Sir Georg Solti; Led Chicago Symphony to World Renown

Sir Georg Solti, under whose baton the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed as a flawless, perfectly synchronized machine, died Friday. He was 84.

An assistant reported that Solti, on holiday at Antibes in the south of France, died in his sleep of an undisclosed illness.

In a career that took him to performance halls the world over, the Hungarian-born conductor displayed an energy that lifted audiences to their feet and kept him remarkably fit into his last years. He won 32 Grammy Awards--including a Lifetime Achievement Award--more than any other artist in the world.

After being named music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the early 1960s--and then almost immediately resigning in a dispute with the orchestra’s board--Solti became the music director of the Chicago Symphony in 1969, holding the post for 22 years.

His critically acclaimed tour of Europe with the orchestra in 1971--its first trip overseas--placed the ensemble among the elite of the world symphonies. Performances at New York’s Carnegie Hall solidified its reputation in the United States.

In 1991, he turned over his baton to Daniel Barenboim and became music director laureate. While leading the Chicago in the 1970s and early 1980s, he held the additional posts of music advisor of the Paris Opera, music director of the Orchestre de Paris, with which he toured China in 1974, and principal conductor of the London Philharmonic.

After he left Chicago in the orchestra’s centennial year, he served as a guest conductor with the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic.

Born Oct. 21, 1912, Solti began studying piano at the age of 6. He made his first public appearance in Budapest at 12, and at 13 enrolled there at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, where he studied with Erno Dohnanyi and, briefly, Bela Bartok.

After graduating at 18, he took a job as a repetiteur at the Budapest Opera, rehearsing the performers, and served as an assistant to two of the famed conductors of their generation--Bruno Walter and Arturo Toscanini--at the Salzburg Festival, which inspired him to move to the podium.

At 25, Solti made his conducting debut at the Budapest Opera, leading a performance of Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro.” He was the first Jewish conductor at the Budapest Opera since Gustav Mahler in the 19th century. But a wave of anti-Semitism sweeping across 1930s Hungary soon forced him to leave.

In August 1939, barely a week before World War II exploded across Europe, Solti was in Switzerland to see Toscanini when his mother cabled him to tell him not to return home. His family was wiped out in the Holocaust.

Solti spent the war in Switzerland, primarily as a concert pianist and instructor. In 1942 he won the Concours International de Piano in Geneva, and two years later was engaged to conduct concerts with the orchestra of Swiss Radio.

Solti’s American debut came with the San Francisco Opera in September 1953, when he conducted a performance of Richard Strauss’ “Elektra.” He was later engaged to be music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He accepted the post, and was scheduled to take the podium in the fall of 1962. But when the orchestra’s governing board appointed 25-year-old Zubin Mehta as his assistant without telling him, Solti resigned, complaining that he had not been afforded full authority over musical and administrative policy. The experience left him bitter toward Los Angeles, and he would not return until the 1980s.

Instead of taking over in Los Angeles, he distinguished himself as music director of the Royal Opera House in London, a post he held until 1971. While in the job, he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, then Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and became a British subject in 1972.

On a tour of Southern California in 1987, Solti told The Times of his love of the road--a characteristic rather rare among his fellow conductors.

“Touring is very important for the orchestra. At home, we know they love us. They applaud. They are proud of us. But they also take us a little bit for granted. It is natural. . . . When we play in new places, there is a special electricity, a special stimulation, an eagerness, even a sense of discovery.”

But he also decried the public’s apparently declining interest in classical music.

“Nothing is easy in these times,” he said. “Bloody TV and movies ruin everything. People don’t want to hear music. They want to sell condoms on TV.”

His first marriage, to Hedi Oechsli, ended in divorce. In 1967, he married Anne Valerie Pitts, a BBC journalist. They had two daughters, Gabrielle and Claudia. Solti is survived by his second wife and his daughters.

Times music writer Daniel Cariaga contributed to this story.