rob urbanik,
lifelong friend
and confidant
London, England;
New York, NY,
1946 (ca.)
The Sir Georg Solti Archive in the Loeb Music Library includes
hundreds of musical scores annotated by Solti, one of the 20th century’s
most renowned conductors of opera and symphony. Heavily marked for
performances and recordings, these scores show how Solti’s thinking
progressed, how he solved musical problems, and how he adapted
performances to suit a particular context. In preparing Bela Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra
for recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1981, Solti was
determined to follow the composer’s metronome marks “slavishly.” In the
second movement, Guioco delle coppie, Solti found Bartók’s
metronome marking of 74 to the quarter note “very sluggish.” Gordon
Peters, the CSO’s principal percussionist, indicated to Solti that 94
was written in his part. “I checked with the Library of Congress, which
owns the original manuscript, and 94 was confirmed as correct; 74 was a
printer’s error that has been published and republished for over fifty
years. Ninety-four is somewhat faster than the movement is usually
performed, but it is a natural, fluent tempo – and that is how I did
it.”
Musical notation.
Paper.
.
Mus 627.22.230.7 Solti .
HOLLIS Catalog: 012755478
http://bookhistory.harvard.edu/takenote/node/18
