Jorge's surprise and unexpected début in Washington DC, January 1944; this was actually reported on 17 December 1943 in the Evening Times
Washington début
1942-45
Godowsky & the Java Suite
Jorge and his sister Maria
'The famous pianist, visiting Mr Raymond F. Stover, of Shadowlawn at St. Clare Shores, will present a concert tomorrow at the Detroit Golf Club, at 8.30pm, including Albeniz's El Albaicin and Von Dohnanyi’s Waltz from the ballet Naila of Delibes.
The Windsor Daily Star (Ontario, Canada), 30 May 1942
(It is worth mentioning in passing that a private recording of Jorge playing the Leo Délibes/ Dohnányi Waltz is among the desiderata of Bolet collectors and fans.)
When Jorge's sister Maria crossed on the ship Drottningholm from Lisbon to New York in transit to Cuba (30 June, 1942), she listed her brother as staying at 329 South 17th Street, Philadelphia, PA.
Some of her letters from the late 1930s/early 1940s are of great interest.
‘I had a hard time in Spain after the revolution began, but finally I could get out of the country six months later and arrived in New York in January 1937. I stayed then in Philadelphia with Jorge…I came again to Philadelphia only 2 months ago. It is good to be with my dear Jorge again for a while. He is such a grown up man and his playing is so wonderful. I am sorry that you have not heard him play yet. Jorge is not doing much this year, he has a very poor manager at present [she may here be referring to Raymond Stover] but he is going to be under Mr Judson next season.’
‘Jorge's concert for June did not materialize and now his entering in the army will make it very difficult. He still hopes to return to the US in the fall but as things are at present I do but it very much. We cannot play for the future nowadays but we know the Lord is our God…Jorge has no piano, he has a few pupils and a lot of social engagements..’
Maria's missionary work
‘We are having a small girls camp again this year at the Fleidnors mission house in the ancient city of El Escorial, not far from Madrid and we covet your prayers for us at this camp…Word has come from the village that I am forbidden to bring the village the protestant girls from Madrid as I did last year, accusing the girls of bad behavior while in the village which is all a lie of the priest and a plot to keep us out…’
‘I have been busy and very happy teaching in the Bible school of the West Indies Mission besides attending to the work of our little magazine Revelation. Part of my work in the Mission has been superintending the children's work…Spain must be evangelized at any cost. It seems a totally impossible task as long as Generalisimo Franco is in power and the Roman Church in full control…Spain has a right to have an opportunity to hear the good news of salvation..’
Raymond Fayette Stover
Here's a name that begins to crop up a lot in the biography of Jorge at this time.
Raymond Fayette Stover, 1894-1979, was born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, into a wealthy family which owned two properties, one of which was Shadowlawn, a summer home on an estate near Puce. He was a lawyer but never practised his profession. As a world traveller, he lived off private means. During the First World War he served in the Royal Flying Corps. He toured the world including Africa and the Arctic, and made more than 50 Atlantic crossings - "thoroughly at home in New York, London, Paris". He lived in Detroit, although Philadelphia served as his base for many years.
Windsor Star, obituary, 13 October 1979
Jorge's connection with him - which probably runs from the late 1930s to about 1946 - seems to have met with extreme disapproval by his sister Maria. One can speculate about the relationship between the two men, and the newspaper gossip pages seem to hint with nudges, winks and nods that it went beyond "business". There is correspondence about Jorge's career between Stover and Mrs Curtis Bok. A series of letters from Maria - with disapproving barbs, though she does not name her target in the extracts which were briefly available - found their way onto the internet for sale around 2014, only to be quickly snapped up and then to disappear.
The Border Cities Star (5 January 1933) reported that Stover had had an automobile accident and was seriously ill in Bryn Mawr Hospital. 'The young Puce resident, son of Samuel Stover, had been spending the evening with Stanley Griswold Flagg Jr. at his home in the fashionable Bryn Mawr suburb of Philadelphia. At the time of the accident, he was on his way back to the Philadelphia Racquet Club where he was stopping, in Mr Flagg's car with the chauffeur Caesar Doble'. For the last five years he has been in the habit of spending Christmas in Philadelphia. He was the guest of Homer Reed Jr., investment broker, at the Racquet Club. Mr Flagg is a member of of an old Philadelphia family; an iron manufacturer and an official of the Sons of the Revolution.
