Description.

Giant sequoia specimens are the most massive individual trees in the world. They grow to an average height of with trunk diameters ranging from. Record trees have been measured at tall. Trunk diameters of have been claimed via research figures taken out of context. The specimen known to have the greatest diameter at breast height is the General Grant tree at. Between 2014 and 2016, specimens of coast redwood were found to have greater trunk diameters than all known giant sequoias. The trunks of coast redwoods taper at lower heights than those of giant sequoias which have more columnar trunks that maintain larger diameters to greater heights.  The oldest known giant sequoia is 3,200–3,266 years old based on dendrochronology. Giant sequoias are among the oldest living organisms on Earth. Giant sequoia bark is fibrous, furrowed, and may be thick at the base of the columnar trunk. The sap contains tannic acid, which provides significant protection from fire damage. The leaves are evergreen, awl-shaped, long, and arranged spirally on the shoots. The giant sequoia regenerates by seed. The seed cones are long and mature in 18–20 months, though they typically remain green and closed for as long as 20 years. Each cone has 30–50 spirally arranged scales, with several seeds on each scale, giving an average of 230 seeds per cone. Seeds are dark brown, long, and broad, with a wide, yellow-brown wing along each side. Some seeds shed when the cone scales shrink during hot weather in late summer, but most are liberated by insect damage or when the cone dries from the heat of fire. Young trees start to bear cones after 12 years.  Trees may produce sprouts from their stumps subsequent to injury, until about 20 years old; however, shoots do not form on the stumps of mature trees as they do on coast redwoods. Giant sequoias of all ages may sprout from their boles when branches are lost to fire or breakage.  A large tree may have as many as 11,000 cones. Cone production is greatest in the upper portion of the canopy. A mature giant sequoia disperses an estimated 300–400 thousand seeds annually. The winged seeds may fly as far as from the parent tree.  Lower branches die readily from being shaded, but trees younger than 100 years retain most of their dead branches. Trunks of mature trees in groves are generally free of branches to a height of, but solitary trees retain lower branches.

Biology.

Because of its size, the tree has been studied for its water pull. Water from the roots can be pushed up only a few meters by osmotic pressure but can reach extreme heights by using large negative pressures in the tree's xylem (the water tubules) and sub-pressure from evaporating water at the leaves. Sequoias supplement water from the soil with fog, taken up through air roots, at heights to where the root water cannot be pulled.

Distribution.

The natural distribution of giant sequoias is restricted to a limited area of the western Sierra Nevada, California. They occur in scattered groves, with a total of 68 groves (see list of sequoia groves for a full inventory), comprising a total area of only. Nowhere does it grow in pure stands, although in a few small areas, stands do approach a pure condition. The northern two-thirds of its range, from the American River in Placer County southward to the Kings River, has only eight disjunct groves. The remaining southern groves are concentrated between the Kings River and the Deer Creek Grove in southern Tulare County. Groves range in size from with 20,000 mature trees, to small groves with only six living trees. Many are protected in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and Giant Sequoia National Monument.  The giant sequoia is usually found in a humid climate characterized by dry summers and snowy winters. Most giant sequoia groves are on granitic-based residual and alluvial soils. The elevation of the giant sequoia groves generally ranges from in the north, to to the south. Giant sequoias generally occur on the south-facing sides of northern mountains, and on the northern faces of more southerly slopes.  High levels of reproduction are not necessary to maintain the present population levels. Few groves, however, have sufficient young trees to maintain the present density of mature giant sequoias for the future. The majority of giant sequoia groves are currently undergoing a gradual decline in density since European settlement.

Historic range.

While the present day distribution of this species is limited to a small area of California, it was once much more widely distributed in prehistoric times, and was a reasonably common species in North American and Eurasian coniferous forests until its range was greatly reduced by the last ice age. Older fossil specimens reliably identified as giant sequoia have been found in Cretaceous era sediments from a number of sites in North America and Europe, and even as far afield as New Zealand and Australia.

Artificial groves.

In 1974, a group of giant sequoias was planted by the United States Forest Service in the San Jacinto Mountains of Southern California in the immediate aftermath of a wildfire that left the landscape barren. The giant sequoias were rediscovered in 2008 by botanist Rudolf Schmid and his daughter Mena Schmidt while hiking on Black Mountain Trail through Hall Canyon. Black Mountain Grove is home to over 150 giant sequoias, some of which stand over tall. This grove is not to be confused with the Black Mountain Grove in the southern Sierras. Nearby Lake Fulmor Grove is home to seven giant sequoias, the largest of which is tall. The two groves are located approximately southeast of the southernmost naturally occurring giant sequoia grove, Deer Creek Grove.  It was later discovered that the United States Forest Service had planted giant sequoias across Southern California. However, the giant sequoias of Black Mountain Grove and nearby Lake Fulmor Grove are the only ones known to be reproducing and propagating free of human intervention. The conditions of the San Jacinto Mountains mimic those of the Sierra Nevada, allowing the trees to naturally propagate throughout the canyon.

Ecology.

Giant sequoias are in many ways adapted to forest fires. Their bark is unusually fire resistant, and their cones will normally open immediately after a fire. The giant sequoias are having difficulty reproducing in their original habitat (and very rarely reproduce in cultivation) due to the seeds only being able to grow successfully in full sun and in mineral-rich soils, free from competing vegetation. Although the seeds can germinate in moist needle humus in the spring, these seedlings will die as the duff dries in the summer. They therefore require periodic wildfire to clear competing vegetation and soil humus before successful regeneration can occur. Without fire, shade-loving species will crowd out young sequoia seedlings, and sequoia seeds will not germinate. When fully grown, these trees typically require large amounts of water and are therefore often concentrated near streams. Squirrels, chipmunks, finches and sparrows consume the freshly sprouted seedlings, preventing their growth.  Fires also bring hot air high into the canopy via convection, which in turn dries and opens the cones. The subsequent release of large quantities of seeds coincides with the optimal postfire seedbed conditions. Loose ground ash may also act as a cover to protect the fallen seeds from ultraviolet radiation damage. Due to fire suppression efforts and livestock grazing during the early and mid-20th century, low-intensity fires no longer occurred naturally in many groves, and still do not occur in some groves today. The suppression of fires leads to ground fuel build-up and the dense growth of fire-sensitive white fir, which increases the risk of more intense fires that can use the firs as ladders to threaten mature giant sequoia crowns. Natural fires may also be important in keeping carpenter ants in check. In 1970, the National Park Service began controlled burns of its groves to correct these problems. Current policies also allow natural fires to burn. One of these untamed burns severely damaged the second-largest tree in the world, the Washington tree, in September 2003, 45 days after the fire started. This damage made it unable to withstand the snowstorm of January 2005, leading to the collapse of over half the trunk.  In addition to fire, two animal agents also assist giant sequoia seed release. The more significant of the two is a longhorn beetle ("Phymatodes nitidus") that lays eggs on the cones, into which the larvae then bore holes. Reduction of the vascular water supply to the cone scales allows the cones to dry and open for the seeds to fall. Cones damaged by the beetles during the summer will slowly open over the next several months. Some research indicates many cones, particularly higher in the crowns, may need to be partially dried by beetle damage before fire can fully open them. The other agent is the Douglas squirrel ("Tamiasciurus douglasi") that gnaws on the fleshy green scales of younger cones. The squirrels are active year round, and some seeds are dislodged and dropped as the cone is eaten.

Discovery and naming.

The giant sequoia was well known to Native American tribes living in its area. Native American names for the species include "wawona", "toos-pung-ish" and "hea-mi-withic", the latter two in the language of the Tule River Tribe.  The first reference to the giant sequoia by Europeans is in 1833, in the diary of the explorer J. K. Leonard; the reference does not mention any locality, but his route would have taken him through the Calaveras Grove. This discovery was not publicized. The next European to see the species was John M. Wooster, who carved his initials in the bark of the 'Hercules' tree in the Calaveras Grove in 1850; again, this received no publicity. Much more publicity was given to the "discovery" by Augustus T. Dowd of the Calaveras Grove in 1852, and this is commonly cited as the species' discovery. The tree found by Dowd, christened the 'Discovery Tree', was felled in 1853.  The first scientific naming of the species was by John Lindley in December 1853, who named it "Wellingtonia gigantea", without realizing this was an invalid name under the botanical code as the name "Wellingtonia" had already been used earlier for another unrelated plant ("Wellingtonia arnottiana" in the family Sabiaceae). The name "Wellingtonia" has persisted in England as a common name. The following year, Joseph Decaisne transferred it to the same genus as the coast redwood, naming it "Sequoia gigantea", but again this name was invalid, having been applied earlier (in 1847, by Endlicher) to the coast redwood. The name "Washingtonia californica" was also applied to it by Winslow in 1854, though this too is invalid, belonging to the palm genus "Washingtonia".  In 1907, it was placed by Carl Ernst Otto Kuntze in the otherwise fossil genus "Steinhauera", but doubt as to whether the giant sequoia is related to the fossil originally so named makes this name invalid.  The nomenclatural oversights were finally corrected in 1939 by J. Buchholz, who also pointed out the giant sequoia is distinct from the coast redwood at the genus level and coined the name "Sequoiadendron giganteum" for it.  The etymology of the genus name has been presumedinitially in "The Yosemite Book" by Josiah Whitney in 1868to be in honor of Sequoyah (1767–1843), who was the inventor of the Cherokee syllabary. An etymological study published in 2012, however, concluded that the name was more likely to have originated from the Latin "sequi" (meaning "to follow") since the number of seeds per cone in the newly-classified genus fell in mathematical sequence with the other four genera in the suborder.  John Muir wrote of the species in about 1870: "Do behold the King in his glory, King Sequoia! Behold! Behold! seems all I can say. Some time ago I left all for Sequoia and have been and am at his feet, fasting and praying for light, for is he not the greatest light in the woods, in the world? Where are such columns of sunshine, tangible, accessible, terrestrialized?'

