1940s
1940-45
"Jorge was playing late Schubert sonatas in the early 1940s in Carnegie Hall, when very few others were."Â
Ira Levin, conductor & former student
1940
Friday, 19 April 1940
At the Curtis Institute, Marcel Tabuteau (French-American oboist in the Philadelphia Orchestra who is considered the founder of the American school of oboe playing) directed
'a fine program of chamber-music'. A highlight was Mozart’s Quintet in E Flat, played by Jorge Bolet, piano; John de Lancie, oboe; James King, clarinet ; Manuel Zegler, bassoon, and David Hall, horn.​
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Two recordings from 1937 and 1939 of Ludwig van Beethoven: Quintet in Eâ™ Major for Piano and Winds, Op. 16 and one of Camille Saint-Saëns: Caprice sur des airs Danois et Russes, Op. 79 can be heard here:
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In 1942, John de Lancie enlisted and served in the US military during World War II, performing with the US Army Band. He met Richard Strauss (in the Bavarian town of Garmisch) during his tour of duty as a soldier in Europe at the end of World War II. De Lancie knew Strauss's orchestral writing for oboe thoroughly and asked the composer if he had ever considered writing an oboe concerto. The composer answered simply "No" and the topic was dropped. Six months later, de Lancie was astonished to see that Strauss had changed his mind and was indeed publishing an Oboe Concerto, one of the glories of his final years. Strauss saw to it that the rights to the U.S. premiere were assigned to de Lancie.
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Josef Hofmann Award
On 10 May 1940, Bolet was awarded the Josef Hofmann Award by his alma mater, Curtis. It was given to the pianist 'who, over and above his technical proficiency, has, in the practice of his art, arrived at spiritual and artistic maturity. Such an award is deemed worthy of the master whose name it is to bear.'
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A recital was the reward for winning the Hofmann Prize, and this took place on Tuesday, 29 October 1940 at Town Hall, New York City.
Of the Chopin Études: 'His excellent finger technique was allied with an irresistibly impelling fire and dash in the C major étude, Op. 10, No. 1, whose spreading arpeggios are only for hands of ample reach; the F major study of the same opus [was] taken at a very rapid tempo, and the ‘Revolutionary Etude’, [was] likewise played at a terrific speed and with exciting effect that found a climax in the cracklingly brilliant final descending passage and chords. The poetry of the E major étude (No. 3) seemed to elude the player, while the posthumous F minor study was forced out of its natural framework.'
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Also on the programme were Schubert's Sonata in A (posthumous = D959?); Brahms' three Intermezzi, Op. 117; Three Preludes: ‘La puerta del vino’; 3 Preludes by Debussy: ‘La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune’; ‘General Lavine, eccentric’; Schumann's Études Symphoniques, Op. 13.
'Debussy’s 'Terrasse des audiences’ was notable for atmospheric delicacy, while its two companion pieces tingled with life and sparkling pictorial color. The Schumann ‘Symphonic Etudes’ were skilfully handled technically; the pianist’s tone, however, suffered through hard driving in the louder chordal passages, especially in the fourth étude. The audience was demonstratively responsive.' (Musical America)
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The programme had been 'tested out' on 15 October 'before an audience which more than filled the Casimir Hall [Curtis Institute, Philadelphia]'. ​
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In a letter to Mrs Albert Shaw around this time, Jorge wrote:
Some people have suggested to me that I give another Town Hall recital this season. What do you think of the idea? Of course even if it is the most advisable thing to do, it is also a terrific expense you know, and I am not at all sure that I will be able to do so… Please accept my sincere thanks for all your kindness and the lovely carnations to mother yesterday. You really are so thoughtful and kind. Now I know why Maria thought so much of you… About getting copies of the recordings, I might say that you should order them from Miss Zeller at Town Hall. All I know is that they cost $20 per set… I trust you do not think I am disrespectful if I address you as Virginia, but I have known you so long that I don’t think of you as Mrs Shaw.
