If Sir Georg Solti, music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1969 to 1991, could be an imposing presence, his wife was the balance. She was human when he could seem more than so, especially to musicians in the orchestra.
“She thought of us as her family,” said violist Li-Kuo Chang, a longtime musician with the CSO. “She took the Chicago Symphony into her heart.”
Lady Valerie Solti died Wednesday at home in London, according to an announcement from the CSO. She was 83.
Her principal role was as first lady of the CSO, a role to which she was devoted, said Frank Villella, director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Rosenthal Archives. When Sir Georg was in town conducting, she would host receptions and meetings of the Women’s Association, now called the League, one of the volunteer arms of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association.
She also took care of his arrangements and to a great extent was his public face, a humanizing presence for his leadership as maestro.
“She was the liaison between him and everyone else,” Villella said. “The thing about Sir Georg was he was all about the music. It wasn’t about ego. But she helped him fill in the blanks.”
Born in England on Aug. 19, 1937, Valerie Pitts studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She worked in television, including at the BBC. It was as an arts journalist for a BBC program in 1964 that she first met Georg Solti, then music director at London’s Royal Opera. It was a story she liked to tell.
She was given a last-minute assignment to interview him, Villella said, “and she said, ‘Who?'”
Sir Georg was running late for the meeting at the Savoy hotel in London, as was common for him, so Valerie went up to his room to find him. “He answered the door in his bathrobe,” Villella said. He apologized and asked her to help him find his socks. She was married at the time, he separated from his wife, but they were married in 1967. They celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary on stage at Orchestra Hall at a post-concert reception in 1992.
The couple’s principal home remained in London but Valerie Solti traveled with him every time he came to Chicago during his tenure. She loved Chicago, called it her second home, Villella said, and frequently appeared on stage at Orchestra Hall. She served as narrator for children’s concerts, hosted the centennial gala concert in 1990 and the Orchestra Hall centennial concert in 2004. She was passionate about CSO history and wrote a foreword to “Theodore Thomas,” a 1989 biography of the orchestra’s founder.
Published on Feb. 7, 1979.
During the 1990 centennial concert, she came out on stage during set changes and told stories from CSO history, Villella said. “She just charmed everybody. And that’s how she always was, the person you saw on stage was the same you saw one-on-one.”
After stepping down as music director, Sir Georg remained music director laureate and continued working with the CSO until his death in 1997, after which Lady Solti remained close with the orchestra.
Chang, who was hired by Georg in 1988, remembers when the CSO played the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland as part of a European tour in 2008. Lady Solti met them there and Chang had brought his wife and their newborn son, Daniel.
“She held him like he was her own grandchild,” Chang said. “And how she smiled, it’s like sunshine came through my heart.”
She knew musicians in the orchestra by their first names and always asked about Daniel whenever she saw Chang thereafter, he said. In later years, he said, “every time she came back it was like a reunion of a family.”
After Georg’s death, Valerie Solti maintained his legacy. With the couple’s daughters Gabrielle and Claudia, she created the European-based Solti Foundation (with a U.S. foundation based in the Chicago area) to assist young professional musicians at the start of their careers, and was founder and chairperson of the Georg Solti Accademia based in Switzerland, devoted to Italian opera. She was an honorary trustee of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association.
Along with her daughters, Valerie Solti is survived by her four grandchildren. Details for services are pending.
dgeorge@chicagotribune.com
