Creativity Quote by Georg Solti

Solti’s confession lands with the candor of someone used to conducting from the podium, not auditioning for likability. “Friends are very important to me” could be a bland celebrity platitude, but he immediately undercuts it with practical psychology: he has many friends for two reasons, one flattering (“naturally friendly”) and one disarmingly needy (“I hate to be alone”). That pairing is the engine of the quote. It treats sociability less as virtue than as temperament plus appetite - warmth, yes, but also a refusal of silence.

The subtext is especially pointed coming from a conductor, a role built on controlled authority and public scrutiny. Conductors are both surrounded and isolated: at the center of an orchestra, yet emotionally separated by hierarchy, travel, and the expectation of command. Solti hints that friendship isn’t just pleasure; it’s ballast against the peculiar loneliness of being perpetually “in charge.” The line reads like an artist admitting that the crowd doesn’t cure solitude unless it becomes relationship.

There’s also an implicit self-portrait of professionalism. “Many friends” in musical life can mean networks, alliances, the social labor that makes careers possible. Solti refuses to romanticize that, framing it as instinct rather than strategy. The intent feels twofold: to normalize his need for connection, and to preempt the myth of the solitary genius. For a 20th-century European musician shaped by displacement and relentless touring, the hatred of being alone isn’t melodrama; it’s a workable ethic - build community or be swallowed by the gaps between performances.