My memories

Ágnes Heller says in Bicikliző monkey: "/…/ The time of a memoir is like that of a tragedy or a drama. The time factor plays a different role in it than in the time of history writing. We are not dealing with chronic-linear time. Yes, in the sense that I put what came before, and what came later, for later." In the latter sense, György Solti is writing a story, a linear chronicle of his own life. But this is only the red thread of his book, on which his memory draws its eyes. What actually happened when and how: cannot be proven and, let's add, is of no importance. The musical life of the 20th century unfolds in the reality in which Solti saw and heard it. His book, in addition to the story of his own life, is a monument of an era that has already ended, but it is not a sculptural monument of the "great narrative" that would like to be bound in leather, but a "novel of a life" or even more a play of a life, which is neither a tragedy nor a comedy. Solti tells stories, tells stories, tells anecdotes: he does not descend into the deep well of the past - the bottom of what it is anyway. He wisely covers the great crises and dramatic turns of his life with his bright, bright enamel. It lacks any kind of resigned elegiac, the pain of "come to the end". Even after the age of eighty, Solti weaved his energetic, new plans, the frequent mention of which points outside the text that tells the story of the past. This serenity is also the serenity of humility, since "we are here to put our best technical knowledge at the service of the composer's wishes; he is the real creator." And the esthete, dealing with the art of understanding, finally understands: it would be unworthy and impolite to give up the hermeneutic lesson to a conductor. Because its spirit would respond with Toscanini's words to his musicians: "I hate you because you destroy my dreams!" Our job is to put our minds at the service of the musician's dreams. Because... But Solti has already written this.