# John von Rhein review of Solti/CSO Complete Recordings...



## Guest (Dec 13, 2017)

Being all too aware of my obvious and considerable limitations my sole contribution to this thread will be establishing it, providing the link to the article, and essentially getting the hell out of everyone's way...

This is a really first-rate piece of music criticism and should be of interest to virtually all...

Since not being "me" is almost impossible for "me" to be I am psychologically, fundamentally, and constitutionally unable to write even a single post without some sort of cheerful high-spirited nonsense and thus I am virtually compelled against my will (I'm lying... I do this on purpose) to gratuitously add this particular bit of completely unwarranted and unwanted bit of cheerful high-spirited nonsense...

For about 45 minutes I gave serious consideration to doing a copy and paste job with my name replacing von Rhein's as a way to solidify my status as one of the forum's "Great Minds" but the sudden realization (not entirely certain that 45 minutes exactly qualifies as "sudden" but let's overlook that, eh?) that plagiarism and copyright infringement are apparently against the law (whose bright idea was that? and why wasn't I consulted?) and that Canada and the United States have signed an extradition treaty with one another (again, whose bright idea was that? and again, why wasn't I consulted?) I decided that perhaps that copy and paste with my name gag may not have been one of my own "brightest" ideas and so... without further ado...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/enter...ical-chicago-solti-recordings-1213-story.html

A brief snippet...

"The emphasis Solti placed on rhythmic incisiveness could make his music-making sometimes feel unremittingly tense and driven, as if tenderness, warmth, sentiment and all the other qualities that make music touch us to the depth of our being were being sacrificed to the ferocious swipes of his baton.

This could verge on the maniacal in concert performance, and it earned Solti many a critical brickbat. The Tribune's Claudia Cassidy was especially hard on him, presaging the scathing dismissal of Solti's conducting by a younger critic, Stephanie von Buchau, who wrote that "Solti does not conduct music - he conducts noise, which the Chicago Symphony plays beautifully."


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Solti could indeed beat music black and blue - but at his best he was great. Above all, he had a way of electrifying a concert (and recording) unlike few others of his generation. Yet, he could also uphold great performing traditions without shame. His Beethoven and Brahms testify to that. There are some who disparage his Bruckner, but I love it - this is not the God-seeking, transcendental Bruckner that others drag out to interminable lengths; it's thrilling, exciting Bruckner, however "wrong" it may be. Same with his Mahler. And it is his rhythmic drive and precision that makes it so exciting. Solti's Wagner and R. Strauss alone vault him to a very high place in the conducting pantheon. I wish he had done more Puccini as his La Boheme is among the best I've heard; reminds me if Toscanini's version. I haven't read the review, but will. Chicago has been lucky in its choice of directors: Kubelik, Reiner, Martinon, Solti, Barenboim, Muti. Solti has the largest recorded legacy and for good reason.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Thanks. Nudge, for alerting me to the article. I have to gripe, however, re the quotes you cite: Von Rhein cites them at the beginning of his article only to pick them apart later.
Solti is to frequently characterized as the Conducting equivalent of a methamphetamine addict-relentless power, fast tempos, etc. As with all stereotypes there are going to be some cases that seem to confirm the case, but he wasn’t always a hard driving martinet


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

mbhaub said:


> Solti could indeed beat music black and blue - but at his best he was great. Above all, he had a way of electrifying a concert (and recording) unlike few others of his generation. Yet, he could also uphold great performing traditions without shame. His Beethoven and Brahms testify to that.


Excellent posting!! yes, Solti was one of the true greats...his concerts were always "Events", with an excitement, an electricity about them...Donald Peck, long-time CSO principal flute, cites Solti's, and Reiner's unerring sense of drama within the music - not just the specific work, but of the entire concert program....they both just knew how to control the ebb and flow throughout the evening's program....