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Jorge gives his address as 329, South 17th Street, Philadelphia.​
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'I have a recording of his performance of the Schumann Symphonic Etudes from his 1940 NY Town Hall recital from badly corroded/mildewed discs Jorge gave to me in the 1980s. The sound is too poor to consider issuing...' [Francis Crociata]
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18th season of the Curtis Institute
The eighteenth season of Curtis opened on 6 October 1941. The new director was the famous Russian-born violinist Efrem Zimbalist (1889-1985). He was from in the southwestern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and at age 12 had entered the St Petersburg Conservatory to study under Leopold Auer. This was his first year as Director, a post in which he remained until 1968. In 1943, having been a widower for five years, he married the Curtis Institute of Music's founder, Mary Louise Curtis Bok, 14 years his senior.​
18th season of the Curtis Institute
On the piano staff were: Rudolf Serkin, Isabelle Vengerova, Mieczyslaw Munz, Jorge Bolet, Jeanne Behrend, Freda Pastor and Eleanor Sokoloff.
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Rosario Scalero and Samuel Barber taught composition, the former teaching Gian Carlo Menotti (who joined the faculty 1948–1955).
Among the singing teachers was the great Elisabeth Schumann (1888-1952). From 1919 until 1938, she was a star of the Vienna State Opera. Her most famous role was that of Sophie in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. Despite her glittering operatic career, she excelled in lieder. Lotte Lehmann, in many ways her rival, paid her the tribute of saying that she represented perhaps the purest singing style of German lieder. ​
On signing his military draft card on 16 October 1940, Jorge listed his widowed mother's address (Mrs Adelina Vda. de Bolet) as Calle E #59, Almendares, Havana, Cuba.
Gian Carlo Menotti
Menotti was born in 1911 in Cadegliano-Viconago, Italy, near Lake Maggiore and the Swiss border. The family was financially prosperous with his father and uncle jointly operating a coffee exporting firm in Colombia. Gian Carlo began writing songs when he was seven years old, and at eleven wrote both the libretto and music for his first opera, The Death of Pierrot. This work was performed as a home puppet show, a passion that occupied Gian Carlo's youth after he was introduced to the art from his older brother Pier Antonio.
He began his formal musical training at the Milan Conservatory in 1924 at the age of 13. At the age of 17, Menotti's life was dramatically altered by the death of his father. Following her husband's death, Ines Menotti and Gian Carlo moved to Colombia in a futile attempt to salvage the family's coffee business. In 1928 she enrolled him at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music before returning to Italy. Armed with a letter of introduction from the wife of Arturo Toscanini, Gian Carlo studied composition at Curtis under Rosario Scalero.
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In 1951, Menotti wrote his Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors for NBC which was inspired by Hieronymus Bosch's painting Adoration of the Magi (c. 1485–1500). It was the first opera ever written for television in America, and first aired on Christmas Eve, 1951. It is his most popular composition.
Rudolf Serkin
Rudolf Serkin (1903-1991) was born in Eger, Kingdom of Bohemia, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Czech Republic/Czechia). Hailed as a child prodigy, he was sent to Vienna at the age of 9.
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In 1936, after a career in Europe, Serkin launched his solo concert career in the US with the New York Philharmonic under Arturo Toscanini. In 1937, Serkin played his first New York City recital at Carnegie Hall, to critical acclaim: Olin Downes wrote, 'What Mr. Serkin did was to display a colossal art, which he devoted to the most idealistic purposes'. [New York Times, 12 January 1937]
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Shortly after the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the Serkin family immigrated to the United States, where Serkin taught several generations of pianists at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. From 1968 to 1976 he served as the Institute's director. He lived with his growing family, first in New York, then in Philadelphia, as well as on a dairy farm in rural Guilford, Vermont.
Photograph seem to suggest Rudolph Serkin as perennially "old", - with the look of a bank-manager, as someone once described him - but in fact he was only 11 older than Jorge.
Mr Bolet, assistant to Rudolf Serkin
In the winter of 1940 Rudolf Serkin, who had become Head of Piano at Curtis in 1939, found himself suffering from an attack of boils on his fingers and the infection by early spring was deep enough and painful enough to require surgery.