The Detroit Evening Times (25 February 1941) reports the (negligible?) news that 'after taking in The Lady in the Dark, the new Gertrude Lawrence show in New York, attending British War Relief doings and bidding fond adieux to the London-bound Miss Helen Cumming, Raymond Stover and Jorge Bolet sped on up to Boston for some visiting about, and are now back in the latter's Philadelphia apartments.' The same newspaper for 18 February had reported:'This very dday, your dauntless friend. Miss Helen Cumming, is being fêted anent her sailing back to England. The vivacious traveler, along with the Duchesse de Crussol of Paris, is being honor guest at a reception and musicale which Raymond Stover and Jorge Bolet are flinging in Philadelphia this afternoon. Helen, who has been in New York for the past several weeks, will be sailing for London Saturday.'
Helen Cumming, born in Windsor, Ontario on 1902, was for a time London correspondent for the Detroit Free Press. During World War Two, she was an eyewitness to the bombings of London. This allowed her to observe the daily life of women in London amidst the stress and terror of war. Inspired by their efforts, she wrote a piece about how the roles of women had changed in the London community.
In the 4 May 1941 edition, we learn that Jorge knows Irma de Alguarra [Algarra], the daughter of the Cuban consul in Detroit, Ignacio de Algarra ('they were playmates in Havana and took in several parades and revolutions and things back in younger days") and that his favourite pastime - this from 'inside sources'! - is roller-skating. Diario de la Marina had reported that Señor de Algarra, his wife Mercedes del Barrio and daughter Irma ("tan encantorada", so enchanting) had sailed from Havana to New York on the Oriente (to take up his post as consul in Detroit, Michigan) on 28 August 1935. Fellow passengers included the gloriously named Orlando Castaynet of the Parke Davis Company, once America's oldest and largest drug maker [he is mispelled Oslardo Castanet!] and Doris Smadbeck.
29 September 1941: 'Mr. and Mrs. Bliss Wolfe, of the Canadian Shore crowd, up and gave a sumptuous dinner and musicale for Raymond Stover and his pianist house guest Jorge Bolet. Same took place on the evening of the Sabbath at the handsome home of the Wolfe’s over there on the Canadian shore with cocktails about 4, edibles at 5 and sonorous tones at 6. Messrs. Stover and Bolet returned from Montreal, Friday, after taking stock with Leading Ladies and Gentlemen of the Province.'
The same newspaper records on 21 December 1941 that Raymond Stover 'has landed in Havana with his friend Jorge Bolet to visit Jorge's parents. At present the two chaps are touring Cuba and having a pretty merry time, but will return to Havana in time for the concert which Señor Bolet will give at the Palace, after which he is to be decorated, we hear, by President Colonel Batista, no less.'
The Windsor Star (29 June 1974) 'The days of The Great Gatsby, days of good times and the best of red wines, are not dead for Raymond Fayette Stover, 80, self-described "inveterate world traveller," a genteel man in this age of getting and spending. "I knew Scott Fitzgerald intimately," he says. "I am sometimes asked if maybe I haven't lived too long".'
Jorge Bolet in Camagüey
Born in the old Francisco sugar mill in Cuba, when Gerardo Machado began his first term in office (1928), Manuel Reguera Saumell studied Architecture at the University of Havana, worked on the Master Plan for Havana as an urban planner, wrote very successful plays and left Cuba more than half a century ago for Barcelona, the land of his paternal ancestors, where he had already lived as a child. His novel La noche era tan joven y nosotros tan hermosos ("The Night Was So Young and We Were So Beautiful") is probably one of the most revealing books of the years preceding the triumph of the 1959 Revolution, with an intrigue in which the homoerotic ingredient (the change of sexual orientation of one of the characters in the plot) makes him a sharp narrator in this field. ―When I was 14, I was sent to Camagüey to study at the Escolapios in this city. I was locked up for five years, during which the only contact with the outside world was the masses in the beautiful neo-Gothic church of the boarding school. I don't remember anything special about that school of priests. Everything was stupidly normal. The only one who was a little different was Father Ullastres, who taught music and had noticed that I was a little different from my classmates, almost all of them country bumpkins (casi todos guajiros catetos), sent by their wealthy families to study at that institute. The only student who knew that Beethoven was not a player on the Almendares team was me. That's why Father Ullastres took me to the Teatro Principal and there he introduced me to the great Jorge Bolet after he had played Chopin during an unforgettable concert (mid-1940s?). The Escolapios were known for having a very good basketball team, but I wasn't interested in sports. Francisco was the name of the founder of the sugar factory, the Asturian Francisco Rionda Polledo, who built it in 1899 a few kilometers from the port of Guayabal, southeast of Camagüey, and which is now called Amancio Rodríguez. From an interview in January 2022, the year the author died
This video has sound
'Happiest in Chopin'
The Windsor Daily Star 22 October 1942 proudly announced that residents who attended Jorge Bolet's recital in the Prince Edward Hotel had had a preview of his upcoming December Carnegie Hall recital. The concert was 'a milestone in the 17 year history of the Matinee Musical society'. A magnificent recital but perhaps a little overplayed at times (in the Mozart) for the ballroom which is not Carnegie Hall and seats only 700! 'The most modern number of the evening, Albéniz's El Albaicín, a gypsy bit, was made for him.' The evening's presentation was under the aegis of Windsor's Raymond Stover.
