A life in music: Solti's final interview

Editor's note In the final three months of his life, Sir Georg Solti gave only two in-depth interviews as he prepared for what would have been his 85th birthday celebration. One was with The Associated Press on June 2.

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LONDON -- Fresh from his daily massage, Sir Georg Solti was in the basement office of his large house, trying to define his contribution to music. Did he really think there was a specific Solti sound?

"I don't know," he said, then considered his reply a moment longer. "I aim for a specific Mozart sound, a Wagner sound, a Verdi sound. A specific Solti sound? No."

This was three days after the first "Simon Boccanegra" performances at Covent Garden, his finale to 59 years of opera. He conducted just three more nights before his summer break -- two Mahler Fifths in Zurich on July 12 and 13, and the gala that closed the Royal Opera House the following night. With his death Sept. 5, that gala wound up being the last performance of his life.

Solti would have been 85 on Oct. 21. He gave an interview in early June in preparation of that birthday. His mind was sharp, the thoughts focused. Some of the words, filtered through a thick, Hungarian accent, were mangled and out of place. But this World War II-emigre had treated English that way his entire life.

And so for nearly an hour, he talked about music and musicians, praising many, criticizing a few. When you're the world's grand old conductor, he agreed, there's no reason not to speak your mind.

"I have new scores all over the place," he said, pulling some from the shelf behind one of the two grand pianos in his basement. His 30 Grammy Awards -- a record for one person -- neatly lined the window sills just above ground level, like little toy soldiers representing his mighty arsenal of musical achievements.

Solti was one of a kind, the last of the superconductors -- both in stature and electricity.

He had mellowed -- a little -- since the days he earned the nickname "The Screaming Skull" from the British press. Now that he had so much respect, he no longer felt the need to play the martinet.

"I'm a great lover of American symphony orchestras," he said. "They are so good. And not any arrogance. Not any, 'We're all better.'

"There's no arrogance in me anymore. But it was for a while. I had to overcome that. Now is no more. I'm simply -- they're accepting me now -- finally."

At some point, he was asked, do musicians listen to a conductor merely because he has gotten old and, supposedly, soaked up more knowledge than anyone else?

"That's it!" he said. "That I am now, unfortunately."

In the interview, Solti was filled with praise for soprano Renee Flemming ("a lovely lady"), baritone Bryn Terfel ("a very good boy") and James Levine, the first name he mentioned when asked whom he admired among the next generation of conductors.

He didn't understand Luciano Pavarotti's performances this year ("Aach, he doesn't even try") or the semiretirement of Carlos Kleiber ("You cannot get better if you conduct once a year").

After building his reputation on works by Wagner and Strauss, Solti had been conducting more Mozart and Verdi. Which composer did he identify with the most these days?

Because of the "Boccanegra" performances, his mind was on Verdi -- "the most human composer after Mozart."

His choice of what operas to record and conduct was based on the singers.

"Every nation has very many good Mozart singers. Now when it comes to Verdi, that's getting more difficult. 'Otello,' 'Aida,' 'Ballo in Maschera,' then it's more difficult. And when it comes to Wagner -- the 'Ring,' it's very difficult. It is hopeless to cast."

His advice to the Bayreuth Wagner Festival is to not even present the "Ring" these days because of the lack of suitable voices for Wotan, Brunnhilde and Siegfried. And this from the man who conducted the first studio recordings of the "Ring," needing from October 1958 to June 1964 to complete the grand project.

"I've been contemplating quite long to do it again, the 'Ring,' because I am different than I was 30, 25 years ago," he says before explaining why he won't. "I think I've grown since then. I've been always a very natural musician, but I am much more sophisticated today. I know music better. I read it better. At least I imagine I know it better."

He sincerely believed that wisdom came with age. "When you are 50, then you will be desperate. Life's stopping. Finished. And then life only starts."

There are only two ways, he says, for a conductor to improve. One is to constantly work on a piece, which Kleiber has done by limiting his repertoire to just nine operas and about 15 symphonic compositions over the last 25 years.

The other is "not repeating the pieces," Solti says.

"I watch very carefully because I don't make a Xerox copy of my pieces. Change it. Change it. Change it. For 10, 15 years, I do the Mahler Five, which was my sort of party piece for a long time. I didn't conduct it 10 years. I have my old score here but I don't use it. I have a new one. ... This is the only way to improve -- that you sit down, and now see Mahler with my eyes totally new. Not sticking to any of what I did -- I don't want to know. I don't even listen to records which I did. I don't want to."

Never?

"I never listen. I listen sometimes to my colleagues' records if I'm curious, but not my own. When I make it, I'm listening very carefully. And when I think, 'That's it!' Then I don't listen anymore."

His advice to the Chicago Symphony -- which he headed for 22 years before leaving in 1991 -- was to watch out that some of his hires didn't stay around too long and make the orchestra old.

"The only way to do it is bribery, giving them money, extra money. Usually it works. It's very expensive."

He had plenty of plans. He had selected Ben Heppner and Deborah Voigt for a new recording of "Tristan und Isolde" with the Vienna Philharmonic, a project that was to start next summer. He was to conduct a Mahler Fifth as the first guest conductor the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra hired for a symphony in years. And he had agreed to conduct "Parsifal" at the 1998 Salzburg Festival with Placido Domingo and Waltraud Meier.

He had not conducted staged opera in the United States since 1976. For him, America was for quick symphonic tours, mainly weeks with the Chicago Symphony. And because he grew too tired to travel, he confined his opera base to London, where he headed Covent Garden from 1961-71.

Solti conducted 55 operas, and there were three he still wanted to do "Pique Dame," "Wozzeck" and "Pelleas et Melisande." But it was always hard to schedule operas because of the need to coordinate schedules with singers, producers and directors.

Outside his office, the corridors are lined with books on music, art, literature. He was looking forward to time at his seaside vacation home in Italy, the only time of the year when he had time to read for pleasure.

He planned to take along his favorite author, Thomas Mann ("but only in the German"). And he was looking forward to the day his two daughters would give him grandchildren.

As soon as the word "grandchildren" was mentioned, his 84-year-old eyes lit up like a baby's. The great conductor disappeared, replaced by the devoted daddy.

"I pray," he said, pushing his palms together, fingers stretched toward the sky. "I would love to have it."

He already was thinking about the start of his fall schedule on Sept. 6. There were to be several big performances Verdi's Requiem, Beethoven's Ninth and Bach's "St. Matthew Passion."

"Look, I don't want to retire because I would die. I most certainly would die. I love work and I love music," he said. "This is the point. I do it only because I love it. I really love it."

Photo by The Associated Press

Sir Georg Solti, shown conducting the Vienna Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in 1995, sincerely believed that wisdom came with age. "When you are 50, then you will be desperate. Life's stopping. Finished. And then life only starts." The famed conductor died Sept. 5 at 84.