Search - Johannes Brahms, Dmitry Shostakovich, Bedrich Smetana :: Sir Georg Solti Carnegie Hall Project

A mixed pro-am orchestra brings out Solti's best

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 01/31/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In the summer of 1994 Solti spent most of June conducting a pickup orchestra (dubbed the Carnegie Hall Project) that mixed 15 first-chair professionals from major U.S. orhcestras with a large group of talented young musicians between the ages of 18 and 35. I shouldn't call it a student orhestra, but most of the participants were picked from conservatories. IN any event, five selections appear here from those summer concerts, and in every respect they are relzed, natural, delightful readings. Indeed, the Strauss Don Juan is so genial that nobody, I venture, could hear it blind and guess that Solti was conducting. Late in life he became enamored of Shostakovich, and this Sym. #9 is about as cheerful and lighthearted as they come.



All the works repeats from the Solti discography, but duplication doesn't matter in this case. Here's a batch of summer music at its best. Too bad that Carnegie Hal, for one reason and another, wasn't able to fulfill its dream of maintianing the orchestra as a permanent feature."