> There are some who disparage his Bruckner, but I love it - this is not the God-seeking, transcendental Bruckner that others drag out to interminable lengths; it's thrilling, exciting Bruckner........Same with his Mahler. And it is his rhythmic drive and precision that makes it so exciting. Solti's Wagner and R. Strauss alone vault him to a very high place in the conducting pantheon.


yes, indeed, great Bruckner conductor - Solti could definitely be a driver, but his Bruckner hangs together, does not get fragmented or logy, and of course, has the most thundering dynamic range imaginable....Solti excelled at Mahler, as well, and Strauss...both in live performance and recording...the performance of Mahler 5 @ Carnegie Hall in 3/70 is still the greatest live concert I've ever heard....really amazing...[by now, has achieved a rather legendary status].

He was also very good with Haydn and Mozart - excellent versions of the symphonies - predictably vigorous and muscular, but with wonderful clarity and flow...Solti produced outstanding results with many of the greatest orchestras - lots of CSO, VPO, LSO, and he ,along with Boult, could actually get the London PhilOrch to sound like a first-class ensemble.

Solti came to Shostakovich fairly late in his career, but he achieved great results - his #8 is esp fine - great recording, but the live one at Boston Sym Hall was perhaps even better!! I wish he had delved into the Prokofieff Symphonies - that could have been cosmic as well.


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## Guest (Dec 14, 2017)

Triplets said:


> Thanks. Nudge, for alerting me to the article. I have to gripe, however, re the quotes you cite: Von Rhein cites them at the beginning of his article only to pick them apart later.
> Solti is to frequently characterized as the Conducting equivalent of a methamphetamine addict-relentless power, fast tempos, etc. As with all stereotypes there are going to be some cases that seem to confirm the case, but he wasn't always a hard driving martinet


You are absolutely right and I can't do anything other than apologize because it's too late for me to edit the post... I was so startled by the vehemence of the opinions expressed that I didn't take into account what effect those quotes would have...

I have the Solti/CSO box myself and have been methodically and meticulously working my way through it... It's no secret that I don't exactly have the strongest musicological background on the forum (don't pay too much attention to that last comment... I'm working on trying to be meek and humble but quite frankly I'm having little to no success) but I have been thoroughly enjoying everything that I have encountered so far as sometimes knowing too much about something can be more of a hindrance than a help...

Thanks for the advice about being more judicious in my choice of quotes - :tiphat:


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Nudge and a Wink said:


> You are absolutely right and I can't do anything other than apologize because it's too late for me to edit the post... I was so startled by the vehemence of the opinions expressed that I didn't take into account what effect those quotes would have...
> 
> I have the Solti/CSO box myself and have been methodically and meticulously working my way through it... It's no secret that I don't exactly have the strongest musicological background on the forum (don't pay too much attention to that last comment... I'm working on trying to be meek and humble but quite frankly I'm having little to no success) but I have been thoroughly enjoying everything that I have encountered so far as sometimes knowing too much about something can be more of a hindrance than a help...
> 
> Thanks for the advice about being more judicious in my choice of quotes - :tiphat:


I envy you your ownership of the set. I already have many of the recordings, and since I live in a Chicago suburb, our local library has many of the ones that I don't have, so I just can't justify the expense. And I have been more naughty than nice, so I don't expect Santa to reward me, despite the copious hints I leave.
The quote from Donald Peck cited by Heck is interesting. One never sees Solti's Bruckner Recordings lauded by critics, but the ones that I have heard (1,6,8) are superb, really different than just about every one else that seems determined to ring profundity from every phrase. And yes, his Shostakovich Eighth and Fifteenth are outstanding. My memory seems to recall a Babi Yar that was very moving, but I can't remember if it was a Concert or a recording


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## Guest (Dec 14, 2017)

Triplets said:


> The quote from Donald Peck cited by Heck is interesting. One never sees Solti's Bruckner Recordings lauded by critics, but the ones that I have heard (1,6,8) are superb, really different than just about every one else that seems determined to ring profundity from every phrase. And yes, his Shostakovich Eighth and Fifteenth are outstanding.


