János Breuer
"Ritorna vincitor!"
The Early Years of Sir Georg Solti
[...]
His most important teacher must have been Leó Weiner (1885-1960),
the composer who taught the "minor subject" of chamber music
from 1918 up till his death. Weiner was unique in the history of music
teaching, as he could only play the piano modestly, and played no other
instrument at all. His personal experience on the concert platform was
restricted to a single occasion when, in 1905, he took part in a performance
of Tarantella, a composition for eight hands on two pianos he wrote for
his final examination, hiding behind three eminent pianists (one of them
called Fritz Reiner, who was to precede Solti at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
between 1953 and 1963). Weiner was not a practicing instrumentalist and
yet he knew everything about phrasing, accents, timbre, form, in short
the very essence of the art of musical performance. He was also able to
teach this "everything". He did so with a seemingly cruel rigour,
tormenting the young musicians under his hand for a whole hour with four-bar
and eight-bar phrases. (As a matter of fact, Solti, who made no secret
of how much he owed to Weiner, did exactly the same when he rehearsed with
a Hungarian orchestra some sixty years later.) The effectiveness of Weiner,
the professor of chamber music, is borne out by all the many soloists with
dazzling international careers who owed the skill of supreme music-making
to him, and by the leading position Hungarian chamber music has achieved--suffice
to mention just the Léner Quartet, the Róth Quartet, the
Végh Quartet and the Hungarian Quartet. The Budapest Quartet had
no Hungarian members during the last thirty years of its existence, yet
it retained its name, for the special cachet the Hungarian capital and
Weiner's seminar room at the Academy lent it.
[...]
The diploma concert featured works by two Dohnányi students,
Sándor Kuti and György Solti. The following day ten Budapest
daily papers carried reviews of the concert. To the best of my knowledge
this was the first occasion in Solti's life that his name appeared in the
press. The reviews were appreciative though, according to the critics,
Sándor Kuti--who in 1945 died in a concentration camp in Germany--was
the more talented.
According to Kálmán Kovács, the associate critic
of Pesti Napló, a middle-class daily competent in musical matters,
"György Solti is the more dramatic talent. His rhythmic and forceful
formal construction undoubtedly shows the influence of Béla Bartók,
but these impressions only serve to launch and not to provide the final
expression of that obviously rich and definitely individual conception
which is reflected in György Solti's music." Sándor Jemnitz,
a member of Arnold Schoenberg's circle, noted, "György Solti
is already a man of practice, unlike Sándor Kuti, who is of a much
more abstract disposition." (Nép szava, the morning paper of
the Social Democratic Party.) István Péterfi, the noted music
critic, emphasized, "Each of the works bore out the young com posers'
thorough and considerable attainment, their sense of form, stylistic know
ledge and exquisite taste." (Magyar Hírlap)
But why did Solti attend Dohnányi's master class when he had
no intention of becoming a composer? I think he sought for, and found,
closer contact with that extremely versatile musician, recognized internationally
as a phenomenal pianist, a popular conductor, a conservative but inventive
composer exceedingly well versed in formal matters--and obviously with
Dohnányi the man as well. Just one example of how Dohnányi
acquitted himself as a man: around 1938-39 it was he who used his great
prestige to prevent the setting up of a Chamber of Musicians, on the Nazi
model, involving the expulsion of all Jewish musicians. This, and a good
many similar acts of his were later "duly acknowledged", when
he was declared a fascist war criminal in the spring of 1945 on a trump
ed-up charge based on petty jealousy.
[...]
The 18-year-old youth became a tiny but indispensable cog-wheel in the
machinery of a musical factory. The repertory contained sixty operas, and
new productions were staged every three to four weeks. Thus the coach had
the chance to become acquainted with a huge repertoire and to work with
great guest conductors (Fritz Busch, Kleiber, etc.).
Naturally, I cannot know which operas figured in the rehearsals where
Solti participated as a coach. The one exception I do know for certain
is that he coached Mussorgsky's Khovanschina for the conductor Issai Dobrowen
who left the Soviet Union in 1922. The Hungarian production on 29 December
1936, of which Dobrowen was both the conductor and a co-producer, had tremendous
success and signified a turning point in the reception of Russian opera
in Budapest, as the work was brought into the repertoire (previously Tchaikovsky's
Eugene Onegin and Mus sorgsky's Boris Godunov had yielded no such positive
response). Uniquely in the history of Hungarian musical criticism, István
Péterfi, a noted critic, made special mention of him: "Last
but not least, let us mention György Solti, the coach. This highly
gifted young musician did exemplary work in coaching the parts. Though
he held no baton as yet, by coaching Khovansh china he has proved that
as a private he carries a fieldmarshall's baton in his pack." (Magyar
Hírlap, 30 December 1936.)
Solti also owed his first engagement abroad to Dobrowen, who, in the
autumn of 1938, invited him to Oslo to coach Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro.
