Solti -- The Last Recording. Bartok: Cantata profana; Weiner: Serenade for small orchestra; Kodaly: Psalmus hungaricus. Sir Georg Solti, Budapest Festival Orchestra and choirs. London 289 458 929-2.

Solti -- The Last Recording. Bartok: Cantata profana; Weiner: Serenade for small orchestra; Kodaly: Psalmus hungaricus. Sir Georg Solti, Budapest Festival Orchestra and choirs. London 289 458 929-2.

This disc may be billed as Solti's last recording, but I doubt that it will be his last release. With a recorded legacy of more than 40 years and probably quite a few recordings still on the shelf, I am sure we can look forward to many more years of new Solti discs. I have never been overly fond of the man's occasionally frenetic style, but it is hard not to admit the importance of some of his work, especially in Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Wagner, and, more recently, Mozart.

On this disc he returned to his homeland, Hungary, in June of 1997 to record pieces by three of his teachers -- Bartok, Weiner, and Kodaly. The Bartok and Kodaly are dark and somber vocal works, the Bartok seldom recorded. They enclose a lighter piece by Weiner, a charming but largely inconsequential Serenade in four movements. London's sound is typical of this source; it is big and robust, large and round of bass and somewhat hard-edged in the mids. Choruses come off fine, but solo voices seem too bright and too sharply delineated to be entirely natural. This is not a disc of best-selling music, but it is an occasion of solemn merit. Solti will be missed.