Solti’s recording career began in 1947 with the music of Beethoven. At Radio Beromünster’s Zürich studio, Solti recorded the “Kreutzer” Sonata (no. 9 in A major, op. 47) with violinist Georg Kulenkampff, as well as Beethoven’s Egmont Overture with Zürich’s Tonhalle Orchestra for the Decca label. The producer was Radio Beromünster’s music director, Rolf Liebermann, who went on to become head of the Hamburg Staatsoper and Paris Opera. Solti’s last recording, like his very first fifty years earlier, was likewise a performance by Zürich’s Tonhalle Orchestra issued by Decca – a posthumous release of Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, which was to be the last concert performance of his career. The Tonhalle Orchestra was thus witness to the beginning and end of one of the most illustrious recording careers of the twentieth century.

Solti's first orchestral recording.
Ludwig van Beethoven. Egmont. Ouverture (Coda). Perf . Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich.
Recorded at Studio Radio Beromünster, June 1947 (Decca 16.41423). Record Collection LP A 25176 (11) http://id.lib.harvard.edu/aleph/008769696/catalog

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