Uses.

Wood from mature giant sequoias is highly resistant to decay, but due to being fibrous and brittle, it is generally unsuitable for construction. From the 1880s through the 1920s, logging took place in many groves in spite of marginal commercial returns. The Hume-Bennett Lumber Company was the last to harvest giant sequoia, going out of business in 1924. Due to their weight and brittleness, trees would often shatter when they hit the ground, wasting much of the wood. Loggers attempted to cushion the impact by digging trenches and filling them with branches. Still, as little as 50% of the timber is estimated to have made it from groves to the mill. The wood was used mainly for shingles and fence posts, or even for matchsticks.  Pictures of the once majestic trees broken and abandoned in formerly pristine groves, and the thought of the giants put to such modest use, spurred the public outcry that caused most of the groves to be preserved as protected land. The public can visit an example of 1880s clear-cutting at Big Stump Grove near General Grant Grove. As late as the 1980s, some immature trees were logged in Sequoia National Forest, publicity of which helped lead to the creation of Giant Sequoia National Monument.  The wood from immature trees is less brittle, with recent tests on young plantation-grown trees showing it similar to coast redwood wood in quality. This is resulting in some interest in cultivating giant sequoia as a very high-yielding timber crop tree, both in California and also in parts of western Europe, where it may grow more efficiently than coast redwoods. In the northwest United States, some entrepreneurs have also begun growing giant sequoias for Christmas trees. Besides these attempts at tree farming, the principal economic uses for giant sequoia today are tourism and horticulture.

Cultivation.

Giant sequoia is a very popular ornamental tree in many areas. It is successfully grown in most of western and southern Europe, the Pacific Northwest of North America north to southwest British Columbia, the southern United States, southeast Australia, New Zealand and central-southern Chile. It is also grown, though less successfully, in parts of eastern North America.  Trees can withstand temperatures of −31 °C (−25 °F) or colder for short periods of time, provided the ground around the roots is insulated with either heavy snow or mulch. Outside its natural range, the foliage can suffer from damaging windburn.  A wide range of horticultural varieties have been selected, especially in Europe, including blue, compact blue, powder blue, hazel smith, pendulumor weepingvarieties, and grafted cultivars.

France.

The tallest giant sequoia ever measured outside of the United States is a specimen planted near Ribeauvillé in France in 1856 and measured in 2014 at a height between and at age 158 years.

United Kingdom.

The giant sequoia was first brought into cultivation in Britain in 1853 by the horticulturist Patrick Matthew of Perthshire from seeds sent by his botanist son John in California. A much larger shipment of seed collected from the Calaveras Grove by William Lobb, acting for the Veitch Nursery near Exeter, arrived in England in December 1853; seed from this batch was widely distributed throughout Europe.  Growth in Britain is very fast, with the tallest tree, at Benmore in southwest Scotland, reaching in 2014 at age 150 years, and several others from tall; the stoutest is around in girth and in diameter, in Perthshire. The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London also contains a large specimen. Biddulph Grange Garden in Staffordshire holds a fine collection of both "Sequoiadendron giganteum" and "Sequoia sempervirens" (coast redwood). The General Sherman of California has a volume of ; by way of comparison, the largest giant sequoias in Great Britain have volumes no greater than, one example being the specimen in the New Forest. "Sequoiadendron giganteum" has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.  An avenue of 218 giant sequoias was planted in 1865 near the town of Camberley, Surrey, England. The trees have since been surrounded by modern real estate development.

Italy.

Numerous giant sequoia were planted in Italy from 1860 through 1905. Several regions contain specimens that range from in height. The largest tree is in Roccavione, in the Piedmont, with a basal circumference of. One notable tree survived a tall flood wave in 1963 that was caused by a landslide at Vajont Dam. There are numerous giant sequoia in parks and reserves.  Growth rates in some areas of Europe are remarkable. One young tree in Italy reached tall and trunk diameter in 17 years (Mitchell, 1972).

Northern Europe.

Growth further northeast in Europe is limited by winter cold. In Denmark, where extreme winters can reach, the largest tree was tall and diameter in 1976 and is bigger today. One in Poland has purportedly survived temperatures down to with heavy snow cover.  Two members of the German Dendrology Society, E. J. Martin and Illa Martin, introduced the giant sequoia into German forestry at the Sequoiafarm Kaldenkirchen in 1952.  Twenty-nine giant sequoias, measuring around in height, grow in Belgrade's municipality of Lazarevac in Serbia.  The oldest "sequoiadendron" in the Czech Republic, at, grows in Ratměřice u Votic castle garden.

United States and Canada.

Giant sequoias are grown successfully in the Pacific Northwest and southern US, and less successfully in eastern North America. Giant sequoia cultivation is very successful in the Pacific Northwest from western Oregon north to southwest British Columbia, with fast growth rates. In Washington and Oregon, it is common to find giant sequoias that have been successfully planted in both urban and rural areas. In the Seattle area, large specimens exceeding are fairly common and exist in several city parks and many private yards (especially east Seattle including Capitol Hill, Washington Park, & Leschi/Madrona, as well as Tacoma's Jefferson Park).  In the northeastern US there has been some limited success in growing the species, but growth is much slower there, and it is prone to "Cercospora" and "Kabatina" fungal diseases due to the hot, humid summer climate there. A tree at Blithewold Gardens, in Bristol, Rhode Island, is reported to be tall, reportedly the tallest in the New England states. The tree at the Tyler Arboretum in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, at may be the tallest in the northeast. Specimens also grow in the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, Massachusetts (planted 1972, 18 m tall in 1998), at Longwood Gardens near Wilmington, Delaware, in the New Jersey State Botanical Garden at Skylands in Ringwood State Park, Ringwood, New Jersey, and in the Finger Lakes region of New York. Private plantings of giant sequoias around the Middle Atlantic States are not uncommon, and other publicly accessible specimens can be visited at the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. A few trees have been established in Colorado as well. Additionally, numerous sequoias have been planted with success in the state of Michigan.  A cold-tolerant cultivar 'Hazel Smith' selected in about 1960 is proving more successful in the northeastern US. This clone was the sole survivor of several hundred seedlings grown at a nursery in New Jersey. The U.S. National Arboretum has a specimen grown from a cutting in 1970 that can be seen in the Gotelli Conifer Collection.

Australia.

The Ballarat Botanical Gardens contain a significant collection, many of them about 150 years old. Jubilee Park and the Hepburn Mineral Springs Reserve in Daylesford, Cook Park in Orange, New South Wales and Carisbrook's Deep Creek park in Victoria both have specimens. Jamieson Township in the Victorian high country has two specimens which were planted in the early 1860s.  In Tasmania, specimens can be seen in private and public gardens, as sequoias were popular in the mid-Victorian era. The Westbury Village Green has mature specimens with more in Deloraine. The Tasmanian Arboretum contains both "Sequoiadendron giganteum" and "Sequoia sempervirens" specimens.  The Pialligo Redwood Forest consists of 3,000 surviving redwood specimens, of 122,000 planted, 500 meters east of the Canberra Airport. The forest was laid out by the city's designer Walter Burley Griffin, though the city's arborist, Thomas Charles Weston, advised against it. The National Arboretum Canberra began a grove of "Sequoiadendron giganteum" in 2008. They also grow in the abandoned arboretum at Mount Banda Banda in New South Wales.

New Zealand.

Several impressive specimens of Sequoiadendron giganteum can be found in the South Island of New Zealand. Notable examples include a set of trees in a public park of Picton, as well as robust specimens in the public and botanical parks of Christchurch and Queenstown. There are also several in private gardens in Wanaka. Other locations in Christchurch and nearby include three large trees on the roadside bordering private properties on Clyde Road, near Wai-Iti Terrace – these are at least 150 years old. The suburb of ‘Redwood’ is named after a 160 years old Giant Redwood tree in the grounds of a local hotel. A grove of about sixteen Redwood trees of varying ages is in Sheldon Park in the Belfast, New Zealand suburb. Some of these trees are in poor condition because of indifferent care. There is also a very large tree at Rangiora High School, which was planted for Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee and is thus over 130 years old.  The location of a large number of New Zealand redwoods can be found at https://register.notabletrees.org.nz

Rotorua.

The best site to see Giant Redwoods in New Zealand is at Rotorua. The six hectare stand of Californian Redwoods is named the Redwood Memorial Grove and is protected from tree harvesting. Redwoods can also be found near Lake Rotokakahi (the Green Lake) and in various other spots within the forest. But none of them are as magnificent as those in the Redwood Memorial Grove. They were planted in the early 1900s as part of experiments to determine suitable trees for commercial growing in New Zealand.

Superlatives.

Largest by trunk volume.

