I never met Georg Solti. It would be tedious to list all the other famous people I have never met, so I won’t. I will tell you how I didn’t meet Sir Georg and that he insisted his first name be pronounced George.
More than twenty years ago I got a call one afternoon from a cousin asking me if I could come to dinner that evening and don a dinner jacket. Sir Georg Solti had accepted but cancelled because of an unscheduled dash to Chicago. His name was vaguely familiar to me; I thought maybe he played jazz. By the time I got to Hatchlands for dinner I was aware of whose place I was taking. His dash to Chicago was to contend with an industrial dispute in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, of which he was music director.
Hatchlands (Nat Trust) has a music room with an organ and not much else until Alec Cobbe offered to lend his collection of keyboard instruments. I will let the Nat Trust explain what they are lucky to have got their hands on.
Hatchlands is home to the Cobbe Collection, an extraordinary group of keyboard instruments by makers who were highly regarded or patronised by composers. Eighteen of these were owned or played by some of history’s greats including JC Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Elgar and Chopin. This is one of the largest groups of composer-related instruments anywhere in the world.
I sat beside Lady Solti (Valerie). She had been wooed quickly by her husband. She had been a BBC Radio 3 employee sent to interview him in his suite at the Savoy. He rang down to reception as she was leaving and asked her to come back to his room. She thought she had probably left something behind; she hadn’t; he proposed; she accepted. She spoke rather longingly of their house in Italy and also that she was a vegetarian. It was an awkward moment when medallions of venison were served for the main course. She put them on my plate and enjoined me to silence. After dinner Alec took her around his collection, explaining about each instrument and playing them. It was a memorable evening.
I never met the maestro but you can.