Ludwig van Beethoven

When Sir Georg Solti died in September 1997, a month before his 85th birthday, he had been an exclusive Decca artist for 50 years.

During this incredible exclusive association (rivalled only by Isaac Stern who enjoyed an equally long exclusive association with CBS/Sony) Solti made some of the legendary recordings in the history of the gramophone — not least his acclaimed recording and the first-ever studio recording of Wagner's Ring (recorded in Vienna 1958–65). What is sometimes forgotten is that when Solti first signed to Decca in 1947 it was as a pianist and his first recordings were as partner to violinist Georg Kulenkampff. (All of their recordings are included here with the exception of one Mozart sonata.)

Solti was a musician of broad sympathies who, during his long career, continued to explore repertory that was new to him (a notable example is his “discovery” of Shostakovich during the last years of his life), but at the same time there were several composers whom he felt a particularly affinity with and he performed, recorded and re-recorded them during his career. Those composers include Bartók and Kodály (both of whom had also been his teachers during his student days in Budapest), Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert and Richard Strauss. All of the recordings included here are receiving their first international CD release and the recordings of Kodály and Richard Strauss are released with the co-operation of Deutsche Grammophon.

The three excerpts from Elektra (amounting to nearly half the complete opera) are particularly fascinating as this was an opera Solti conducted throughout his career and which he later recorded in its entirety in Vienna in the 1960s with the incomparable Birgit Nilsson in the title role. Even in this group of three scenes all the essential Solti characteristics are in evidence: tremendous rhythmic drive and an accute ear for orchestral colour and detail.