Some sequoias, such as the Mother of the Forest, were undoubtedly far larger than any living tree today. However, as of 2009, the top ten largest giant sequoias sorted by volume of their trunks are:

Sequoiadendron giganteum (giant sequoia; also known as giant redwood, Sierra redwood, Sierran redwood, Wellingtonia or simply big treea nickname also used by John Muir) is the sole living species in the genus "Sequoiadendron", and one of three species of coniferous trees known as redwoods, classified in the family Cupressaceae in the subfamily Sequoioideae, together with "Sequoia sempervirens" (coast redwood) and "Metasequoia glyptostroboides" (dawn redwood). Giant sequoia specimens are the most massive trees on Earth. The common use of the name "sequoia" usually refers to "Sequoiadendron giganteum", which occurs naturally only in groves on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. The oldest known giant sequoia is 3,200-3,266 years old

巨杉(学名:'),俗称世界爷,属柏科巨杉属唯一物种。主要分布于美国加利福尼亚州内华达山脉西部。阳性树,生长快,而树龄极长。播种繁殖,但幼苗易生病害。巨杉是所有树中最粗大的一种。巨杉不仅是最大的红木,而且也是地球上最庞大的并且尚存活着的生物。平均可长到,直径约。纪录中树高最高可达、最大直径超过。


Causes.

A motor vehicle contains many types of flammable materials, including flammable liquids like gasoline and oil as well as solid combustibles such as hose. Fuel leaks from ruptured fuel lines also can rapidly ignite, especially in petrol fuelled cars where sparks are possible in the engine compartment. Fires with casualties have been caused by ozone cracking of nitrile rubber fuel lines for example.  Vehicles house multiple potential sources of ignition including electrical devices that may short circuit, hot exhaust systems, and modern car devices such as air bag detonators.  In the UK, accidental car fires are declining but deliberate car fires (arson) are increasing. There are approximately the same number of deliberate car fires as there are accidental car fires in the UK. It is common for joyriders to set fire to stolen cars: abandoned cars are commonly set on fire by vandals. Around two cars out of every thousand registered in the UK catch fire each year.  It is often the case in accidental auto fires that the bulk of the fire is (at least initially) contained in the engine compartment of the vehicle. In most vehicles, the passenger compartment is protected from engine compartment fire by a firewall. However, in case of arson, the fire does not always start in the interior or spread there. It is mandatory to carry an in-car fire extinguisher in some countries, such as Belgium, Bulgaria and Poland.  From 2003 to 2007 in the United States, there were 280,000 car fires per year, which caused 480 deaths.

History.

While some cases of deliberate car fires are isolated incidents, committed clandestinely, the practice is publicly performed by either rioters and revelers, with little to no retribution. Some tragic vehicle fires have received wide publicity, some evidently due to accident or mechanical or electrical problems, and other due to crimes.

A vehicle fire is an undesired conflagration (uncontrolled burning) involving a motor vehicle. Also termed car fire or auto fire, it is one of the most common causes of fire-related property damage.

车辆火灾,又称为火烧车,是火灾的一种类型,指涉及机动车辆发生非预期的燃烧。由于车辆存有燃料,如汽油,发生车辆火灾时,火将会极速成长。许多车辆火灾是由碰撞产生,是以B类火灾为主。在城市中,机车纵火是较为常见的车辆火灾,停放在骑楼的速克达起火燃烧,火焰卷向建筑物外墙的高度可达7米,燃烧的烟往往经由窗口或楼梯口侵入建筑物,进一步引发建筑物火灾。


Etymology.

The etymology most frequently repeated, because of its semantic appropriateness, is that it derives from the Celtic "penn", "mountain, summit": which could have been assigned during the Celtic domination of north Italy in the 4th century BC or before. The name originally applied to the north Apennines. However, historical linguists have never found a derivation with which they all agree. Wilhelm Deecke said: is doubtful but some derive it from the Ligurian-Celtish "Pen" or "Ben", which means mountain peak."  A large number of place names seem to reflect "pen": Penarrig, Penbrynn, Pencoid, Penmon, Pentir, etc. or "ben": Beanach, Benmore, Benabuird, Benan, Bencruachan, etc. In one derivation "Pen/Ben" is cognate with Old Irish "cenn" "head", but an original "*kwen-" would be required, which is typologically not found in languages that feature labio-velars. Windisch and Brugmann reconstructed Indo-European "*kwi-", deriving also the Greek Pindus Mountains from the same root, but "*kwen-" < "*kwi-" is not explained by any rule. By some, English "pin", as well as "pen" and Latin "pinna" or "penna" "feather" (in the sense of the horn of the quill) have been connected to the name. This view has the word originating in Latium inconsistently with the theory of the northern origin. None of these derivations are unquestionably accepted.

Geography.

The Apennines are divided into three sectors: northern (")," central "("), and "  A number of long hiking trails wind through the Apennines. Of note is European walking route E1 coming from northern Europe and traversing the lengths of the northern and central Apennines. The Grand Italian Trail begins in Trieste and after winding through the Alpine arc traverses the entire Apennine system, Sicily and Sardinia.

Northern Apennines.

The northern Apennines consist of three sub-chains: the Ligurian ('), Tuscan-Emilian ('-emiliano), and Umbrian Apennines ("").

Ligurian Apennines.

The Ligurian Apennines border the Ligurian Sea in the Gulf of Genoa, from about Savona below the upper Bormida River valley to about La Spezia (La Cisa pass) below the upper Magra River valley. The range follows the Gulf of Genoa separating it from the upper Po Valley. The northwestern border follows the line of the Bormida River to Acqui Terme. There the river continues northeast to Alessandria in the Po Valley, but the mountains bend away to the southeast.  The upper Bormida can be reached by a number of roads proceeding inland at a right angle to the coast southwest of Savona, the chief one being the Autostrada Torino-Savona. They ascend to the Bocchetta di Altare, sometimes called Colle di Cadibona,, the border between the Ligurian Alps along the coast to the west and the Ligurian Apennines. A bronze plaque fixed to a stone marks the top of the pass. In the vicinity are fragments of the old road and three ruins of former fortifications.  At Carcare, the main roads connect with the upper Bormida valley (Bormida di Mallare) before turning west. The Scrivia, the Trebbia and the Taro, tributaries of the Po River, drain the northeast slopes. The range contains dozens of peaks. Toward the southern end the Aveto Natural Regional Park includes Monte Penna. Nearby is the highest point of Ligurian Apennines, Monte Maggiorasca at.  The main and only feasible overland route connecting the coastal plain of Liguria to the north Italian plain runs through Bocchetta di Altare. It has always been of strategic importance. Defenders of north Italy have had to control it since ancient times, as the various fortifications placed there testify. Trenitalia, the state railway system, highly developed on the coastal plain, now traverses the mountains routinely through a number of railway tunnels, such as the one at Giovi Pass.  The southeastern border of the Ligurian Apennines is the Fiume Magra, which projects into the Tyrrhenian Sea south of La Spezia, and the Fiume Taro, which runs in the opposite direction to join the Po. The divide between the two upper river valleys is the Cisa Pass. Under it (in two tunnels) runs the Autostrada della Cisa between Spezia and Parma.

Tuscan–Emilian Apennines.

Starting at Cisa Pass, the mountain chains turn further to the southeast to cross the peninsula along the border between the Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany regions. They are also named the Tuscan–Emilian Apennines west of the Futa pass and the Tuscan–Romagnol Apennines east of it, or just the Tuscan Apennines. They extend to the upper Tiber River. The highest point is Monte Cimone at.  A separate branch, the Apuan Alps, goes to the southwest bordering the coast south of La Spezia. Whether they are to be considered part of the Apennines is a matter of opinion; certainly, they are part of the Apennine System. Topographically only the valley of the River Serchio, which running parallel to the coast turns and exits into the Tyrrhenian Sea north of Pisa, separates the Apuan Alps from the Apennines; geologically the rock is of a slightly different composition: marble. The Roman marble industry was centered at Luna, and is now active in Carrara.  As the Tuscan Apennines divide the peninsula between the Po Valley and the plains and hills of Tuscany and Lazio, transportation over them is essential to political and economic unity. Historically the Romans used the Via Flaminia between Rome and Rimini. The montane distance between Florence in Tuscany and Bologna in Emilia-Romagna is shorter, but exploitation of it required the conquest of more rugged terrain, which was not feasible for the ancients. Railway lines were constructed over the mountains in the early 19th century but they were of low capacity and unimprovable.  Since 1856 a series of tunnels have been constructed to conduct "the Bologna-Florence rail line", which is neither a single line nor a single tunnel. The Porrettana Line went into service in 1864, the Direttissima in 1934 and the High Speed in 1996. A few dozen tunnels support the three of them, the longest on the High-Speed Line being the Voglia Tunnel at. The longest is on the Direttissima, the Great Apennine Tunnel, which at is the longest entirely within Italy, although the Simplon Tunnel, which connects Italy and Switzerland, is longer. Automobile traffic is carried by the Autostrada del Sole, Route A1, which goes through numerous shorter tunnels, bypassing an old road, originally Roman, through Futa Pass. In December 2015, a new Route A1 called Variante di Valico was opened after many years of construction consisting of major tunnels (the longest being the new 'Tunel Base') and new overpasses notably shortening the traveling time between Florence and Bologna by road. Inside the Tuscan–Romagnol Apennines are in the southern part also the Foreste Casentinesi, Monte Falterona, Campigna National Park. Geographically the southernmost sharp limit of the Tuscan–Romagnol Apennines is the Bocca Serriola pass that is politically in northern Umbria and links Fano and Città di Castello.  The Tiber River at Rome flows from Monte Fumaiolo in the Tuscan-Romagnol Apennine from northeast to southwest, projecting into the Tyrrhenian Sea at right angles to the shore. The upper Tiber, however, flows from northwest to southeast, gradually turning through one right angle clockwise. The northern Tiber valley is deep and separates the Apennines on the left bank from a lesser range, the Tuscan Anti- or Sub-Apennines on its right.

