spectacular fashion.

In 1958, he started the mammoth recording project

that would sell 100 million records

and establish him as a true innovator.

'If you were a young conductor of talent in those days,'

somebody was going to come after you because they needed conductors,

they needed to record the whole classical repertoire

and there were a lot of record labels.

For seven years, he made regular visits to Vienna to work with

one of the pioneers in high fidelity recording.

John Culshaw of Decca.

-That's on the luxury list, I think.

-It is not more than the luxury list?

-Luxury list.

-All right.

Culshaw had been a naval officer

and he entered Decca in the press department.

But he had a dream and a vision,

which was totally beyond the means of any record company at that time.

He said, "We are going to make a Ring Cycle -

"the whole of Wagner's Ring, all four operas.

"We're not going to record it off stage, but create it in-studio,

"so that the sound picture is going to be what people have in their living rooms,

"rather than some simulacrum with all the bumps and squeaks

"of what's going on on the stage of an opera house."

Right, OK.

SOLTI MIMICS HORN INTRO

HORNS SOUND

At the centre of it was this marvellous Solti, this athletic,

lithe, panther-like figure.

He was so fit - as you have to be to conduct these major works.

Ein, zwei...!

The elasticity... His body language was so beautiful.

Combined with an intellectual rigour which had been instilled in him

over donkeys' years.

Enorm, orchestra! Absolute enorm!

POWERFUL MUSICAL PASSAGE

And it took a long time to make.

And every single segment required board approval at Decca,

and it was always touch and go whether they'd finish,

and whether they'd get the right singers,

and whether the singers would walk out on them.

I know, I know what you mean.

-It has a transcendent quality.

-Ja.

-She is very far away.

-She is no-more here.

-Right, yeah.

SOLTI SINGS AND PLAYS NILSSON SINGS

Here you have to make over and over again

and have the same intensity all the time...

Without public and with many things that bothers you,

conductor very far away and... So, it's very difficult.

SHE SINGS WITH THE ORCHESTRA

Working with the Vienna Philharmonic did bring its own problems.

He was particularly polite to the Viennese

because he knew the Viennese were desperately anti-Semitic

and he wasn't going to be the one to open up the hostilities.

-INTERCOM:

-"Zigarettenpause, ja?"

He'd call them gentlemen and mein herren.

"Zigarettenpause!" he'd say, if he wanted a break.

Zigarettenpause.

I am afraid we are getting now too fast. And then I will kill you,

-because then you are guilty!

-No, I promise you the tempo is right.

And the choice of Wagner's Ring had a heavy political resonance,

for a Hungarian Jew little more than 15 years after the end of the Second World War.

Because Hitler misabused that music. Very much.

First, because he liked it,

and he went to Bayreuth. And every year went,

and thought something very special on it. But it's not Wagner's fault.

I do entirely believe they are great musical masterpieces,

and nothing to do with totalitarian fascism philosophy, at all.

At least, I don't see it.

SOLTI SINGS ALONG WITH ORCHESTRA

The recordings were a long struggle to approach perfection.

In afternoon sessions, they were a bit sleepy. They'd had a big lunch.

Who the hell want to play Gotterdammerung at two o'clock

having had five-course lunch?

I arrived at two o'clock full of ambition.

So many takes and takes and being never right, never right.

So, between four and five, they awake, and it's marvellous, but I was dead!

Solti and Culshaw's 15-hour Ring Cycle,

released on 20 LPs from 1959 to 1966, was a landmark.

All right, John. Let's do it.

And still, half a century later,

retains its status as one of the great modern recordings.

The public response was so enormous, because it came out in stereo,

which was the latest thing.

And everybody who had two speakers had to have this opera

to demonstrate the new technology they'd just brought into their house.

And it sold and sold and sold, and it is, to this day,

still the best-selling classical record of all time.

Solti was now in his early 50s.

He was a recording star, and music director at the Royal Opera House.

But his marriage to Heidi was coming to an end.

He moved out of their house in Kensington

and into a suite at the Savoy Hotel,

and there he met his second wife, the television presenter, Valerie Pitts.

I was doing an arts programme for the BBC.

They said, "Oh, yes, Dr Solti is waiting for you in his room."

I thought, "Ooh."

Yes, that's it. This is the door. There it is.