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​​​​​Eugene Istomin, a student, found that a splendid way to get around Bolet when he hadn’t prepared his lesson was to start him playing - Godowsky’s transcription, for example, of Isaac Albéniz’s already difficult ‘Triana’. ‘Bolet’s eyes would gleam wildly as his flying fingers got nearer and nearer the edge of extreme virtuosity’. For an irreverent teenager, there was something especially hilarious about the fact that Bolet – ‘this enormous, enormous man’ – who loomed over the piano and played finger-breaking transcriptions of pieces already finger-breaking in their own right, nevertheless demanded the most delicate, calculated touch.'
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Istomin did not feel that Bolet had much to teach him about music. 'The solution came in the person of the fifty-year old Mieczyslaw Horszowski who took over as Serkin's assistant when Bolet left Curtis to become the cultural attaché of the Cuban embassy in Washington.'
James Gollin, Pianist: A biography of Eugene Istomin (Bloomington, Indiana 2010)
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Detroit Evening Times, 29 September 1941
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Wednesday, 10 December 1941: recital in the Auditorio, Havana, a tiny notice dwarfed by a panel advertising "Stalin Speaks" in the Teatro Alkazar: for the first time on the big screen you can hear the Soviet leader, on 15, 16 and 17 December, courtesy of Blue RIbbon Films. (Noticias de Hoy). It was in this month that Jorge received a decoration/honour from the President of Cuba
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Claudio Arrau moves residence from Santiago, Chile, to New York.
Early in October, 1941 he departs from the Port of Valparaíso to New York, on board the 'Motonave Imperial', a cargo-passenger ship of the Compañía Sudamericana de Vapores, based in Valparaíso, Chile. Wife Ruth along with toddler Carmen and baby Mario temporarily stayed in Santiago.
In mid October, en route performances by Claudio Arrau in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Guatemala, and Mexico, before his arrival in New York.
By September, Serkin’s fingers had healed and he was again playing a full schedule. Because he was so often absent from Philadelphia, he needed a teaching assistant and settled on Bolet. Serkin’s decision was thought to be surprising – he had disliked the showy pianism of Saperton – but perhaps was influenced by his own and Bolet’s shared interest in the music of Max Reger.
Wednesday 14 May 1941, Jorge's first public appearance in Detroit (a city to which Raymond Stover - who seems to have been acting as his agent and perhaps more - is connected) at the Scottish Rite Cathedral of the Masonic Temple. Raymond F. Stover Concert Management Philadelphia. Included are: Schumann's Symphonic Etudes and Schubert's A major Sonata D959. "At the invitation of the President of Cuba, Jorge flew to Havana for Easter and gave a command performance at the Palace." Detroit Evening News
Claudio Arrau
Claudio Arrau gave a recital at the Teatro Solís, Montevideo, Uruguay on Monday 1 July,1940. The Teatro Solís - established in 1856 and still operating - is the oldest theatre in the Americas.
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[Source: The Teatro Solís, 150 Years of Opera, Concert and Ballet in Montevideo (2003), Susana Salgado]
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Arrau then moves residence from Santiago, Chile, to New York. Early in October, 1941 he departs from the Port of Valparaíso to New York, on board the 'Motonave Imperial', a cargo-passenger ship of the Compañía Sudamericana de Vapores, based in Valparaíso, Chile. Wife Ruth (née Schneider) along with toddler Carmen and baby Mario temporarily stayed in Santiago.
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In mid-October, en route there were performances by Claudio Arrau in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Guatemala, and Mexico, before his arrival in New York.
Havana 1942
In the Auditorio, Havana, Bolet played Spanish music on Monday 12 January 1942 (at the rather late time of 9.30pm) This was with the Havana Philharmonic under Massimo Freccia, an Italo-American conductor who died at the grand old age of 98 in 2004.
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The programme in January 1942 was Turina, Sevillana, de Falla, Fire Dance, and Noches en los jardines de Espana with Bolet as soloist. It ended with Albeniz’s Iberia Suite (two pieces, Evocacion & Triana, in 'the marvellous orchestration' of Fernández Arbós from the original piano version). JB played a Baldwin piano, courtesy of Excelsior Music Co. The concert was reviewed in Noticias de Hoy 16.1.42 by the flamboyant critic known as "Custodio"who began by saying that 'Manuel de Falla is the Goya of music', and he had much to say about de Falla's music and Noches in particular - one of his most delicate compositions, Andalusian in character, intellectual in terms of its orchestral focus and development.