The Hempstead Sentinel, 29 October 1942, reports that ‘return engagements are sometimes disappointing but this was not the case Tuesday morning (27th) when JB made his second appearance under the auspices of the music department of the Garden City Hempstead Community Club. Garden City is an incorporated village in Nassau County, on Long Island, in New York
‘If there was any change in Mr Bolet’s work it was the fact that he had grown emotionally as an artist in the more than four years since he was last heard in Garden City. Each number was exquisitely colored and was set in an atmosphere all of its own. The same remarkable tempos are there, together with crystal clear and fluent technique and a breadth of tone that is breath taking.
'The twenty-seven year old pianist again included in his recital a group of Chopin, and it is there that he seems happiest although his Spanish numbers were played with a dash and feeling that only one of the Latin race can bring forth.’
‘Mr Bolet and his manager, Raymond Stover, were guests of honor at a luncheon following the recital given by the music committee at the Cherry Valley Club.' Among the guests 'was another well-known pianist, Edward Kilenyi who is stationed with the air corps at Mitchel Field.'
Kilenyi was born in Philadelphia in 1910. He enrolled at the Franz Liszt Royal Hungarian Conservatory of Music at Budapest around 1922 and graduated in 1930. His principal teacher there was Ernst von Dohnányi (Hungarian: Dohnányi Ernő). His career offers an interesting and piquant ‘compare and contrast’ with that of Bolet: unlike Bolet, he left the United States for primary studies in Europe, but both careers had a European debut in Holland, and an appearance in London in 1935 and both were interrupted by the World War II (and both men served in the United States Military – Kilenyi becoming in 1945 the Music Control Officer for Bavaria in the US Military Government). While specialising in Liszt and Chopin (but also Beethoven), Kilenyi seems to have had the more successful career at least early on, with – for example – eleven recordings for Remington.
Arthur Judson, Impresario
Tim Page notes that Judson was the closest thing to a musical czar the United states ever had. For over 40 years - as Norman Lebrecht puts it - 'from Verdun to Vietnam', he was the dominant figure in marketing classical music in America. He managed about 50 conductors, who naturally found it in their best interest to hire soloists recommended by Judson. He also had a large stable of pianists. A Central European division of Columbia Concerts Judson, Haensel and Jones, arranged bookings for Austrian pianists.
And Judson himself moved everyone like pieces on a chessboard!
For a vivid picture see James Gollin, Pianist: A Biography of Eugene Istomin pp.112ff.
Carnegie Hall, December 1942
Friday, 18 December at 8.30pm at Carnegie Hall; Jorge's first appearance in this fabled hall since his student performance of 29 January 1932. Schubert 2 Impromptus B flat Op. 142/3 E flat Op.90/2, Chopin 4 Scherzi, Falla Cubana, Andaluza, Albeniz El Albaícin, Godowsky 3 pieces from Java Suite "Phonoramas" (Gamelan, In the Gardens of Buitenzorg & In the Streets of Old Batavia)
Jorge Bolet, 28-year-old Cuban pianist, who was largely trained here, is a brilliant young artist. One of the leaders of the younger generation.’ There were moments when he was carried away by his own exuberance. [H. Taubman] (That afternoon, Rachmaninov had performed his Paganini variations under Dimitri Mitropoulos.)
Henry Simon stated that Jorge 'had played three pieces from Java Suite that all but lived up to the composer’s own lush program notes. It may not be great music, but a young pianist who has the color and technique to live up to such literature has an extraordinary equipment. That’s Jorge Bolet.'
'Buitenzorg, meaning Sans Souci and pronounced Boy-ten-sorg...is the country capital of Java, where the Governor General of the Dutch East Indies has his residence. His spacious palace is situated in a large park which forms part of the most famous Botanical Gardens in the world....The heavily perfumed air awakens an inexpressibly deep and painful yearning for unknown worlds, for inaccessible ideals, for past happenings irrevocably gone...Why do certain scents produce unutterable regrets, insatiable longings, indefinable desires?'
