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The Radio 3 Boards > The Music Boards > The Opera House > Solti's Mozart
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Author Topic: Solti's Mozart  (Read 193 times)
Tam Pollard
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« on: 09:59:38, 02-06-2007 »
As I was browsing in my local CD shop the other day, I came across the ROH's latest archive releases, which included Solti's Don Giovanni. In a rare moment of restraint I chose not to pick it up. Was I wrong? I have doubts about how Solti would be in Mozart (though I do remember glowing praise of the studio reading of one of his operas in a not to distant collection in Gramophone).
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DracoM
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« Reply #1 on: 10:23:04, 03-06-2007 »
Well, Tam, if you can stand Stuart Burrows Tamino, then Solti's Magic Flute is well worth catching.

Darkest black voiced Sarastro = Talvela, Pilar Lorengar = Pamina, Hermann Prey = Papageno, and the wonderfully sleazy Gerhard Stolze is Monostatos, and Chirstina Deutekom is a dizzying Queen of the Night. VPO etc.
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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #2 on: 11:47:59, 03-06-2007 »
I am not a Solti fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I agree with DracoM about his earlier Flute (there's a later version that I haven't heard)

The only other Solti Mozart opera I have is Figaro, which I bought mainly for the cast (Popp, Allen, Ramey). It's certainly acceptable - none of the mannerisms that put me off Solti in Wagner, and the VPO do play as beautifully as ever - but, alongside, say, Gui or Guilini (or even Bohm) it's a bit foursquare.
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
Swan_Knight
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« Reply #3 on: 01:12:56, 07-06-2007 »
I generally like Solti's recordings (though I feel that many of them succeed for reasons other than the conducting) and tend to like the repertoire that he specialised in.  However, his enthusiasm for Mozart always puzzled me, as I can't think of a less likely Mozartian. I have an excerpts disc, handed down to me, of his first 'Zauberflote' (which I believe is currently unavailable) and it's good stuff.   He made two attempts apiece at Giovanni and Cosi and a lot of people like his Figaro.

Sadly, I can't be persuaded that most Mozart is anything other than highbrow elevator music.
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...so flatterten lachend die Locken....
smittims
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« Reply #4 on: 10:27:12, 07-06-2007 »
Mozart is one of the composers I often wish Solti had left alone. I don't think it showed  him at his best. Verdi, Mahler, Bartok, and Strauss did, and had he not been preoccupied with recording all the Beethoven symphonies,Messiah  and the S.Matthew Passionn he might have given us some wonderful interpretations of other music.
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