(His acting as assistant to Toscanini for Die Zauberflöte at the 1937
Salzburg Festival was due to a lucky coincidence.)
It was only a few days after the production of Khovanshchina that Solti
could take charge of an orchestra. On 7 January 1937 he conducted Schubert's
Symphony No. 5 in Budapest's largest concert hall at what was called the
concert to safeguard talent in a subscription series of the semi-amateur
Metropolitan Orchestra. This annual concert provided an opportunity for
young composers and performers to make their début. At the first
such concert, at Christmas 1926, the 12-year-old Annie Fischer played the
piano. Aladár Tóth, the greatest Hungarian music critic of
the time, responded to the event with an indulgence due to beginners:
The only exception was György Solti, the young conductor who this
time made his first appearance at these concerts. Actually he is not unknown
to the musical professionals: as the répetiteur of our Opera House
he rapidly called attention to himself with his outstanding coaching, and
indeed, recently, after his work on Khovansh china, Dobro wen, the world
famous guest conductor of the production, spoke with the highest admiration
of his work. Now at last the young musician was able to justify the high
expectations regarding his gift. He conducted Schubert's Symphony No. 5
with a really surprising wealth of imagination, and an as yet somewhat
over-ebullient but convincing and gripping temperament, in an elegant,
tasteful interpretation exhibiting a healthy musical instinct and sincere
poetic empathy throughout. But Solti is not only an outstanding musician,
he is also a conductor par excellence: he has a sure grip on his orchestra
and the lack of experience can at most be felt in minor trappings and never
in the essence of music. In short, he is an artist who, for all his youth,
could be of valuable service to our Opera House in the conductor's place
as well. (Pesti Napló, 8 January 1937)
Given the high acclaim he earned with his début, it took a fairly
long time, a full year, before he was again asked to conduct. This time
it was a full concert. The orchestra which performed under his baton on
12 January 1938 had been es-tablished in the autumn of 1936. It lacked
experience, and was actually disbanded after two seasons. To quote Aladár
Tóth once again:
Début of a Young Talented Conductor
György Solti, the outstanding young coach of our Opera House, appeared
in his maiden concert as the conductor of the Magyar Orchestra. He conducted
a colossal, exacting programme: Bach's Branden burg Concerto in G major,
Mozart's Symphony in G minor, Debussy's Little Suite, the delicate orchestral
accompaniment to Schumann's Piano Concerto and finally the ouverture to
Rossini's La Gazza Ladra. When you realize that the Magyar Orchestra is
still a new ensemble, we can only speak with the highest esteem of the
splendid energy with which György Solti, right on his first full-night
appearance, prompted his musicians to a faultless artistic unity of execution.
Such a début really calls for a musician who has the score at his
finger-tips and who is an out-and-out conducting talent, cut out for the
conductor's platform.
This young musician is full of rhythm and burning ambition. Of course,
one can feel in his purposeful, resolute gestures, how much he has learnt
from Toscanini, for whom he coached in Salzburg. But Solti is one of the
students who not only does his homework but when it comes to the exam,
can also do splendidly. It is true that in the fluster of the trade, the
joy of conducting, the youthful zeal of the vocation, he still has not
arrived at the immersion required by the great classical masterpieces and
therefore we could not yet feel in the ebullient organism of his interpretation
the pulsation of the innermost noble organs of music. But one who can strike
up the march of La Gazza Ladra with such an irresistible swerve and splendid
brio, who can hold his orchestra together with such a firm hand and find
such a lively and immediate contact with the audience, is a true conducting
talent, a man with a career to look forward to, who must be reckoned with
both in the concert hall and the opera house. György Solti has scored
a resounding success." (Pesti Napló, 16 January 1938)
[...]
The bravura can clearly be gathered from Aladár Tóth's
review:
A new Hungarian conductor made his début in our Opera House in
the production of Le nozze di Figaro: György Solti, the highly gifted
young répetiteur of the Opera House, who had already drawn the attention
of musical circles at the Salzburg Festival as one of Toscanini's assistants.
To face the audience for the very first time with one of the most exacting
works of the repertoire, and indeed with the limited preparatory work of
a single rehearsal, entails an
onerous task whose assignment cannot be approved of in theory. This time,
however, practice luckily denied theory: György Solti's splendid technical
aptitude with a brilliant musical comprehension was able to win the day,
where in a similar situation most young conductors would have failed.
And so we could enjoy Mozart's masterpiece in an animated and appropriate,
graphically delineated interpretation bursting with youthful verve. A born
conducting talent has come to the fore here, who in the future can safely
be depended upon as he was able not only to conquer audiences at one go
but also the realm of Mozart. (Pesti Napló, 13 March 1938)
[...]
János Breuer
is a musicologist and author of books on 20th-century Hungarian
music, including A Guide to Kodály, Corvina Press, 1990.
