Solti - Ring documentary (With thanks to George for your clips)

I bought this on DVD about 6 months ago, it's wonderful to see how one of my favourite recordings was put together.

A little less camera time on Solti & a bit more on the performers would have been nice though.

Do Solti’s markings on the score make any sense?

No sense to me but I've only had a glance. I suppose that the markings in a score for a performance may look different from a score that is used for a recording. I have to see if this is the case.  I'll put some shots of it up here. I do feel that, in the vinyl first issues, I have a little bit of musical history here.

Well it is historic in as much as it is the first complete studio Ring, but I also think it is still one of the best, Gotterdammerung being especially good.

I bought the box set in the early seventies which also included a three LP bonus of Deryck Cooke’s introduction to the Ring which thankfully concentrated solely on the music & also a nice performance of the Siegfried Idyll and the rarely heard but charming Kinderkatechismus.

I now also have the CD & now Blu-ray audio versions.

Too tall for my record shelves!

It fits on the bottom shelf in what my better half calls my den, hence the dust & mess!

Lack of forward planning on my part. It's a bit 'on show' at the moment.

Morton posted:

I bought this on DVD about 6 months ago, it's wonderful to see how one of my favourite recordings was put together.

A little less camera time on Solti & a bit more on the performers would have been nice though.

Do Solti’s markings on the score make any sense?

Solti was famous for extremely detailed marking of his conducting scores. At the time of the recordings of the Ring for Decca he was at the helm at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, and it was not going to pass un-noticed that he chose to make the recordings elsewhere. 

At the time a friend of mine [who died last year aged 90] was principal double bass player in the orchestra, so I have some hair raising stories directly about his time there. As well as some wonderful anecdotes about other great visiting conductors.

ATB from George

Care to share some stories George?

One funny one is that the orchestra used to call Solti the “conducting skull!” Not kind, and he had a way that put backs up, but he did have the work done on the music. He knew it completely, so there was no argument about how it would go. 

Basically the orchestra disliked him after he chose to use the Vienna State Opera for the recordings of the Ring. They criticised his lack of spontaneity, but then that does run hand in hand with a completely pre-arranged and thought through way of conducting. Hence the huge number of detailed markings in his score as a sign of it. 

At that time they revered the conducting of the very aged Pierre Monteux, and liked the fact that rather than being a wind-mill he simply gave every beat through a whole opera, and made sure that the performers were well rehearsed, but allowing for the spark of spontaneous magic that could occur even during a performance! An example of an exceptionally fine recording of the ROHCG with Monteux [on Decca] is Ravel’s  Daphnis et Chloe. On the evidence of that recording the Royal Opera House would have made a superb recording of the Ring, had Solti had the faith in them.

ATB from George

George - I was very interested to hear some conductor stories.  If you have any more to pass on?  I guess that could start a whole new thread.  Solti was a controversial figure who divided opinion.  I heard him twice live, once doing Beethoven's Eroica and once Beethoven 9, both with the LPO when he was their principal conductor.  He generated enormous tension and the tone he got from the orchestra was immensely powerful.  I know he wasn't well-liked by the LPO but he invariably gave characterful performances and he was a truly committed musician.  He was I believe more popular in Chicago where his style better suited the American musicians.

George Fredrik Fiske posted:

Morton posted:

I bought this on DVD about 6 months ago, it's wonderful to see how one of my favourite recordings was put together.

A little less camera time on Solti & a bit more on the performers would have been nice though.

Do Solti’s markings on the score make any sense?

Solti was famous for extremely detailed marking of his conducting scores. At the time of the recordings of the Ring for Decca he was at the helm at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, and it was not going to pass un-noticed that he chose to make the recordings elsewhere. 

At the time a friend of mine [who died last year aged 90] was principal double bass player in the orchestra, so I have some hair raising stories directly about his time there. As well as some wonderful anecdotes about other great visiting conductors.

ATB from George

I would have like to have heard Solti but by the time I started going to ROH in 1975 he had been replaced by Colin Davis; your double bass playing friend was probable still there though, do you know what he thought of Davis?

A glimpse of what a Covent Garden Ring under Solti was like can be had from this cd of the 3^rd act of Gotterdammerung recorded in 1963.

Most of the leads were also used in the Decca recording, including a youthful Gwyneth Jones as Wellgunde, who I saw sing Brunnhilde in 1982 at Covent Garden under Colin Davis.

When The Archers is over I'll photograph some pages from Solti's Die Walkure score.

The first four photos are in order, and them a couple of jumps to significant events.

Hi, John Culshaw wrote a book "Ring Resounding" first published in 1967 and still available on Amazon.The book is subtitled " The recording of Der Ring des Nibelungden", which at 284 pages is well worth getting especially if you own the LP/CDs.

Culshaw describes the juggling of artist and orchestra availability to ensure they can do a "take". Not always that easy. He describes the slow demise of Kirsten Flagstad who might have gone on from only recording Das Rheingold to other operas in the cycle. In Die Walkure he goes into great detail about getting the correct effect of the offstage steerhorns. The guy was a perfectionist. This was the golden age for Decca Records. If you own some of the better New Malden classical LP pressings, current CD versions, or at a price 180/200 gram Speakers Corner versions, all have the perfect combination of bite and warmth.

I saw Solti at the RFH when he conducted Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde with Janet Baker and the late Robert Tear. Sat in the front row so nearly all the sound went over your head! Also Pierre Monteux in the same hall. He was conducting Beethoven's 5th Symphony and three minutes into the second movement be just collapsed on the podium. The section leaders carried him off back stage. You can imagine the audience reaction. Anyway, a few minutes l later he shuffled back on and restarted the second movement as if nothing had happened. This would have been in the early 1960's.

Given the choice I think I would rather have worked under Monteux than Solti, but each to his own.

Douglas.

k90tour2 posted:

The first four photos are in order, and them a couple of jumps to significant events.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for posting; it looks as if he was writing in the dynamic markings to help his eyesight, something I can sympathise with.

Thanks for your best about the Culshaw book , Douglas. And for sharing your RFH experiences. Very interesting.  'Ring Resounding' is included in this CD /DVD set that I have which included the score extract.  But you've prompted me to dive into it.

My father-in-law is a pianist and conductor and when my wife visited him on Friday and moaned about the housing filling up with Wagner, he sent her back with a book by Nike Wagner about the battles at Bayreuth.

The Solti ring that I have an vinyl has made a great impression on me but I am only now beginning to understand the impression that his work must have made to European musical life in the late 19th century.