Central Apennines.

The Apennine System forms an irregular arc with centers of curvature located in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The northern and southern segments comprise parallel chains that can be viewed as single overall mountain ridges, such as the Ligurian Mountains. The center, being thicker and more complex, is geologically divided into an inner and an outer arc with regard to the centers of curvature. The geologic definition, however, is not the same as the geographic.  Based on rock type and orogenic incidents, the northern segment of the arc is divided into the Outer Northern Apennines (ONA) and the Inner Northern Apennines (INA). The Central Apennines are divided into the Umbrian–Marchean (') or Roman Apennines in the north and the Abruzzi Apennines (') in the south. It extends from Bocca Serriola pass in the north to Forlì pass in the south.

Umbria-Marche Apennines.

The west border of the Umbria-Marche Apennines (or "Umbro-Marchigiano") runs through Cagli. They extend south to the Tronto River, the south border of the ONA. The highest peak, Monte Vettore, at, is part of the Monti Sibillini, incorporated into Parco Nazionale dei Monti Sibillini. Further north is Parco naturale regionale Gola della Rossa di Frasassi, in which are the Gola della Rossa ("Canyon of the Red") and Frasassi Caves. Still further north is Parco Sasso Simone e Simoncello. The Italian Park Service calls it the "green heart" of Italy. The region is heavily forested, such as the Riserva Naturale Statale Gola del Furlo, where Furlo Pass on the Via Flaminia is located. Both the Etruscans and the Romans constructed tunnels here.

Abruzzi Apennines.

The Abruzzi Apennines, located in Abruzzo, Molise and southeastern Lazio, contain the highest peaks and most rugged terrain of the Apennines. They are known in history as the territory of the Italic peoples first defeated by the city of Rome. Coincidentally they exist in three parallel folds or chains surviving from the orogeny. These extend in a northwest-southeast direction from the River Tronto to the River Sangro, which drain into the Adriatic. The coastal hills of the east extend between San Benedetto del Tronto in the north and Torino di Sangro in the south.  The eastern chain consists mainly of the southern part of the Monti Sibillini, the Monti della Laga, the Gran Sasso d'Italia Massif and the Majella Massif. Among them are two national parks: Gran Sasso e Monti della Laga National Park and Majella National Park; and the Regional Park of the Monti Simbruini. Gran Sasso contains Corno Grande, the highest peak of the Apennines (2912 m).  Other features between the western and central ranges are the plain of Rieti, the valley of the Salto, and the Lago Fucino; while between the central and eastern ranges are the valleys of Aquila and Sulmona. The chief rivers on the west are the Nera, with its tributaries the Velino and Salto, and the Aniene, both of which fall into the Tiber. On the east there is at first a succession of small rivers which flow into the Adriatic, from which the highest points of the chain are some 20 km distant, such as the Tronto, Tordino, Vomano and others. The Pescara, which receives the Aterno from the north-west and the Gizio from the south-east, is more important; and so is the Sangro.  The central Apennines are crossed by the railway from Rome to Pescara via Avezzano and Sulmona: the railway from Orte to Terni (and thence to Foligno) follows the Nera valley; while from Terni a line ascends to the plain of Rieti, and thence crosses the central chain to Aquila, whence it follows the valley of the Aterno to Sulmona. In ancient times the Via Salaria, Via Caecilia and Via Valeria-Claudia all ran from Rome to the Adriatic coast. The volcanic mountains of the province of Rome are separated from the Apennines by the Tiber valley, and the Monti Lepini, part of the Volscian chain, by the valleys of the Sacco and Liri.

Southern Apennines.

The southern Apennines can be divided into four major regions: (1) Samnite Apennines, (2) Campanian Apennines, (3) Lucan Apennines and (4) Calabrian Apennines including the Sicilian Apennines. They extend from Forlì pass towards south.

Samnite and Campanian Apennines.

In the southern Apennines, to the south of the Sangro valley, the three parallel chains are broken up into smaller groups; among them may be named the Matese, the highest point of which is the Monte Miletto. The chief rivers on the south-west are the Liri or Garigliano with its tributary the Sacco, the Volturno, Sebeto, Sarno, on the north the Trigno, Biferno and Fortore.  Daunian mountains, in Apulia, are connected with the Apennine range, and so are Cilento hills on the west. On the converse the promontory of Mount Gargano, on the east, is completely isolated, and so are the Campanian volcanic arc near Naples. The district is traversed from north-west to south-east by the railway from Sulmona to Benevento and on to Avellino, and from south-west to northeast by the railways from Caianello via Isernia to Campobasso and Termoli, from Caserta to Benevento and Foggia, and from Nocera Inferiore and Avellino to Rocchetta Sant'Antonio, the junction for Foggia, Spinazzola (for Barletta, Bari, and Taranto) and Potenza. Roman roads followed the same lines as the railways: the Via Appia ran from Capua to Benevento, whence the older road went to Venosa and Taranto and so to Brindisi, while the Via Traiana ran nearly to Troia (near Foggia) and thence to Bari.

Lucan Apennines.

The valley of the Ofanto, which runs into the Adriatic close to Barletta, marks the northern termination of the first range of the Lucanian Apennines (now Basilicata), which runs from east to west, while south of the valleys of the Sele (on the west) and Basento (on the east)—which form the line followed by the railway from Battipaglia via Potenza to Metaponto—the second range begins to run due north and south as far as the plain of Sibari. The highest point is the Monte Pollino. The chief rivers are the Sele—joined by the Negro and Calore—on the west, and the Bradano, Basento, Agri, Sinni on the east, which flow into the gulf of Taranto; to the south of the last-named river there are only unimportant streams flowing into the sea east and west, inasmuch as here the width of the peninsula diminishes to some.

Calabrian and Sicilian Apennines.

The railway running south from Sicignano to Lagonegro, ascending the valley of the Negro, is planned to extend to Cosenza, along the line followed by the ancient Via Popilia, which beyond Cosenza reached the west coast at Terina and thence followed it to Reggio. The Via Herculia, a branch of the Via Traiana, ran from Aequum Tuticum to the ancient Nerulum. At the narrowest point the plain of Sibari, through which the rivers Coscile and Crati flow to the sea, occurs on the east coast, extending halfway across the peninsula. Here the limestone Apennines proper cease and the granite mountains of Calabria begin.  The first group extends as far as the isthmus formed by the gulfs of South Eufemia and Squillace; it is known as the Sila, and the highest point reached is (the Botte Donato). The forests which covered it in ancient times supplied the Greeks and Sicilians with timber for shipbuilding. The railway from South Eufemia to Catanzaro and Catanzaro Marina crosses the isthmus, and an ancient road may have run from Squillace to Monteleone. The second group extends to the south end of the Italian Peninsula, culminating in the Aspromonte () to the east of Reggio di Calabria. In both groups the rivers are quite unimportant. Finally, the Calabrian southern Apennine Mountains extend along the northern coast of Sicily (the Sicilian Apennines, Italian "Appennino siculo")—Pizzo Carbonara () being the highest peak.

Ecology.

Vegetative zones.

Ecoregions.

The number of vascular plant species in the Apennines has been estimated at 5,599. Of these, 728 (23.6%) are in the treeline ecotone. Hemicryptophytes predominate in the entire Apennine chain.

Alpine zone.

The tree line ecotone is mainly grasslands of the Montane grasslands and shrublands biome; with Temperate broadleaf and mixed forests, and Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub below it. The tree line in the Apennines can be found in the range to. About 5% of the map area covered by the Apennines is at or above the tree line—or in the treeline ecotone. The snow line is at about, leaving the Apennines below it, except for the one remaining glacier. Snow may fall from October to May. Rainfall increases with latitude. The range's climates, depending on elevation and latitude, are the Oceanic climate and Mediterranean climate.

Geology.

The Apennines were created in the Apennine orogeny beginning in the early Neogene (about 20 mya, the middle Miocene) and continuing today. Geographically they are partially or appear to be continuous with the Alpine system. Prior to the explosion of data on the topic from about the year 2000 many authors took the approach that the Apennines had the same origin as the Alps. Even today some authors use the term Alpine-Apennine system. They are not, however, the same system and did not have the same origin. The Alps were millions of years old before the Apennines rose from the sea.  Both the Alps and the Apennines contain primarily sedimentary rock resulting from sedimentation of the ancient Tethys Sea in the Mesozoic. The northward movement of the African Plate and its collision with the European Plate then caused the Alpine Orogeny, beginning in the late Mesozoic. The band of mountains created extends from Spain to Turkey in a roughly east–west direction and includes the Alps. The Apennines are much younger, extend from northwest to southeast, and are not a displacement of the Alpine chain.  The key evidence of the difference is the geologic behavior of the Po Valley in northern Italy. Compressional forces have been acting from north to south in the Alps and from south to north in the Apennines, but instead of being squeezed into mountains the valley has been subsiding at 1 to per year since about 25 mya, before the Apennines It is now known to be not an erosional feature but is a filled portion of the Adriatic Trench, called the Adriatic foredeep after its function as a subduction zone was discovered. The Alps and the Apennines were always separated by this trench and were never part of the same system.

