Saluting Solti

SIR GEORG SOLTI, who died on holiday in France on September 5th, was a great concert-goer as well as a great conductor. Nobody who sat behind him in the audience at a recital could forget the experience. Throughout, as Sir Georg listened, his bald head with its big ears would swivel from side to side in metronomic time to the music. To players under his command his discipline could be frightening. At London's Royal Opera, where he was music director in 1961-71, he was known as “the screaming skull”. Members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which he conducted from 1969 to 1991, called him “the truckdriver”. But players smarting from his tongue and temper greatly admired his musicianship. “We play for some conductors with love,” a Chicago player once said, “but for Solti we play with respect.”