And I stood here and I knocked.

No reply. So I knocked again. And a voice said, "What do you want?"

And I said, I'm from the BBC, I've come to interview you.

And then there was total silence.

And shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.

About 30 seconds later, the door opened

and there was a sort of Rocky Marciano-Cassius Clay figure,

wrapped up in a bathrobe and towels,

opened the door and said, "Please come in, I will get dressed."

Disappeared back into the bathroom and then turned around

and said, "Please, could you find my socks?"

And came this rather beautiful lady, a sort of future

Miss America, or Miss UK, or something like that, not...BBC.

Because the BBC, for me, always represented old ladies.

Afterwards, we had a drink together and I dropped a clanger,

because I said to him, "You know, I'm awfully sorry

"but I really don't know much about opera,

"and I really don't enjoy it very much,

"because I once saw a terrible opera. It was Elektra in Frankfurt."

And his nose would twitch when he was... Which I...

And this sort of twitch of the nose... "My dear, what year was that?"

And I said which ever year it was.

And he said, "Thank you so very much. I was the conductor."

They married in 1967, and Solti decided that after nearly 20 years

as an opera conductor in Europe,

he would go west to the United States and concentrate on the concert repertoire.

He accepted an offer from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

He always said this was the greatest musical love relationship of my life.

And he looked on them as a partner. To that level.

We achieved, I think, a great thing.

Out of this provincial orchestra

came one of the great orchestras of the world.

He said, "They are SO marvellous, this orchestra.

"They are wonderful."

And he felt the orchestra just made music

and had the same enthusiasm as he did.

When he arrived, Solti found the orchestra embroiled in a personality dispute.

He took it upon himself to resolve it.

There had been certain members of this orchestra

who didn't talk to each other at all.

It suddenly was real, in which the first flute stood up and loudly said,

"I can't take that any more!"

And out went.

If I tolerate that, my days are numbered.

So I asked the two gentlemen to my room and I said to them,

very heartfelt, it was real...

"You either make peace right now here, in my presence,

"or I leave you immediately.

"You can look another man. I am not staying for a day longer."

And they knew I am not joking.

The flautist and the oboist settled their differences

and Solti's relationship with Chicago would last for a quarter of a century.

I love precision. I adore dynamics. I adore clarity and texture.

I adore rhythmical precision.

The sound actually gleamed in your ears.

That was the Solti hallmark.

This big brash, but very, very clean sound.

He was now in his 60s.

And he and his new young family would spend six months a year in Chicago.

Chicago is a very young city.

There were people from all over the world, so it was a great mixing pot.

There are many emigres. A, Hitler emigres. B, Russian emigres.

Lithuania, Estonia, and then Czech,

and then Hungarians.

The amalgamation is quite amazing.

This is now, of course, an American orchestra - very American outlook,

very American way of life -

but we're making, I think, very European way of music.

Solti embraced America. They called him the Fastest Baton in the West.

And the citizens of Chicago loved the flamboyant personality

who brought so much status to their orchestra and the city.

Chicago Symphony is considered as one of the finest in the world.

And Georg Solti...

I love all the wonderful soloists

and the orchestra sounds really marvellous.

When he wasn't conducting in Chicago, Solti would return regularly to the United Kingdom,

where, in the 1980s, he became principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

He used to come across and spend about three weeks to a month with us.

And every time he appeared, the fireworks started flying.

And sometimes he had problems communicating exactly what he wanted, and thus,

some people didn't get on with him.

They found him difficult to work with.

He encouraged me to make the sort of sound that I didn't want to make.

He changed the whole sound of the orchestra.

We wanted to maintain the tradition of a beautiful English sound.

He definitely wanted us to make this terrible American type of sound.

Solti had the Chicago orchestra.

They played in the way that Solti wanted them to. And we didn't.

We're English.

He was bereft of any stick technique whatever.

And all he did, in my opinion, was get in the way

of what was supposed to be happening.

He would've been the first to admit he couldn't really beat time

straightforwardly.

It was all passion.

His jerking and doing this kind of thing,

in the most flowing sort of music... And like...convulsions!

So it was a question of heads down and you'd be fine. You didn't look.

His technique is not particularly beautiful to watch,

but somehow, it did get the results.