That's a really a very nice bit of musical criticism that you've written there and if it's alright with you I will copy and paste it into several threads here in an effort to boost my last place ranking in the "musicological expertise" sweepstakes here on the forum but I'll need to change it so that it appears as if I wrote it... You seem really bright and I'm fairly certain you can spare a quote or two without missing them as I'm reasonably sure that you'll be able to effortlessly replace them with even better comments before I even finish copying and pasting the previous ones into the other threads...

It's supposed to be the "season of giving" so everyone needs to start "giving" me some really nice examples of "insightful critiques and analysis" that I can copy, paste, and post in other threads under my own username rather than your own as I'm beginning to bitterly chafe at my current last place status in all of the really important music categories... And so I ask you go give... give until it hurts...well, maybe not "hurts" - no sense getting carried away, eh?... Instead change that to "And so I ask you to give... give until it kind of stings a little"... Better, right? Yeah... I thought so too...

I'm not exactly sure where "River Forest" is (I'm going to kind of go out on a limb here and say "Near both a river and a forest I reckon" - can't get anything past me, eh?) but I have actually been to Chicago itself - beautiful city with warm friendly people who were strangely excited to meet a "real honest to goodness Canadian" (I guess there may not be very many of us in Chicago... either that or the people in Chicago need to get out a little more as they apparently are a little too easily impressed) and really great pizza but the strangest looking hot dogs that I've ever seen in my life! Someone in Chicago will have to explain just what the hell that is all about as I can't even imagine what all of you must of been thinking of when you created that... I would post a picture of one of them but I'm just too lazy to do so... and besides even *I'm* beginning to wonder just what all of this has to do Solti and the CSO and I'm usually too clueless to even notice such things...

Best wishes, and thanks for "lending" me the comments! :lol:


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Nudge, are you familiar with the works of the estimable Thomas Dolby at all? He has a song called, and I make no connection here with anyone on this forum, Hyperactive!!:tiphat:


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## Guest (Dec 14, 2017)

Barbebleu said:


> Nudge, are you familiar with the works of the estimable Thomas Dolby at all? He has a song called, and I make no connection here with anyone on this forum, Hyperactive!!:tiphat:


Correct me if I'm wrong here, Barbs old boy, but I somehow detect a sly dig here somewhere...I'm going to have to "parse" (analyze (a sentence) into its parts and describe their syntactic roles) because your post seems somehow vaguely insulting...

And as far as Thomas Dolby is concerned my only knowledge of him is that he apparently had something or other to do with audio compression technologies or some such nonsense... I have audio equipment with "Dolby Digital" labeled on it so I reckon he must have been somehow involved in that... His sole contribution may be nothing more than being the first to say..."Hey, let's call it 'Dolby Digital'" and everyone else in the room either didn't care or was too tired to object and so if I were you, which as you know I'm not, I wouldn't be overly impressed by him..

If I had to sum up exactly what I know about the subject I couldn't really say anything other than that the first use of Dolby Digital was to provide digital sound in cinemas from 35mm film prints; today, it is now also used for other applications such as TV broadcast, radio broadcast via satellite, DVDs, Blu-ray discs and game consoles....

Ya know what, Barbs...you kind of nailed me but good... Thank God no one's written a song entitled "Bouncing off the walls" because everyone would insist that I make that my "theme song" and I would have to have it playing in the background whenever anyone read my posts which would quickly become almost as annoying as my posts themselves...

I offer my kind regards and holiday wishes to both you and your half-Canadian wife... _Full _Canadian would have been much _much better_ but hey, she's your wife, not mine...Hopefully the half-Canadian part is dominant over whatever other ethnicity or nationality there may be in her family tree...:lol:


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Triplets said:


> The quote from Donald Peck cited by Heck is interesting. One never sees Solti's Bruckner Recordings lauded by critics, but the ones that I have heard (1,6,8) are superb, really different than just about every one else that seems determined to ring profundity from every phrase.


