The world of classical music mourns Lady Valerie Solti

Lady Ann Valerie Solti passed away after an extraordinary and fascinating life, wrote The Sunday Times in an honorable obituary recently.

As Valerie Pitts The British television presenter, born in 1937, was one of the first presenters of the in the 1950s BBC. In Hungary Valerie Pitts is mainly the widow of the conductor, who died in 1997 Georg Solti known. The TV presenter’s relationship with Solti was considered one of the great love affairs in classical music. Valerie Pitts and Georg Solti never tire of emphasizing that it was fate that brought them together in 1964: she a young, ambitious art journalist and he an internationally acclaimed orchestra conductor.

The one ennobled by the Queen Sir Georg Solti belongs to the circle of the best Conductors any times. His work represents a high point in classical music of the 20th century. Georg Solti was born in Budapest in 1912 under the name György Stern as the son of a Jewish family. Nationalism and anti-Semitism drove him to emigrate after his studies and his first successes. He lived the Second World War in Switzerland and became known as a pianist. But his passion was conducting. After the war his internationally successful conducting career began.

Georg Solti fell in love with the beautiful, educated woman during his first interview with Valerie Pitts. He courted her for four years until they married. With her he got the family he had longed for all his life. Valerie Pitts gave him two daughters. After his death, Lady Valerie Solti and her daughters founded the Solti Foundation to promote young musicians.

The spirited and passionate conductor left an indelible impression and unforgettable memories in all of his places of work – be it famous opera houses, large orchestras and festivals. It was he, the many of them orchestra only led to a previously unknown quality, size and fame. His first full studio recording of Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen” for the Decca record company from 1958 to 1965 is the world’s best-selling classical recording of all time. Until her death, Lady Valerie Solti was the patroness of the “World Orchestra for Peace“, With which they both wanted to express the unique power of music as an ambassador for peace.

Solti once said in a television portrait: If I hadn’t had such a difficult life as a multiple emigrant, I would never have become what I am today. I had to fight for everything in my life. Yet my studies at Bartók, Kodály and Weiner in Budapest I will never forget With his last recording, the recording of a concert in Budapest with works by his former teachers, he returned to his roots. Sir Georg Solti was laid to rest in the Farkasrétitemető cemetery in Budapest. Lady Valerie Solti found her final resting place in her British homeland.

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