A favorite story of the late John S. Edwards, onetime general manager of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, concerned the visit of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to Chicago in October 1979. The pontiff, a great lover of the fine arts, had expressed his wish to hear the mighty CSO under Sir Georg Solti during his visit, and so a special concert of the Bruckner Fifth Symphony was arranged in Holy Name Cathedral. After the concert, the pope went out onto State Street, where he was greeted by thousands of cheering Chicagoans. “Thank you,” he called, “but I am not the Chicago Symphony. I am only the pope.”
It was the north-shore Ravinia Festival that invited Solti, then a rather inexperienced conductor, to make his North American debut back in July of 1953. The engagement fell through because of visa complications, but the following summer Solti did conduct the Chicago Symphony at Ravinia, and he immediately “fell in love” with the orchestra.
Solti is an intense and driven man who is always on the move. He guards his privacy fiercely and hates interviews, not only because he finds it difficult to sit still but also because he would rather be making music than talking about it. The conversation that follows took place in several installments, the first and longest of which was just over 45 minutes last February in his Orchestra Hall studio. We also spoke last September in his downtown hotel suite, on a quiet Sunday morning before the hectic 1988-89 season began. The one forbidden subject was the CSO’s new music director, but Solti was gracious enough to update me on that situation last Monday, when the announcement of his successor was finally made publicly.
DP: How do you feel about leaving, now that your successor has been publicly named?
The controversy developed very slowly, but unfortunately it is a political issue; I am quite convinced of that. What happened was very simple: the Socialist government [of President Francois Mitterrand] was against the appointee of the [conservative former prime minister Jacques] Chirac government. It’s as simple as that. It has nothing to do with Mr. Barenboim’s qualifications musically, nothing to do with the money they are paying him, it is all an excuse–a dirty excuse for politics.
But it is also not insignificant that the orchestra itself had an absolutely clear preference for Barenboim over Abbado as music director. That is an essential point, because the view of this quality orchestra shouldn’t be overruled.
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DG: You came across that handwriting a few years back when you and the orchestra were preparing the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra, the piece that also opened the current season. Tell that story, if you will.