Whether it was his left heel or his right elbow, I don't know!

On the stage, the dynamic, the electricity that was there...

Every single concert that he did was an event.

Solti was a one-off. He was unique.

This is Castiglione in Tuscany,

in Italy.

Here, in the early '60s,

Solti bought a villa which, for 35 years, would be his summer home.

It was a total symbol for him, really.

And he once said to me,

"You know, I just feel I've been here in another life."

And when he first brought me down here,

he said, "Look at this red soil.

"The soil is like that in Hungary."

So I think, in a way,

it replaced his Hungarian home, emotionally, for him.

And it was the first house he had.

The first thing he owned.

And the place where could really have tranquillity.

Solti would come here every year, and stop. In this place.

With the cicadas talking. Stop and think.

It takes me, in the summer holidays, at least four weeks

when music, as such, gets out of my bloodstream.

It is a pulse which you all the time feel.

It is a certain... Either a motif or a rhythmical microcosm,

something all the time vibrates in your nervous system.

And he would come down here for six weeks, sometimes for two months,

and for the first part of it, he'd have a rest

and then the second bit, he'd start working.

And he might do an hour a day... and then two hours.

And that's how he paced himself,

till he was then working half the day.

But, even so, he would still go down for his swim...or his walk.

And he might play tennis in the morning as well.

And he'd certainly go off on his bicycle to collect the newspaper.

So, his day-to-day life was very disciplined.

All his life was really concentrated...

on the performance or the studying.

And he once said,

"You know, musicians, particularly conductors,

"are the servants of the composer, not the other way round."

THEY ALL SING IN ITALIAN

And, you see, every morning,

he woke up and was thrilled that he was making music.

And he was very grateful for that,

that he'd had the opportunity to make music.

He was very, very generous

and he wanted to share it all the time.

Here in Castiglione,

the Solti Foundation and the Solti Academy perpetuate Sir Georg's ideals

by offering real support to talented young musicians.

He never forgot what it was like to be poor and to be struggling.

And, therefore, always gave this sometimes financial helping hand to youngsters who needed it.

All his life, Solti had seized every opportunity to introduce new talent to wider audiences.

And he found a powerful, natural ally in television.

We brought him into the studio at Television Centre

to play a piece he hadn't played for 40 years

and make a half-hour programme about it.

The Mozart G Minor Piano Quartet.

It was a maestro saying, "Here are three young people. We're going to play Mozart."

"This is how chamber music is made."

In 1981, when I was 24, the word Solti rang all the bells.

So to be given a call to play chamber music with Solti

was like getting a summons from God.

And I didn't even know he played the piano. Ha!

He was incredibly kind. And encouraging.

At one point, I made a mistake, I came in too late,

and then just tweaked it and did a naughty boy, "Nobody noticed that."

And then out of the corner of my eye, I saw Solti back off from the piano like this.

And this big grin came over his face.

He looked at me and I thought, "Hmm!"

Never mind. That's OK.

Maybe I'm too soon. Let's hear...

Yes. Yes!

Yes.

-A small point...

-Of course, I can do it with one.

Two hands is better. Cos you never really enjoy yourself...

He's in charge but not dominating.

It's quite a different atmosphere here than when he's on the podium.

Cos as he says,

"In conducting, somebody has to make the decisions when you've got 120 people."

"But in chamber music, you must throw that out of the window. Everybody has to agree."

Solti's willingness to let the cameras into his life

produced some classic, revealing programmes.

In 1990, we persuaded Kiri and Solti

to do The Maestro And The Diva, it was called.

And in that lovely studio of his,

we saw him rehearsing a set of Strauss songs.

SHE SINGS IN GERMAN

He loved the human voice and he loved singers,

particularly the soprano voice.

And Solti and her were bouncing off each other,

they were flirting outrageously.

The camera, I suppose, had something to do with that,

but I suspect they flirted outrageously even when the camera wasn't running.

I'd swap your fingers any time for my voice.

Oh, come on! Come on! I make a big...

I can play! I can play till 78, instead of retiring at 50!

I loved it that he was naughty, but that was the colour of him.

There should be no secret about it.

He had that incredible twinkle in his eye.

He was always looking at the girls.

Which ones he chose, I don't know, but he was that sort of person.