Apennine orogeny.

The Apennine orogeny is a type of mountain-building in which two simpler types are combined in an apparently paradoxical configuration. Sometimes this is referred to as "syn-orogenic extension", but the term implies that the two processes occur simultaneously during time. Some scientists imagine that this is relatively rare but not unique in mountain building, whereas others imagine that this is fairly common in all mountain belts.  The RETREAT Project have this specific feature as one of their focus points In essence the east side of Italy features a fold and thrust belt raised by compressional forces acting under the Adriatic Sea. This side has been called the "Apennine-Adriatic Compressional Zone" or the "Apennines Convergence Zone." On the west side of Italy fault-block mountains prevail, created by a spreading or extension of the crust under the Tyrrhenian Sea. This side is called the "Tyrrhenian Extensional Zone." The mountains of Italy are of paradoxical provenience, having to derive from both compression and extension: "The paradox of how contraction and extension can occur simultaneously in convergent mountain belts remains a fundamental and largely unresolved problem in continental dynamics."Both the folded and the fault-block systems include parallel mountain chains. In the folded system anticlines erode into the highest and longest massifs of the Apennines.  According to the older theories (originating from the 1930s to 1970s) of Dutch geologists, including Van Bemmelen, compression and extension can and should occur simultaneously at different depths in a mountain belt. In these theories, these different levels are called "Stockwerke". More recent work in geotectonics and geodynamics of the same school of geoscientists (Utrecht and Amsterdam University) by Vlaar, Wortel, and Cloetingh, and their disciples, extended these concepts even further into a temporal realm. They demonstrated that internal and external forces acting upon the mountain belt (e.g., slab pull and intra-plate stress field modulations due to large scale reorganisations of the tectonic plates) result in both longer episodes and shorter phases of general extension and compression acting both upon and inside mountain belts and tectonic arches (See e.g. for extensive reviews, bibliography and discussions on the literature: Van Dijk (1992), Van Dijk and Okkes (1991), Van Dijk & Scheepers (1995), and Van Dijk et al. (2000a)).

Compressional zone.

The gradual subsidence of the Po Valley (including that of Venice) and the folding of the mountains of eastern Italy have been investigated using seismic wave analysis of the "Apennine Subduction System." Along the Adriatic side of Italy the floor of the Adriatic Sea, referred to as the "Adriatic lithosphere" or the "Adriatic plate," terms whose precise meaning is the subject of ongoing research, is dipping under the slab on which the Apennines have been folded by compressional forces.  Subduction occurs along a fault, along which a hanging wall, or overriding slab is thrust over an overridden slab, also called the subducting slab. The fault that acts as the subduction interface is at the bottom of the Apennine wedge, characterized by a deep groove in the surface, typically filled with sediment, as sedimentation here occurs at a much faster rate than subduction. In north Italy the dip of this interface is 30° to 40° at a depth of 80–90 km.  The strike of the Apennine subduction zone forms a long, irregular arc with centers of curvature in the Tyrrhenian Sea following the hanging wall over which the mountains have been raised; i.e., the eastern wall of the mountains. It runs from near the base of the Ligurian Apennines in the Po Valley along the margin of the mountains to the Adriatic, along the coastal deeps of the Adriatic shore, strikes inland at Monte Gargano cutting off Apulia, out to sea again through the Gulf of Taranto, widely around the rest of Italy and Sicily and across inland north Africa. The upper mantle above deep is broken into the "Northern Apennines Arc" and the "Calabrian Arc", with compressional forces acting in different directions radially toward the arcs' centers of curvature. The overall plate tectonics of these events has been modeled in different ways but decisive data is still missing. The tectonics, however, are not the same as those which created the Alps.

Extensional zone.

The west side of Italy is given to a fault-block system, where the crust, extended by the lengthening mantle below, thinned, broke along roughly parallel fault lines, and the blocks alternatively sank into grabens or were raised by isostasy into horsts. This system prevails from Corsica eastward to the valley of the Tiber River, the last rift valley in that direction. It runs approximately across the direction of extension. In the fault-block system the ridges are lower and are more steep-sided, since the walls are formed by faults. Geographically they are not considered part of the Apennines proper but are termed "sub-apennine" or "anti-apennine." These mountains are found mainly in Tuscany, Lazio and Campania.

Stability of terrain.

The terrain of the Apennines (as well as that of the Alps) is to a large degree unstable due to various types of landslides, including falls and slides of rocks and debris, flows of earth and mud, and sink holes. The Institute for Environmental Protection and Research ('), a government agency founded in 2008 by combining three older agencies, published in that year a special report, "Landslides in Italy", summarizing the results of the IFFI Project ('), the Italian Landslide Inventory (""), an extensive survey of historical landslides in Italy undertaken by the government starting in 1997. On December 31, 2007, it had studied and mapped 482,272 landslides over. Its major statistics are the Landslide Index (LI here), the ratio of the landslide area to the total area of a region, the Landslide Index in Mountainous-Hilly Areas (here LIMH) and the Density of Landslides, which is the number per.  Italy as a whole has a LI of 6.8, a LIMH of 9.1 and a density of 160. Lombardia (LI of 13.9), Emilia-Romagna (11.4), Marches (19.4), Molise (14.0), Valle d'Aosta (16.0) and Piemonte (9.1) are significantly higher. The most unstable terrain in the Apennines when the landslide sites are plotted on the map are in order from most unstable the eastern flanks of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, the Central Apennines and the eastern flank of the southern Apennines. Instability there is comparable to the Alps bordering the Po Valley. The most stable terrain is on the western side: Liguria, Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio. The Apennines are slumping away to the northeast into the Po Valley and the Adriatic foredeep; that is, the zone where the Adriatic floor is being subducted under Italy. Slides with large translational or rotational surface movements are most common; e.g., a whole slope slumps into its valley, placing the population there at risk.

Glacial ice.

Glaciers no longer exist in the Apennines outside the Gran Sasso d'Italia massif. However, post-Pliocene moraines have been observed in Basilicata.

Major peaks.

The Apennines include about 21 peaks over, the approximate tree line (counting only the top peak in each massif). Most of these peaks are located in the Central Apennines.

The Apennines or Apennine Mountains (; or Ἀπέννινον ὄρος; or – a singular with plural meaning; ) are a mountain range consisting of parallel smaller chains extending along the length of peninsular Italy. In the northwest they join with the Ligurian Alps at Altare. In the southwest they end at Reggio di Calabria, the coastal city at the tip of the peninsula. Since 2000 the Environment Ministry of Italy, following the recommendations of the Apennines Park of Europe Project, has been defining the Apennines System to include the mountains of north Sicily, for a total distance of. The system forms an arc enclosing the east side of the Ligurian and Tyrrhenian Seas.

亚平宁山脉(),位于亚平宁半岛东侧,是亚平宁半岛的主干山脉,北起阿尔卑斯山南麓,南至亚平宁半岛南端,全长超过1000公里。全境属意大利管辖。


Frederick Schomberg, 1st Duke of Schomberg

弗雷德里希·绍姆贝格,第一代绍姆贝格公爵

Early career.

Descended from an old family of the Electorate of the Palatinate, he was born at Heidelberg, the son of "Graf" Hans Meinard von Schönberg (1582–1616) and Anne, daughter of The 5th Baron Dudley and Theodosia Harington. An orphan within a few months of his birth, he was educated by various family friends, among whom was Frederick V, Elector Palatine, in whose service his father had been. He began his military career under Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, and passed (1634) into the service of Sweden, entering that of France in 1635. His family, and the allied house of the Saxon Schönbergs, had already attained eminence in France with Henri de Schomberg and Charles de Schomberg, both marshals of France.  After a time he retired to his family estate at Geisenheim on the Rhine, but in 1639 he re-entered the Dutch States Army, in which, apparently, apart from a few intervals at Geisenheim, he remained until about 1650. He then rejoined the French army as a general officer ("maréchal de camp"), served under Turenne in the campaigns against Condé, and became a lieutenant-general in 1665, receiving this rapid promotion perhaps partly owing to his relationship with Charles de Schomberg, duc d'Halluin.  After the peace of the Pyrenees (1659), the independence of Portugal was threatened by Spain, and Schomberg was sent as military adviser to Lisbon with the secret approval of Charles II of England. Louis XIV of France, in order not to infringe the treaty just made with Spain, deprived Schomberg of his French officers. Schomberg thus took command of the English brigade which consisted of three regiments in total 3,000 men. Many of these were ex Royalist and New Model Army troops from the Civil War. After many difficulties in the three first campaigns resulting from the opposition of Portuguese officers, the Portuguese commander António Luís de Meneses, 1st Marquis of Marialva, together with Schomberg won the victory of Montes Claros on 17 June 1665 over the Spaniards under Luis de Benavides Carrillo, Marquis of Caracena.  After participating with his army in the revolution which deposed the reigning king Afonso VI of Portugal in favour of his brother Dom Pedro, and ending the war with Spain, Schomberg returned to France, became a naturalised Frenchman and bought the lordship of Coubert near Paris. He had been rewarded by the king of Portugal, in 1663, with the rank of Grandee, the title of count of Mértola and a pension of f 5000 a year. In 1673 he was brought by Charles II to England to take command of the newly formed Blackheath Army, which was planned to take part in an invasion of the Dutch Republic during the Third Anglo-Dutch War. However the army did not go into action before the Treaty of Westminster established peace, and was disbanded by the King following Parliamentary pressure.  He therefore again entered the service of France. His first operations in Catalonia were unsuccessful owing to the disobedience of subordinates and the rawness of his troops. On 19 June 1674, he was dealt a defeat at the Battle of Maureillas by Francisco de Tutavilla y del Rufo, but he retrieved the failure by retaking Fort de Bellegarde in 1675. For this he was made a marshal, being included in the promotion that followed the death of Turenne. The tide had now turned against the Huguenots, and Schomberg's merits had been long ignored on account of his adherence to the Protestant religion. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) forced him to leave his adopted country.  Ultimately he became general-in-chief of the forces of the Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, and at Berlin he was the acknowledged leader of the thousands of Huguenot refugees there. Soon afterwards, with the Electors consent, he joined the Prince of Orange on his expedition to England in 1688, the Glorious Revolution, as second in command to the prince. The following year he was made a Knight of the Garter, was appointed Master-General of the Ordnance, was created Duke of Schomberg, and received from the House of Commons a vote of £100,000 to compensate him for the loss of his French estates, of which Louis had deprived him.

