Overrated Recordings

I think that Sir Georg Solti recordings are generally over_rated and not deservedly recommended.Of course there ara clean orchestral playing,famous singers and graet sound but no interpretation or real musicianship.He was a technician well equipped for showpieces,a product of wagner denazification era.

I couldn't agree more.  It was said of him that he knew how the music should go but did not know why.

I find that he overemphasises, he is not alone in this, of course, but, although initially exciting, can quickly become wearing and superficial.

My other bete noire is Sinopoli, mainly because I paid good money to witness him murder Elgar one evening.

Well each to his own, and all that, but I am genuinely mystified by those who find the Solti Ring over-rated.

I came to this relatively late after getting to know Karajan's installments and suddenly understood what the hype was all about. Yes, of course there are places where the touch of the sound engineer is apparent but I've watched many a conductor in rehearsal adjusting intsrumental balance acoustically in exactly the same way.

I have many recordings of the operas but time and again I go back to Solti. To take but one example, my favourite section of the whole thing is Siegfried's Funeral march and nobody, but nobody has yet come close to the sheer visceral punch of Solti's VPO - not even the great man himself in later outings! Go on, put it on the platter, turn up the wick and just revel in the glorious, glorious sound. If you don't have it, download the track now - it's the best 89p you'll ever spend!

Actually I have only once heard something to rival this: a few years ago I was one of the mannerchor in a concert performance of ActIII under Runnicles at the Edinburgh Festival and found myself placed directly behind the brass, looking down the mouth of one of the Wagnerian tubas. When the Trauermarsch erupted around me, I realised this was the seat that Solti had given me years before.

Yes, I think you've hit it on the head - thing is it's the long bits in between that give me a problem too!!!

I just don't subscribe to the current revisionism that has Solti always a hell-for-leather merchant to the detriment of the music. I once sang in a Missa Solemnis at the Proms for him and it was the most intense spiritual experience I've ever had with that sublime piece (- notwithstanding a few superb concerts singing it under Giulini's baton as well as nearly nodding off under Gielen and Colin Davis to name but two.)

It was filmed by the BBC and I just wish it could be found in the archives and released on DVD to give the lie to the Solti detractors. There I promise you was a man with the span of a great work in his ken.

Macsporran's mention of that Missa Solemnis at the Proms reminded me of something that caught my attention. There's a DVD of the BPO under Karajan playing this work at the 1979 Salzburg Festival, and the Austrian maestro, who normally used a baton, conducts with his bare hands. And in his recent Blu-ray with the Staatskapelle Dresden, Christian Thielemann, another baton-wielding conductor, also directs the orchestra without the stick. Is this just a coincidence or is there some sort of recommended pratice that the Missa Solemnis be conducted without the baton ?    

Troyen1 wrote on Solti's Wagner "it's the long bits in between that are the problem".

At great risk of heresy I would say yes but that this problem is due to the composer not the conductor!

Michael Tanner's views are not worth having on anything (he is only an amateur critic, being otherwise a teacher of philosophy). Goodall had the heartbeat of a slug.