Solti Conducts Bartok (2012)

October 21, 2012 marks Sir Georg Solti's centenary and Decca is celebrating this with several important reissues. Sir Georg was an exclusive Decca artist for 50 years.

In 1947 he signed his first contract with Decca - as a pianist and that same year he made his first record as a conductor (with the Zurich Tonhalle in Beethovens Egmont Overture). His last public concerts took place just a few weeks before his death in 1997 and were with the Zurich Tonhalle.

Solti was a musician with extraordinarily wide musical interests and sympathies and he was without doubt one of the most important opera conductors of the second half of the twentieth century. His legacy of recordings is dominated by opera and his recording of Wagners Der Ring des Nibelungen - the first ever complete studio recording - has been described as the greatest recording of all time

Composer: Béla Bartók, Leó Weiner, Zoltán Kodály
Performer: Alexandru Agache, Tamás Daróczy, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Kyung-Wha Chung, …
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra Strings, Hungarian Radio/TV Chorus, …

Reviews: "Sir Georg's empathy for this idiom is everywhere in evidence, and never more so than in Bartok's Romanian folkdances, where lightness of touch and sensitive rubato recreate a crucial feeling of improvisation. The Hungarian Sketches are tellingly pointed, with fluid lines in ''Evening in the Village'' and ''Melody'', a hilarious ff trombone/tuba belch in ''A Little Tipsy'' and cleanly differentiated percussion in the ''Bear Dance''. Here one might also recall Reiner's more explosive option, whereas in Dorati's roughly contemporaneous Minneapolis recording, snare and tenor drum are virtually inaudible. Solti's is now perhaps the current front-runner, and makes for a most entertaining musical diversion. Nice too to hear music by the much underrated Leo Weiner, his Csongor es Tunde ballet with its subtle reminiscences of Nicolai's Merry Wives of Windsor Overture and Liszt's Dante Symphony. The busy scherzo is the sort of thing Bartok might have composed had he not outgrown the worlds of Strauss and Dohnanyi, while the Introduction is reminiscent of Kodaly in pastoral vein."

"It is apt, if ironic, that these very last recordings of Sir Georg Solti, product of sessions in Budapest last June, three months before his sudden death, should make up the perfect valedictory disc. Ironically too, these were his very first recordings made in his native Hungary with Hungarian musicians…Solti came to feel that the story of Bartok’s Cantata profana – about nine sons turned by magic into stags, who finally return home – symbolized his own life-story. The chorus, as I say, sing superbly, with the Romanian baritone, Alexander Agache, a strong and dark soloist.

The rarity here is the Serenade of Leo Weiner, the teacher closest to Solti in his student days, one who both challenged him and drew him out. The amiability of this music, far less individual, less specifically Hungarian than that of Bartok or Kodaly, seems to reflect Weiner’s character as Solti’s mentor. Beautifully written in four cleanly constructed movements, this is a delightful piece full of fresh, crisply conceived ideas, as in the easygoing sonata-form first movement. The warmly responsive woodwind soloists of the Budapest Festival Orchestra come into their own in the interlude of the third movement with its sequence of solos getting faster, in turn for clarinet, bassoon, oboe and flute. Solti could never have conceived a more winning last offering on disc."

Tracklisting:

1. Concerto for Orchestra, Sz 116 by Béla Bartók
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1943; USA

2. Dance Suite for Orchestra, Sz 77 by Béla Bartók
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1923; Budapest, Hungary

3. Hungarian Sketches (5), Sz 97 by Béla Bartók
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1931; Budapest, Hungary

4. Romanian Folkdances for String Orchestra, Sz 68 by Béla Bartók
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1917; Budapest, Hungary

5. Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Sz 106 by Béla Bartók
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1936; Budapest, Hungary

6. Divertimento for String Orchestra, Sz 113 by Béla Bartók
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: Chicago Symphony Orchestra Strings
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1939; Budapest, Hungary

7. Miraculous Mandarin, Op. 19/Sz 73: Suite by Béla Bartók
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1919-1927; Budapest, Hungary

8. Cantata Profana, Sz 94 by Béla Bartók
Performer: Alexandru Agache (Baritone), Tamás Daróczy (Tenor)
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: Hungarian Radio/TV Chorus, Budapest Festival Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1930; Budapest, Hungary
Date of Recording: 06/1997
Venue: Italian Institute, Budapest, Hungary
Length: 18 Minutes 48 Secs.
Language: Hungarian

9. Concerto for Piano no 1, Sz 83 by Béla Bartók
Performer: Vladimir Ashkenazy (Piano)
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: London Philharmonic Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1926; Budapest, Hungary

10. Concerto for Piano no 2, Sz 95 by Béla Bartók
Performer: Vladimir Ashkenazy (Piano)
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: London Philharmonic Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1930-1931; Budapest, Hungary

11. Concerto for Piano no 3, Sz 119 by Béla Bartók
Performer: Vladimir Ashkenazy (Piano)
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: London Philharmonic Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1945; USA

12. Concerto for Violin no 1, Sz 36 by Béla Bartók
Performer: Kyung-Wha Chung (Violin)
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1907-1908; Budapest, Hungary

13. Concerto for Violin no 2, Sz 112 by Béla Bartók
Performer: Kyung-Wha Chung (Violin)
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: London Philharmonic Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1937-1938; Budapest, Hungary

14. Bluebeard's Castle, Op. 11/Sz 48 by Béla Bartók
Performer: Istvan Sztankay (Spoken Vocals), Sylvia Sass (Soprano), Kolos Kováts (Bass)
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: London Philharmonic Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1911/1918; Budapest, Hungary

15. Serenade in F minor, Op. 3 by Leó Weiner
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: Budapest Festival Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1906; Hungary
Date of Recording: 06/1997
Venue: Italian Institute, Budapest, Hungary
Length: 19 Minutes 58 Secs.

16. Dances of Galánta by Zoltán Kodály
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: London Philharmonic Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1933; Hungary
Date of Recording: 11/1952

17. Variations on a Hungarian folksong "The Peacock" by Zoltán Kodály
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: London Philharmonic Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1938-1939; Hungary
Date of Recording: 4/1954

18. Háry János, Op. 15: Suite by Zoltán Kodály
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: London Philharmonic Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1927; Hungary
Date of Recording: 2/1955

19. Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Sz 106 by Béla Bartók
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: London Philharmonic Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1936; Budapest, Hungary

20. Dance Suite for Orchestra, Sz 77 by Béla Bartók
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: London Philharmonic Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1923; Budapest, Hungary

21. Psalmus hungaricus, Op. 13 by Zoltán Kodály
Performer: William Mcalpine (Tenor)
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Choir
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1923; Hungary

22. Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Sz 106 by Béla Bartók
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1936; Budapest, Hungary

23. Dance Suite for Orchestra, Sz 77 by Béla Bartók
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1923; Budapest, Hungary

24. Prinz Csongor und die Kobolde Suite, Op. 10b: Scherzo by Leó Weiner
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Period: Romantic
Written: by 1927; Hungary









Thanks to the original releaser