His Bruckner recordings are loved by musicians, esp the brass players!!  It's true that Solti tends to move it along, but he was a great master at building the long line, the long, slow crescendo, reaching shattering climax....With Solti, Bruckner does not come off as fragmented, or episodic - there is continuity and flow...I tend to favor the non-Teutonic conductors in Bruckner [Walter excepted] - Solti, Barenboim, von Matacic, etc...for me, the Germans just get too ponderous, trying so desperately to be profound....
Solti's 2nd Bruckner #8 - with CSO, live from Leningrad [11/90] is remarkable - I think it has the hugest, most powerful brass sound I've ever heard on recording, simply astounding. the dynamic range is incredible.



> his Shostakovich Eighth and Fifteenth are outstanding. My memory seems to recall a Babi Yar that was very moving, but I can't remember if it was a Concert or a recording


Yes, Solti did record Shostakovich Sym #13 - [2/95] it is very good...I heard Solti/CSO perform Shostakovich #8 in Boston Symphony Hall - they took it on tour, alternating with Mahler 5, IIRC!!...The Shostakovich was a most moving performance, really powerful...the big, long first movement crescendo climax was delivered with shattering force...the quiet ending was most magiccal...the audience sat entranced, for several seconds, before bursting into wild applause.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Heck148 said:


> His Bruckner recordings are loved by musicians, esp the brass players!!  It's true that Solti tends to move it along, but he was a great master at building the long line, the long, slow crescendo, reaching shattering climax....With Solti, Bruckner does not come off as fragmented, or episodic - there is continuity and flow...I tend to favor the non-Teutonic conductors in Bruckner [Walter excepted] - Solti, Barenboim, von Matacic, etc...for me, the Germans just get too ponderous, trying so desperately to be profound....
> Solti's 2nd Bruckner #8 - with CSO, live from Leningrad [11/90] is remarkable - I think it has the hugest, most powerful brass sound I've ever heard on recording, simply astounding. the dynamic range is incredible.
> 
> Yes, Solti did record Shostakovich Sym #13 - [2/95] it is very good...I heard Solti/CSO perform Shostakovich #8 in Boston Symphony Hall - they took it on tour, alternating with Mahler 5, IIRC!!...The Shostakovich was a most moving performance, really powerful...the big, long first movement crescendo climax was delivered with shattering force...the quiet ending was most magiccal...the audience sat entranced, for several seconds, before bursting into wild applause.


 I remember hearing his Shostakovich Eighth in concert. I wasn't familiar with the work, having picked out from my local library a Barshai recording on lp that was damaged like heck just to prepare myself for the concert in those pre streaming and pre you tube era. It didn't remotely prepare me for the intensity of what I heard. At one point in one of the inner movements there is a long diminendo that is then checked by a brass outburst. I thought the movement was ending and the outburst lifted me half out of my seat
days


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Nudge and a Wink said:


> That's a really a very nice bit of musical criticism that you've written there and if it's alright with you I will copy and paste it into several threads here in an effort to boost my last place ranking in the "musicological expertise" sweepstakes here on the forum but I'll need to change it so that it appears as if I wrote it... You seem really bright and I'm fairly certain you can spare a quote or two without missing them as I'm reasonably sure that you'll be able to effortlessly replace them with even better comments before I even finish copying and pasting the previous ones into the other threads...
> 
> It's supposed to be the "season of giving" so everyone needs to start "giving" me some really nice examples of "insightful critiques and analysis" that I can copy, paste, and post in other threads under my own username rather than your own as I'm beginning to bitterly chafe at my current last place status in all of the really important music categories... And so I ask you go give... give until it hurts...well, maybe not "hurts" - no sense getting carried away, eh?... Instead change that to "And so I ask you to give... give until it kind of stings a little"... Better, right? Yeah... I thought so too...
> 
> ...


