125 Moments: 051 Sir Georg Solti on the cover of Time

The May 7, 1973, issue of Time featured a cover story by the magazine’s music critic William Bender, calling Sir Georg Solti “The Fastest Baton in the West.”

Bender’s article, “Solti and Chicago: A Musical Romance,” described to the magazine’s readers what most everyone in Chicago already knew: “Solti’s love for the Orchestra, and its for him, is obvious. ‘It’s a marvelous thing to be musically happily married,’ he says. ‘I am and I know, I’m a romantic type of musician, and this is a romantic orchestra. That is our secret: at a time when everybody is doing exactly the opposite, we are unafraid to be romantic.’ ”

At the end of the article, Bender briefly rated U.S. orchestras, planting Chicago firmly at the top, only writing “Sine qua non.”

Chicago Symphony Orchestra: 125 Moments was created to celebrate the ensemble’s 125th season in 2015-16 and gathered significant events, illustrated with imagery and artifacts from the collections of the Rosenthal Archives.

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