Ireland.

In July 1689 William appointed him commander-in-chief of the expedition that he undertook to drive James II out of Ireland. Before departing to Ireland, Schomberg took his leave from parliament on 16 July 1689. On 20 July Schomberg arrived at Chester where the expedition's troops were gathering. Sailing with a fleet from Hoylake, he landed on 13 August 1689 at Ballyholme Bay near Bangor. He made the passage on the royal yacht Cleveland. He then marched over Bangor and Belfast to Carrickfergus, which had a Jacobite garrison. He began the siege of Carrickfergus on 20 August. The town surrendered on 28 August. Thereafter he marched unopposed through a country desolated before him to Dundalk, but, as the bulk of his forces were raw and undisciplined as well as inferior in numbers to the enemy Irish Army, he deemed it imprudent to risk a battle, and entrenching himself at Dundalk declined to be drawn beyond the circle of his defences. Shortly afterwards pestilence broke out, and when he retired to winter quarters in Ulster his forces were more shattered than if they had sustained a severe defeat.  His conduct was criticized in ill-informed quarters, but the facts justified his inactivity, and he gave what was said at the time to be a "striking example of his generous spirit" in placing at William of Orange's disposal for military purposes the £100,000 recently granted to him. ln the spring he began the campaign with the capture of Charlemont, but no advance southward was made until William arrived with reinforcements. At the Battle of the Boyne (1 July 1690), Schomberg gave his opinion against the determination of William to cross the river in face of the opposing army. After riding through the river to rally his men, he was wounded twice in the head by sabre cuts, and was shot in the neck by Cahir O'Toole of Ballyhubbock and instantly killed.

Family.

His eldest son Charles Schomberg, the second duke in the English peerage, died in the year 1693 of wounds received at the Battle of Marsaglia. His other son was Meinhardt Schomberg, 3rd Duke of Schomberg.

Burial and Inscription.

He was buried in St Patricks Cathedral, Dublin, where there is a monument to him, erected in 1731. On the monument is a Latin inscription by Jonathan Swift, which reads:  The English translation:  The village of Schomberg, Ontario is named after him.

Friedrich Hermann von Schönberg, 1st Duke of Schomberg, 1st Count of Mertola, (French: "Frédéric-Armand"; Portuguese: "Armando Frederico"; 6 December 1615 – 1 July 1690) was a Marshal of France and a General in the English and Portuguese Army. He was killed at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

弗雷德里希·绍姆贝格,第一代绍姆贝格公爵(Friedrich Hermann,或Frédéric-Armand,1st Duke of Schomberg,原为Schönberg,勋伯格;1615年12月或1616年1月–1690年)KG,知名的德意志军事冒险家、法国元帅、英格兰贵族,也曾在葡萄牙与英国担任将军。


Life and career.

Early years.

Solti was born György Stern on Maros utca, in the Hegyvidék district of the Buda side of Budapest. He was the younger of the two children of Teréz () and Móricz "Mor" Stern, both of whom were Jewish. In the aftermath of the First World War it became the accepted practice in Hungary for citizens with Germanic surnames to adopt Hungarian ones. The right wing regime of Admiral Horthy enacted a series of Hungarianisation laws, including a requirement that state employees with foreign-sounding names must change them. Mor Stern, a self-employed merchant, felt no need to change his surname, but thought it prudent to change that of his children. He renamed them after Solt, a small town in central Hungary. His son's given name, György, was acceptably Hungarian and was not changed. Solti described his father as "a kind, sweet man who trusted everyone. He shouldn't have, but he did. Jews in Hungary were tremendously patriotic. In 1914, when war broke out, my father invested most of his money in a war loan to help the country. By the time the bonds matured, they were worthless." Mor Stern was a religious man, but his son was less so. Late in life Solti recalled, "I often upset him because I never stayed in the synagogue for longer than ten minutes." Teréz Stern was from a musical family, and encouraged her daughter Lilly, by eight years the elder of the children, to sing, and György to accompany her on the piano. Solti remembered, "I made so many mistakes, but it was invaluable experience for an opera conductor. I learnt to swim with her." He was not a diligent student of the piano: "My mother kept telling me to practise, but what ten-year-old wants to play the piano when he could be out playing football?"  Solti enrolled at the Ernő Fodor School of Music in Budapest at the age of ten, transferring to the more prestigious Franz Liszt Academy two years later. When he was 12 he heard a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony conducted by Erich Kleiber, which gave him the ambition to become a conductor. His parents could not afford to pay for years of musical education, and his rich uncles did not consider music a suitable profession; from the age of 13 Solti paid for his education by giving piano lessons.  The faculty of the Franz Liszt Academy included some of the most eminent Hungarian musicians, including Béla Bartók, Leó Weiner, Ernő Dohnányi and Zoltán Kodály. Solti studied under the first three, for piano, chamber music and composition respectively. Some sources state that he also studied with Kodály, but in his memoirs Solti recalled that Kodály, whom he would have preferred, turned him down, leaving him to study composition first with Albert Siklós and then with Dohnányi. Not all the Academy's tutors were equally distinguished: Solti remembered with little pleasure the conducting classes run by Ernő Unger, "who instructed his pupils to use rigid little wrist motions. I attended the class for only two years, but I needed five years of practical conducting experience before I managed to unlearn what he had taught me".

Pianist and conductor.

After graduating from the Academy in 1930 Solti was appointed to the staff of the Hungarian State Opera. He found that working as a répétiteur, coaching singers in their roles and playing at rehearsals, was a more fruitful preparation than Unger's classes for his intended career as a conductor. In 1932 he went to Karlsruhe in Germany as assistant to Josef Krips, but within a year, Krips, anticipating the imminent rise to power of Hitler and the Nazis, insisted that Solti should go home to Budapest, where at that time Jews were not in danger. Other Jewish and anti-Nazi musicians also left Germany for Budapest. Among other musical exiles with whom Solti worked there were Otto Klemperer, Fritz Busch, and Kleiber. Before Austria fell under Nazi control, Solti was assistant to Arturo Toscanini at the 1937 Salzburg Festival:  After further work as a répétiteur at the opera in Budapest, and with his standing enhanced by his association with Toscanini, Solti was given his first chance to conduct, on 11 March 1938. The opera was "The Marriage of Figaro". During that evening, news came of the German invasion of Austria. Many Hungarians feared that Hitler would next invade Hungary; he did not do so, but Horthy, to strengthen his partnership with the Nazis, instituted anti-semitic laws, mirroring the Nuremberg Laws, restricting Hungary's Jews from engaging in professions. Solti's family urged him to move away. He went first to London, where he made his Covent Garden debut, conducting the London Philharmonic for a Russian ballet season. The reviewer in "The Times" was not impressed with Solti's efforts, finding them "too violent, for he lashed at the orchestra and flogged the music so that he endangered the delicate, evocative atmosphere." At about this time Solti dropped the name "György" in favour of "Georg".  After his appearances in London Solti went to Switzerland to seek out Toscanini, who was conducting in Lucerne. Solti hoped that Toscanini would help find him a post in the US. He was unable to do so, but Solti found work and security in Switzerland as vocal coach to the tenor Max Hirzel, who was learning the role of Tristan in Wagner's opera. Throughout the Second World War, Solti remained in Switzerland. He did not see his father again: Mor Stern died of diabetes in a Budapest hospital in 1943. Solti was reunited with his mother and sister after the war. In Switzerland he could not obtain a work permit as a conductor, but earned his living as a piano teacher. After he won the 1942 Geneva International Piano Competition he was permitted to give piano recitals, but was still not allowed to conduct. During his exile, he met Hedwig (Hedi) Oeschli, daughter of a lecturer at Zürich University. They married in 1946. In his memoirs he wrote of her, "She was very elegant and sophisticated.... Hedi gave me a little grace and taught me good manners – although she never completely succeeded in this. She also helped me enormously in my career".

Munich and Frankfurt.