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"Bolet nos hizo grata sensación. De ímpetu y brío juvenil, dotado de una fuerte y varonil 'doigtée', y de una prometidora personalidad, demostró haber comprendido la obra, en la que el piano no es sino un acompañante, distinguido, de la orquestra."
With youthful impetus and spirit, endowed with strong and manly 'fingerwork', and a promising personality, he showed that he had understood the work, in which the piano is but a distinguished companion of the orchestra.
The conductor Freccia was born on 19 September, 1906 in the Tuscan village of Valdibure, Italy. His mother from an aristocratic Pistoian family. In the late 1930s, he found the Cuban orchestra a poor ensemble, but trained it skilfully and was appointed its music director. Soloists of the quality of Artur Rubinstein (Polish pianist) and Jascha Heifetz (often called "God's violinist") played with it.
Gardens of the GeneralifeÂ
Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) completed one of his most famous orchestral works, Noches en los Jardines de España (“Nights in the Gardens of Spain”) in 1916. He attached no specific programme, but the titles of the three movements suggest the Spanish pictures that he sought to evoke. The first movement is called In the Gardens of the Generalife - the jasmine-scented gardens surrounding the summer palace of the king’s harem at the Alhambra; the second, A Dance Is Heard in the distance; the third, In the Gardens of the Sierra de Cordoba.
It is, as composer Joaquin Turina remarks, ‘a really wonderful evocation, although in a sense the most tragic and sorrowful of his works'.
Noches en los Jardines de España
Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) completed one of his most famous orchestral works, Noches en los Jardines de España (“Nights in the Gardens of Spain”) in 1916. He attached no specific programme, but the titles of the three movements suggest the Spanish pictures that he sought to evoke. The first movement is called In the Gardens of the Generalife - the jasmine-scented gardens surrounding the summer palace of the king’s harem at the Alhambra; the second, A Dance Is Heard in the distance; the third, In the Gardens of the Sierra de Cordoba.
It is, as composer Joaquin Turina remarks, ‘a really wonderful evocation, although in a sense the most tragic and sorrowful of his works'.
The first performance of Nights was given in Madrid at the Teatro Real, on 9 April, 1916. Artur Rubinstein played it at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires during his first musical visit to that city, and eventually became a life-long champion of the work. So far as I am aware no recording exists of Bolet in this highly evocative work - the more’s the pity. Listen to Alicia de Larrocha in 1971:
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En los Jardines de La Habana
In Jorge's audience...
Among the eminent patrons listed in the programme in January 1942 were Amelia Solberg de Hoskinson (the lady in whose salon JB first made a name for himself in 1927) , Sra. de Gaetano Todaro, Sra. de Gomez Cueto, (born St John's Newfoundland, died in 2009 aged 108), Sra. Maria Daurer vda. de (=widow of) Hoyt, Jorge’s brother Alberto Bolet, Leopoldo Teixeira Leite (1st Secretary at the Brazilian Legation) and Marcial Truffin.
Clearly the cream of Havana society were there. Marcial Truffin, for example, was the second son of Señora Mina Perez Chaumont Truffin, wealthy widow of Regino Truffin and member of one of Cuba's most prominent families. Her husband had died in July, 1926, had two sons, Regino and Marcial, the latter connected with the National City Bank in Havana. There was an Avenida Truffin named after their father. But the house the family had owned was very special indeed, reminding me of The Garden of the Fini-Continis (in Giorgio Bassani's Ferrara) or Rappaccini's Daughter (in Nathaniel Hawthorne, but without the Gothic horror and the poisonous vegetation!)
In the Marianao municipality in the province of Havana, was their Villa Mina, a beautiful suburban property, surrounded by a luxuriant tropical forest (one might apparently have found some dwarf palms from China or a rare orchid from the Amazon) - a fairy-tale dream for a nightclub which became known as ‘the most attractive and sumptuous nightclub in the world’, the Tropicana. We may - too fancifully - imagine that de Falla's subtle depiction of gardens had some special resonance with Marcial.