 I spent the first half of my life in Detroit. We would get you crazy Canucks coming NORTH (yes, you read that right, Windsor is south of Detroit) all the time to play tricks. I lived in constant fear of my sliders at White Castle being surreptitiously replaced by Hockey Pucks by some demented practical joke playing icicle head


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## Guest (Dec 14, 2017)

Triplets said:


> I spent the first half of my life in Detroit. We would get you crazy Canucks coming NORTH (yes, you read that right, Windsor is south of Detroit) all the time to play tricks. I lived in constant fear of my sliders at White Castle being surreptitiously replaced by Hockey Pucks by some demented practical joke playing icicle head


Oh no you don't lad, I'm a Vancouver boy born and bred... And I can't begin to describe the seething white-hot deeply profound ever-present openly contemptuous and thoroughly enjoyable loathing that us Western Canadians have for anyone and anything living to the right of Manitoba...(our beef is primarily with Ontario - especially Toronto - the self-proclaimed "Centre of the Universe" and Quebec because they can become awfully tiresome after a while...When we're feeling particularly snarky we call Quebec "Canada's ashtray" because everyone and I do mean everyone even the kids smoke like chimneys... And as previously mentioned they can be awfully tiresome especially every few years when they start yacking about leaving Canada and declaring independence... Everybody and I do mean everybody in the rest of Canada that is not in fact Quebec says "So leave already, eh?"...

Quebec is kind of like those posters who leave those "I'm leaving and I'm never ever coming back...until Tuesday" threads that they start which leads everyone to say what we say about Quebec which is "So leave already, eh?"...

We never really think much about PEI (Prince Edward Island) unless the subject of "growing potatoes" comes up which trust me is even rarer than those posts of mine which actually have something to do with classical music...

Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are spoken of even less than "growing potatoes" in Western Canada... truth be told a lot of us actually think that they might somehow be part of the United States and not actually one of the Canadian provinces but trust me they're of so little interest that none of us can be bothered to find out which country they actually belong to...In any part of Western Canada if you mention Nova Scotia... the response will inevitably be "Nova Scotia, who cares?" and if you mention New Brunswick...the response will inevitably be "New Brunswick, who cares?"

The only thing that Western Canadians know about Newfoundland which is approximately 4731.47 km or 2,940 miles away from Vancouver is that they're all fishermen and speak with an accent that literally no one else in Canada can understand - it's certainly not English and I'm fairly certain that it's not French but whatever it is...it's virtually unintelligible ...and ...oh yeah...everyone there has a beard...apparently even the women...

Now you'll probably notice that I've fearlessly and gratuitously taken like 6 or 7 shots at my fellow Canadians... I can do that but you can't for two reasons...1.) I'm an actual Canadian and thus free to criticize our own and 2.) I'm fairly certain that the forum doesn't actually have any members in Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI, or Newfoundland so I don't have to worry about getting any heat from any of them or any other form of retaliation ...

Western Canada consists of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba...although if it were up to me I'd ditch Alberta because both the Calgary Flames and the Edmonton Oilers traditionally beat the Vancouver Canucks like drums every time they play but I'm almost certain that no one else in Western Canada will actually allow me to give them the heave-ho for such petty reasons even though they're not petty to me...

I left out the Yukon because everyone else in Canada does too...

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the Canadian travelogue... Best wishes, NW


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Nudge and a Wink said:


> Correct me if I'm wrong here, Barbs old boy, but I somehow detect a sly dig here somewhere...I'm going to have to "parse" (analyze (a sentence) into its parts and describe their syntactic roles) because your post seems somehow vaguely insulting...
> 
> And as far as Thomas Dolby is concerned my only knowledge of him is that he apparently had something or other to do with audio compression technologies or some such nonsense... I have audio equipment with "Dolby Digital" labeled on it so I reckon he must have been somehow involved in that... His sole contribution may be nothing more than being the first to say..."Hey, let's call it 'Dolby Digital'" and everyone else in the room either didn't care or was too tired to object and so if I were you, which as you know I'm not, I wouldn't be overly impressed by him..
> 
> ...


Thank goodness for a sense of humour otherwise life would be intolerable. :tiphat:


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