The conductor Sir Georg Solti recorded throughout his career for the British Decca Record Company. During the 1950s and 1960s, Decca had an alliance with RCA Victor in the United States; some of Solti's Decca recordings were first issued on the RCA Victor label.
Solti's first recordings were as a piano accompanist, playing at sessions in Zürich for the violinist Georg Kulenkampff in 1947. [1] Decca's senior producer, Victor Olof, did not much admire Solti as a conductor [2] (nor did Walter Legge, Olof's opposite number at EMI's Columbia Records), [3] but Olof's younger colleague at Decca John Culshaw held Solti in high regard. With Culshaw, and later James Walker, producing his recordings, Solti's career as a recording artist flourished. [1]
Solti's most celebrated recording was Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen made in Vienna, with Culshaw producing, between 1958 and 1965. It has twice been voted the greatest recording ever made, the first poll being of readers of Gramophone magazine in 1999, [4] and the second of professional music critics in 2011, carried out for the BBC. [5]
For Decca, Solti made more than 250 recordings, including 45 complete opera sets. Among the international honours given for his recordings were 31 Grammy awards – more than any other recording artist, whether classical or popular. [6]
In entries below for operas, only the singers of the leading roles are listed. Where Solti appears as pianist rather than a conductor his name is given in the soloists column. Recording dates are shown by year followed by month, to enable sorting, using the arrows in the column headings.
Abbreviations:
Awards:
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) is an American symphony orchestra based in Chicago, Illinois. Founded by Theodore Thomas in 1891, the ensemble has been based in the Symphony Center since 1904 and plays a summer season at the Ravinia Festival. Klaus Mäkelä was named music director-designate in 2024, with his first contractual season to begin in 2027. The orchestra's most recent music director is Riccardo Muti, whose tenure spanned the season's from 2010 to 2023, and he continues to perform on occasion as director-emeritus. The CSO is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five".
The London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) is a British orchestra based in London. One of five permanent symphony orchestras in London, the LPO was founded by the conductors Sir Thomas Beecham and Malcolm Sargent in 1932 as a rival to the existing London Symphony and BBC Symphony Orchestras.
The Philharmonia Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. It was founded in 1945 by Walter Legge, a classical music record producer for EMI. Among the conductors who worked with the orchestra in its early years were Richard Strauss, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Arturo Toscanini; of the Philharmonia's younger conductors, the most important to its development was Herbert von Karajan who, though never formally chief conductor, was closely associated with the orchestra in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The Philharmonia became widely regarded as the finest of London's five symphony orchestras in its first two decades.
Sir Georg Solti was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor, known for his appearances with opera companies in Munich, Frankfurt, and London, and as 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 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.
The 19th Annual Grammy Awards were held on February 19, 1977, and were broadcast live on American television (CBS). It was the seventh and final year Andy Williams hosted the telecast. The ceremony recognized accomplishments by musicians from the year 1976.
Deutsche Grammophon is a German classical music record label that was the precursor of the corporation PolyGram. Headquartered in Berlin Friedrichshain, it is now part of Universal Music Group (UMG) since its merger with the UMG family of labels in 1999. Deutsche Grammophon is the world's oldest surviving established record company. Presidents of the company are Frank Briegmann, Chairman and CEO Central Europe of Universal Music Group and Clemens Trautmann.
Harry Walter Legge was an English classical music record producer, most especially associated with EMI. His recordings include many sets later regarded as classics and reissued by EMI as "Great Recordings of the Century". He worked in the recording industry from 1927, combining this with the post of junior music critic of The Manchester Guardian. He was assistant to Sir Thomas Beecham at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and in World War II played a role in bringing music to the armed forces and civilians.
Thomas Bernard Heppner is a renowned Canadian tenor and broadcaster, now retired from singing, who specialized in opera and other classical works for voice.
Hans Knappertsbusch was a German conductor, best known for his performances of the music of Wagner, Bruckner and Richard Strauss.
Ljuba Welitsch was an operatic soprano. She was born in Borisovo, Bulgaria, studied in Sofia and Vienna, and sang in opera houses in Austria and Germany in the late 1930s and early and mid-1940s. In 1946 she became an Austrian citizen.
John Royds Culshaw, OBE was a pioneering English classical record producer for Decca Records. He produced a wide range of music, but is best known for masterminding the first studio recording of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, begun in 1958.
Kenneth Ernest Wilkinson was an audio engineer for Decca Records, known for engineering classical recordings with superb sound quality.
Christopher Raeburn was an English record producer of international renown.
Peter Edward Andry, was a classical record producer and an influential executive in the recording industry, active from the 1950s to the 1990s.
Victor Olof was an English musician, known first as a violinist and conductor and later as a record producer for Decca Records and subsequently for HMV Records.
La damnation de Faust is a 126-minute studio album of Hector Berlioz's légende dramatique, performed by José van Dam, Malcolm King, Kenneth Riegel, Frederica von Stade and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under the direction of Georg Solti. It was released in 1982.
Le nozze di Figaro is a 168-minute studio recording of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera of the same name, performed by a cast of singers headed by Sir Thomas Allen, Jane Berbié, Yvonne Kenny, Philip Langridge, Kurt Moll, Lucia Popp, Samuel Ramey, Frederica von Stade, Robert Tear and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Sir Georg Solti. It was released by Decca in 1982.
Oda Balsborg was a Danish operatic soprano. She was born in Copenhagen on 12 January 1934 and died there on 2 September 2014, aged 80.
Between 1958 and 1965 the Decca record company made the first complete recording to be released of Richard Wagner's operatic tetralogy, Der Ring des Nibelungen, comprising Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. Of the four component operas, there had been two previous studio recordings of Die Walküre, and a radio recording of Götterdämmerung that was released on record in 1956, but Decca's was the first Ring cycle planned and recorded for the gramophone.