And you loved him

because he was such a gentleman and he treated you like a woman.

I must say that it is the highlights of my career, truly.

If you would know how much I curse myself.

And so when he spoke to you, it was like his nose was right on your nose.

Before I came to... Then you would understand why I never like anything.

-It's the only way to improve!

-Of course.

That's the way he spoke.

And if he spat on you, you tried to avoid spittle and stuff.

SHE SINGS IN ITALIAN

Kiri is not difficult, absolutely not.

She is a good collaborator and listens to me.

Kiri is a little bit my girl.

Oh, he was always The Maestro. Yeah.

The man himself, Sir Georg Solti.

-APPLAUSE

-In his later years, he became a familiar face on television.

Sir Georg Solti, welcome to Going Live.

Here with his wife, Lady Valerie, Sir Georg Solti.

-APPLAUSE

-His ease in front of the cameras, with that powerful charisma,

turned him into something of a national treasure.

One climax was a remarkable broadcast in 1992.

Good evening from The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

And welcome to a gala night. It's a celebration of the 80th birthday of Sir Georg Solti.

Their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales

will be here for a performance of one of Verdi's greatest operas, Otello.

The last performance with him was Otello in Covent Garden.

He was a really great, great musician.

He was a very, very active and expressive conductor.

But I like that we lived the passion of the music together.

And there was no doubt with Sir Georg,

there was no way that you cannot get contagious by his enthusiasm.

HE SINGS IN ITALIAN

It is the most musical Otello you can imagine.

Placido is a wonderful musician. I love working with him,

because he's as precise a musician as I am.

And that makes life so easy.

And the personification of Otello is really wonderful.

THEY BOTH SING IN ITALIAN

He really loved music.

He was demanding, but at the same time,

at the same time, very much happy with the results, you know.

APPLAUSE

Being his 80th birthday, it was a very special occasion,

so we sang happy birthday to him.

# Happy birthday, dear Maestro

# Happy birthday to you... #

To have such great colleagues there

as Birgit Nilsson and, of course, Kiri, it was a great celebration.

APPLAUSE

His 80th birthday was also marked by a surprise concert at Buckingham Palace,

which brought together 13 musicians from the 13 different orchestras that he had conducted that year.

It would inspire Solti with the last great idea of his life.

APPLAUSE

For this Hungarian Jew, who had helped to reconstruct German cultural life after the war,

had turned Covent Garden in London into a world stage,

had conquered America,

and raised orchestral standards to new levels across the globe,

it was entirely fitting

that in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the United Nations,

he would form his first orchestra, The World Orchestra For Peace.

It was done on a one-to-one basis.

When he found a player who he thought was wonderful,

he would call him or her to the dressing room and say, "I have this crazy idea!"

"We will meet in Geneva in six months time, we will make a concert for peace!"

"Will you come?" Of course, everybody said yes.

And I couldn't have a most wonderful thing to say,

except to say that all my musician friends, in that quality,

coming without any fee, amazing!

But, of course, that's not enough.

We must make also amazing music.

Let's go.

He was a man with character, with a lot of fire.

And this fire was immediately...

Everything is set on fire around him.

So he was, in a way, the keeper of the fire.

All my life, I've grown up in wars, in revolution.

Both Fascists and Communists...

taught me passionately to believe in peace.

He was passionate about international cooperation

and people's understanding of each other to break down the barriers.

We had world leaders from everywhere.

And I remember the security looking into the audience and seeing

the two sides of the Middle East conflict

surrounded by guns.

And then at the end of the concert...both sides smiling.

This was the only time that Solti would conduct his World Orchestra For Peace.

In 1997, he died suddenly of a heart attack,

a month before his 85th birthday.

APPLAUSE

But Georg Solti's humanitarian ideal lives on.

And every year, the World Orchestra For Peace reassemble under the baton of Valery Gergiev.

It's a demonstration of the power of music.

We musicians know how to act, we just have to bring together colleagues, friends, artists,

hopefully from very different conflicting countries.

It should help cement this process of making peace, peace, peace, lasting peace.

But it was Sir Georg Solti who started here this vision.

He didn't believe in organised religion,

but he did believe in the pattern of life.

You must be aware of your blessings. And if you have problems, you must never give up.

That was his thing, never give up.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd