Solti once likened the city of Chicago and its illustrious orchestra to a ‘sleeping beauty’ when he arrived as music director in the autumn of 1969.It was the name of another ballet – Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’ – which was to reveal just how incendiary the new relationship had become within five years in a recording which still hurls itself out of the loudspeakers half a century after it was made.The recording of ‘Rite’ was made in a single session on 14th May 1974, in Medinah Temple, Chicago, Decca’s favoured venue at that time.