With the end of the war Solti's luck changed dramatically. He was appointed musical director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in 1946. In normal circumstances this prestigious post would have been an unthinkable appointment for a young and inexperienced conductor, but the leading German conductors such as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Clemens Krauss and Herbert von Karajan were prohibited from conducting pending the conclusion of denazification proceedings against them. Under Solti's direction, the company rebuilt its repertoire and began to recover its pre-war eminence. He benefited from the encouragement of the elderly Richard Strauss, in whose presence he conducted "Der Rosenkavalier". Strauss was reluctant to discuss his own music with Solti, but gave him advice about conducting.  In addition to the Munich appointment Solti gained a recording contract in 1946. He signed for Decca Records, not as a conductor but as a piano accompanist. He made his first recording in 1947, playing Brahms's First Violin Sonata with the violinist Georg Kulenkampff. He was insistent that he wanted to conduct, and Decca gave him his first recording sessions as a conductor later in the same year, with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra in Beethoven's "Egmont" overture. Twenty years later Solti said, "I'm sure it's a terrible record, because the orchestra was not very good at that time and I was so excited. It is horrible, surely horrible – but by now it has vanished." He had to wait two years for his next recording as a conductor. It was in London, Haydn's "Drum Roll" symphony, in sessions produced by John Culshaw, with whose career Solti's became closely linked over the next two decades. Reviewing the record, "The Gramophone" said, "The performance of the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Georg Solti (a fine conductor who is new to me) is remarkable for rhythmic playing, richness of tone, and clarity of execution." "The Record Guide" compared it favourably with EMI's rival recording by Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic.  In 1951 Solti conducted at the Salzburg Festival for the first time, partly through the influence of Furtwängler, who was impressed by him. The work was "Idomeneo", which had not been given there before. In Munich Solti achieved critical and popular success, but for political reasons his position at the State Opera was never secure. The view persisted that a German conductor should be in charge; pressure mounted, and after five years Solti accepted an offer to move to Frankfurt in 1952 as musical director of the Oper Frankfurt. The city's opera house had been destroyed in the war, and Solti undertook to build a new company and repertoire for its recently completed replacement. He also conducted the symphony concerts given by the opera orchestra. Frankfurt's was a less prestigious house than Munich's and he initially regarded the move as a demotion, but he found the post fulfilling and remained at Frankfurt from 1952 to 1961, presenting 33 operas, 19 of which he had not conducted before. Frankfurt, unlike Munich, could not attract many of the leading German singers. Solti recruited many rising young American singers such as Claire Watson and Sylvia Stahlman, to the extent that the house acquired the nickname "Amerikanische Oper am Main". In 1953 the West German government offered Solti German citizenship, which, being effectively stateless as a Hungarian exile, he gratefully accepted. He believed he could never return to Hungary, by then under communist rule. He remained a German citizen for two decades.  During his Frankfurt years Solti made appearances with other opera companies and orchestras. He conducted in the Americas for the first time in 1952, giving concerts in Buenos Aires. In the same year he made his debut at the Edinburgh Festival as a guest conductor with the visiting Hamburg State Opera. The following year he was a guest at the San Francisco Opera with "Elektra", "Die Walküre" and "Tristan und Isolde". In 1954 he conducted "Don Giovanni" at the Glyndebourne Festival. The reviewer in "The Times" said that no fault could be found in Solti's "vivacious and sensitive" conducting. In the same year Solti made his first appearance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, at the Ravinia Festival. In 1960 he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, conducting "Tannhäuser", and he continued to appear there until 1964.  In the recording studios Solti's career took off after 1956, when John Culshaw was put in charge of Decca's classical recording programme. Culshaw believed Solti to be "the great Wagner conductor of our time", and was determined to record the four operas of "Der Ring des Nibelungen" with Solti and the finest Wagner singers available. The cast Culshaw assembled for the cycle included Kirsten Flagstad, Hans Hotter, Birgit Nilsson and Wolfgang Windgassen. Apart from "Arabella" in 1957, in which he substituted when Karl Böhm withdrew, Solti had made no complete recording of an opera until the sessions for "Das Rheingold", the first of the "Ring" tetralogy, in September and October 1958. In their respective memoirs Culshaw and Solti told how Walter Legge of Decca's rival EMI predicted that "Das Rheingold" would be a commercial disaster ("'Very nice,' he said, 'Very interesting. But of course you won't "sell" any.'") The success of the recording took the record industry by surprise. It featured for weeks in the "Billboard" charts, the sole classical album alongside best sellers by Elvis Presley and Pat Boone, and brought Solti's name to international prominence. He appeared with leading orchestras in New York, Vienna and Los Angeles, and at Covent Garden he conducted "Der Rosenkavalier" and Britten's "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

Covent Garden.

In 1960 Solti signed a three-year contract to be music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1962. Even before he took the post the Philharmonic's autocratic president, Dorothy Chandler, breached his contract by appointing a deputy music director without Solti's approval. Although he admired the chosen deputy, Zubin Mehta, Solti felt he could not have his authority undermined from the outset, and he withdrew from his appointment. He accepted an offer to become musical director of Covent Garden Opera Company, London. When first sounded out about the post, he had declined it. After 14 years of experience at Munich and Frankfurt he was uncertain that he wanted a third successive operatic post. Moreover, founded only 15 years earlier, the Covent Garden company was not yet the equal of the best opera houses in Europe. Bruno Walter convinced Solti that it was his duty to take Covent Garden on.  The biographer Montague Haltrecht suggests that Solti seized the breach of his Los Angeles contract as a convenient pretext to abandon the Philharmonic in favour of Covent Garden. However, in his memoirs Solti wrote that he wanted the Los Angeles position very much indeed. He originally considered holding both posts in tandem, but later acknowledged that he had had a lucky escape, as he could have done justice to neither post had he attempted to hold both simultaneously.  Solti took up the musical directorship of Covent Garden in August 1961. The press gave him a cautious welcome, but there was some concern that under him there might be a drift away from the company's original policy of opera in English. Solti, however, was an advocate of opera in the vernacular, and he promoted the development of British and Commonwealth singers in the company, frequently casting them in his recordings and important productions in preference to overseas artists. He demonstrated his belief in vernacular opera with a triple bill in English of "L'heure espagnole", "Erwartung" and "Gianni Schicchi". As the decade went on, however, more and more productions had to be sung in the original language to accommodate international stars.  Like his predecessor Rafael Kubelík, and his successor Colin Davis, Solti found his early days as musical director marred by vituperative hostility from a small clique in the Covent Garden audience. Rotten vegetables were thrown at him, and his car was vandalised outside the theatre, with the words "Solti must go!" scratched on its paintwork. Some press reviews were strongly critical; Solti was so wounded by a review in "The Times" of his conducting of "The Marriage of Figaro" that he almost left Covent Garden in despair. The chief executive of the Opera House, Sir David Webster, persuaded him to stay with the company, and matters improved, helped by changes on which Solti insisted. The chorus and orchestra were strengthened, and in the interests of musical and dramatic excellence, Solti secured the introduction of the "stagione" system of scheduling performances, rather than the traditional repertory system. By 1967 "The Times" commented that "Patrons of Covent Garden today automatically expect any new production, and indeed any revival, to be as strongly cast as anything at the Met in New York, and as carefully presented as anything in Milan or Vienna".  The company's repertory in the 1960s combined the standard operatic works with less familiar pieces. Among the most celebrated productions during Solti's time in charge was Schoenberg's "Moses and Aaron" in the 1965–66 and 1966–67 seasons. In 1970, Solti led the company to Germany, where they gave "Don Carlos", "Falstaff" and "Victory", a new work by Richard Rodney Bennett. The public in Munich and Berlin were, according to the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung", "beside themselves with enthusiasm".  Solti's bald head and demanding rehearsal style earned him the nickname "The Screaming Skull". A music historian called him "the bustling, bruising Georg Solti – a man whose entire physical and mental attitude embodied the words 'I'm in charge'." Singers such as Peter Glossop described him as a bully, and after working with Solti, Jon Vickers refused to do so again. Nevertheless, under Solti, the company was recognised as having achieved parity with the greatest opera houses in the world. Queen Elizabeth II conferred the title "the Royal Opera" on the company in 1968. By this point Solti was, in the words of his biographer Paul Robinson, "after Karajan, the most celebrated conductor at work". By the end of his decade as music director at Covent Garden Solti had conducted the company in 33 operas by 13 composers.  In 1964 Solti separated from his wife. He moved into the Savoy Hotel, where not long afterwards he met Valerie Pitts, a British television presenter, sent to interview him. She too was married, but after pursuing her for three years, Solti persuaded her to divorce her husband. Solti and Valerie Pitts married on 11 November 1967. They had two daughters.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

In 1967 Solti was invited to become music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It was the second time he had been offered the post. The first had been in 1963 after the death of the orchestra's conductor, Fritz Reiner, who made its reputation in the previous decade. Solti told the representatives of the orchestra that his commitments at Covent Garden made it impossible to give Chicago the eight months a year they sought. He suggested giving them three and a half months a year and inviting Carlo Maria Giulini to take charge for a similar length of time. The orchestra declined to proceed on these lines. When Solti accepted the orchestra's second invitation it was agreed that Giulini should be appointed to share the conducting. Both conductors signed three-year contracts with the orchestra, effective from 1969.  One of the members of the Chicago Symphony described it to Solti as "the best provincial orchestra in the world." Many players remained from its celebrated decade under Reiner, but morale was low, and the orchestra was $5m in debt. Solti concluded that it was essential to raise the orchestra's international profile. He ensured that it was engaged for many of his Decca sessions, and he and Giulini led it in a European tour in 1971, playing in ten countries. It was the first time in its 80-year history that the orchestra had played outside of North America. The orchestra received plaudits from European critics, and was welcomed home at the end of the tour with a ticker-tape parade.  The orchestra's principal flute player, Donald Peck, commented that the relationship between a conductor and an orchestra is difficult to explain: "some conductors get along with some orchestras and not others. We had a good match with Solti and he with us." Peck's colleague, the violinist Victor Aitay said, "Usually conductors are relaxed at rehearsals and tense at the concerts. Solti is the reverse. He is very tense at rehearsals, which makes us concentrate, but relaxed during the performance, which is a great asset to the orchestra." Peck recalled Solti's constant efforts to improve his own technique and interpretations, at one point experimentally dispensing with a baton, drawing a "darker and deeper, much more relaxed" tone from the players. As well as raising the orchestra's profile and helping it return to prosperity, Solti considerably expanded its repertoire. Under him the Chicago Symphony gave its first cycles of the symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler. He introduced new works commissioned for the orchestra, such as Lutosławski's "Third Symphony", and Tippett's "Fourth Symphony" which was dedicated to Solti. Another new work was Tippett's "Byzantium", an orchestral song-cycle, premiered by Solti and the orchestra with the soprano Faye Robinson. Solti frequently programmed works by American composers, including Charles Ives and Elliott Carter.  Solti's recordings with the Chicago Symphony included the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler. Most of his operatic recordings were with other orchestras, but his recordings of "The Flying Dutchman" (1976), "Fidelio" (1979), "Moses und Aron" (1984) and his second recordings of "Die Meistersinger" (1995) and Verdi's "Otello" (1991) were made with the Chicago players.  After relinquishing the position of music director in 1991, Solti continued to conduct the orchestra, and was given the title of music director laureate. He conducted 999 concerts with the orchestra. His 1,000th concert was scheduled for October 1997, around the time of his 85th birthday, but Solti died that September.

Later years.

In addition to his tenure in Chicago Solti was music director of the Orchestre de Paris from 1972 to 1975. From 1979 until 1983 he was also principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He continued to expand his repertoire. With the London Philharmonic he performed many of Elgar's major works in concert and on record. Before performing Elgar's two symphonies, Solti studied the composer's own recordings made more than 40 years earlier, and was influenced by their brisk tempi and impetuous manner. A critic in "The Guardian" wrote that Solti "conveys the authentic frisson of the great Elgarian moment more vividly than ever before on record." Late in his career he became enthusiastic about the music of Shostakovich, whom he admitted he failed to appreciate fully during the composer's lifetime. He made commercial recordings of seven of Shostakovich's fifteen symphonies.  In 1983 Solti conducted for the only time at the Bayreuth Festival. By this stage in his career he no longer liked abstract productions of Wagner, or modernistic reinterpretations, such as Patrice Chéreau's 1976 Bayreuth "Ring", which he found grew boring on repetition. Together with the director Sir Peter Hall and the designer William Dudley, he presented a "Ring" cycle that aimed to represent Wagner's intentions. The production was not well received by German critics, who expected radical reinterpretation of the operas. Solti's conducting was praised, but illnesses and last-minute replacements of leading performers affected the standard of singing. He was invited to return to Bayreuth for the following season, but was unwell and withdrew on medical advice before the 1984 festival began.  In 1991 Solti collaborated with the actor and composer Dudley Moore to create an eight-part television series, "Orchestra!", which was designed to introduce audiences to the symphony orchestra. In 1994 he directed the "Solti Orchestral Project" at Carnegie Hall, a training workshop for young American musicians. The following year, to mark the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, he formed the World Orchestra for Peace, which consisted of 81 musicians from 40 nations. The orchestra has continued to perform after his death, under the conductorship of Valery Gergiev.  Solti regularly returned to Covent Garden as a guest conductor in the years after he relinquished the musical directorship, greeted with "an increasingly boisterous hero's welcome" ("Grove"). From 1972 to 1997 he conducted ten operas, some of them in several seasons. Five were operas he had not conducted at the Royal Opera House before: "Carmen", "Parsifal", "Die Entführung aus dem Serail", "Simon Boccanegra" and a celebrated production of "La traviata" (1994) which propelled Angela Gheorghiu to stardom. On 14 July 1997 he conducted the last operatic music to be heard in the old house before it closed for more than two years for rebuilding. The previous day he had conducted what proved to be his last symphony concert. The work was Mahler's Fifth Symphony; the orchestra was the Zurich Tonhalle, with whom he had made his first orchestral recording 50 years earlier.  Solti died suddenly, in his sleep, on 5 September 1997 while on holiday in Antibes in the south of France. He was 84. After a state ceremony in Budapest, his ashes were interred beside the remains of Bartók in Farkasréti Cemetery.

Recordings.

Solti recorded throughout his career for the Decca Record Company. He made more than 250 recordings, including 45 complete opera sets. During the 1950s and 1960s Decca had an alliance with RCA Victor, and some of Solti's recordings were first issued on the RCA label.  Solti was one of the first conductors who came to international fame as a recording artist before being widely known in the concert hall or opera house. Gordon Parry, the Decca engineer who worked with Solti and Culshaw on the "Ring" recordings, observed, "Many people have said 'Oh well, of course John Culshaw made Solti.' This is not true. He gave him the opportunity to show what he could do."  Solti's first recordings were as a piano accompanist, playing at sessions in Zurich for the violinist Georg Kulenkampff in 1947. Decca's senior producer, Victor Olof did not much admire Solti as a conductor (nor did Walter Legge, Olof's opposite number at EMI's Columbia Records), but Olof's younger colleague and successor, Culshaw, held Solti in high regard. As Culshaw, and later James Walker, produced his recordings, Solti's career as a recording artist flourished from the mid-1950s. Among the orchestras with whom Solti recorded were the Berlin Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, London Philharmonic, London Symphony and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras. Soloists in his operatic recordings included Birgit Nilsson, Joan Sutherland, Régine Crespin, Plácido Domingo, Gottlob Frick, Carlo Bergonzi, Kiri Te Kanawa and José van Dam. In concerto recordings, Solti conducted for, among others, András Schiff, Julius Katchen, Clifford Curzon, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Kyung-wha Chung.  Solti's most celebrated recording was Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen" made in Vienna, produced by Culshaw, between 1958 and 1965. It has twice been voted the greatest recording ever made, the first poll being among readers of "Gramophone" magazine in 1999, and the second of professional music critics in 2011, for the BBC's "Music Magazine".

Honours and memorials.

Honours awarded to Solti included the British CBE (honorary), 1968, and an honorary knighthood (KBE), 1971, which became a substantive knighthood when he took British citizenship in 1972, after which he was known as Sir Georg Solti. He received honours from other countries, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal and the US. He received honorary fellowships or degrees from the Royal College of Music and DePaul, Furman, Harvard, Leeds, London, Oxford, Surrey and Yale universities.  In celebration of his 75th birthday in 1987, a bronze bust of Solti by Dame Elisabeth Frink was dedicated in Lincoln Park, Chicago, outside the Lincoln Park Conservatory. It was first displayed temporarily at the Royal Opera House in London. The sculpture was moved to Grant Park in 2006 in a new "Solti Garden", near Orchestra Hall in Symphony Center. In 1997, to commemorate the 85th anniversary of his birth, the City of Chicago renamed the block of East Adams Street adjacent to Symphony Center as "Sir Georg Solti Place" in his memory.  Record industry awards to Solti included the Grand Prix Mondial du Disque (14 times) and 31 Grammy Awards (including a special Trustees' Grammy Award, shared with John Culshaw, for the recording of the "Ring" (1967) and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1996)). He won more Grammys than any other recording artist, whether classical or popular. In September 2007, as a tribute on the 10th anniversary of his death, Decca published a recording of his final concert.  After Solti's death his widow and daughters set up the Solti Foundation to assist young musicians. Solti's memoirs, written with the assistance of Harvey Sachs, were published the month after his death. Solti's life was also documented in a 1997 film by Peter Maniura, "Sir Georg Solti: The Making of a Maestro." In 2007 Valerie Solti was appointed a Cultural Ambassador of Hungary, an honorary title granted by the Hungarian state.  In 2012 a series of events under the banner of "Solti @ 100" was announced, to mark the centenary of Solti's birth. Among the events were concerts in New York City and Chicago, and commemorative exhibitions in London, Chicago, Vienna and New York. In the same year Solti was voted into the inaugural "Gramophone" "Hall of Fame".  The Sir Georg Solti International Conductors' Competition, which occurs every two years in Frankfurt, is named in his honour.

Sir Georg Solti, (; born György Stern; 21 October 1912 – 5 September 1997) was a Hungarian-born British orchestral and operatic conductor, best known for his appearances with opera companies in Munich, Frankfurt and London, and as a long-serving music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Born in Budapest, he studied there with Béla Bartók, Leó Weiner and Ernő Dohnányi. In the 1930s, he was a répétiteur at the Hungarian State Opera and worked at the Salzburg Festival for Arturo Toscanini. His career was interrupted by the rise of the Nazis' influence on Hungarian politics, and being of Jewish background he fled the increasingly harsh Hungarian anti-Jewish laws in 1938. After conducting a season of Russian ballet in London at the Royal Opera House he found refuge in Switzerland, where he remained during the Second World War. Prohibited from conducting there, he earned a living as a pianist.

乔治·索尔蒂爵士(英语:Sir Georg Solti,1912年-10月21日-1997年-9月5日),英籍匈牙利裔指挥家。