Jorge's performance of The Gardens of Buitenzorg can be heard on Marston CD Vol.2, from a performance on 28 November 1983, in Milan, Italy
A month later, Jorge wrote a letter, dated 20 January, 1943, about this concert to Mrs. Albert Shaw, Winter Park, Florida.
Dear Virginia:
I was so sad not to have you at Carnegie! But I saw Roger just last week and he told me he was there and enjoyed it very much. I have wished that I could have written to you sooner telling you about the financial outcome of the recital, but it was not until my return from Albany (I played a recital there) day before yesterday that I received the statement from Columbia Concerts, Inc. The total expenses amount to a few dollars over $1300.00 and the total box office receipts came to exactly $680.03.
As I wrote to you last fall, I was to return money given to me in proportion to the receipts taken in. Therefore since you advanced me $75.00, I take great pleasure in enclosing you a check for $39.22, your proportionate return. I wish that I were returning the whole $75.00 but I consider myself fortunate in having had such a good house.
Again I want to thank you for your wonderful kindness which together with that of some others of my good friends made the concert possible. Maria has just received a wire from Mercedes saying they shall arrive at the end of January. She is tickled pink! I am always your sincerely friend, Jorge.
Please let us know if you come North!
[329, South 17th St., Philadelphia, PA]
Claudio Arrau gave a complete performance Beethoven's Piano Sonata Cycle at the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires in a series of six subscription recitals over April and May, 1942. He seems to have done this concurrently with Cycle at the Teatro Solís, Montevideo, as part of the 1942 Concert Season run by the Organización Musical Daniel. In late August, he is in Peru. A second and farewell recital at the Teatro Nacional, Lima on Sunday 30 August at 9:00 pm.
This review of the above recital, from the International Musician, January 1943 identifies an aspect of Bolet's programming that was perhaps to hinder him over the years: the unorthodox selection. Certainly, a survey of reviews from around the world suggests that Liszt's 12 Transcendental Studies as a second half of a recital was not a good idea (and - in my view - they do not represent the best of Liszt's work, as is not the case with Chopin's 24 Études, each of which is a musical gem).
'Why, at age fifty-seven, has he not yet had a bigger American career? "Well, maybe because my repertoire, which seems to be fashionable today, wasn't always so fashionable," he answered. "Maybe my playing has changed and matured recently." Of the Liszt Études, he mentions a previously incomplete set: "They were recorded in the modern manner with takes, retakes and re-retakes. By the time we were done, the notes were there but little of the music. I've now recorded all of them in Spain (to be released in the US by RCA) in a much more old-fashioned way - I just played the way I would in a concert hall - and if I say so myself, they're not so bad." (Interview, Gregor Benko, HiFi Stereo Review, July 1972)
The Java Suite
The Java Suite
Godowsky's Far East tour in 1922 would keep him away from home in New York for the best part of a year. Having reached Vancouver, he set sail on the 13th October for Yokohama, and thence travelled and played throughout Japan, China, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore and Java. On the island of Java, where he spent several weeks playing recitals practically every day - six pianos and the piano tuner were sent in front of him at a cost of $25,000. The Javanese fascinated him, and the time he spent away from the piano give him enough opportunity to absorb the exotic atmosphere that was to inspire one of his most original compositions, the Java Suite. These impressions had to be retained in his memory, as he hurried on in the late spring of 1923 to the Philippines, Manila, and Honolulu, before returning to New York.
The Java Suite
It was not of course, the first time that a European composer had been attracted to the rhythms and sonorities of Indonesian music, though very few had experienced that part of the world at first hand. Neither was his tour of Java his first contact with the islands music. As a struggling 19-year-old in Paris, when the Grande Exposition Universelle was held there, he had visited the Dutch East Indian exhibits, which included a complete Javanese village, trips of dancers and puppeteers, and above all gamelans, and like Fauré, Widor, Debussy, Ravel, and Saint-Säens, he was captivated by the tonal effects of the music, so foreign to occidental ears. He began work on the Suite in Berlin in late 1924, and composed over the next eight months in New York, Chicago and Evanston. The Java Suite was published in 4 books in August 1925.
Jeremy Nicholas, Godowsky, The Pianists' Pianist (1989) p.112-118
Here's a selection of notes on some of the 12 pieces which make up the Suite (edited from the composer's own words of introduction):
2. Wayang-Purwa, Puppet Shadow Plays (A minor)
‘This entertainment symbolises to the Javanese their past historical greatness; their hopes, aspirations and national solidarity. To the subdued accompaniment of the Gamelan, the Dalang, - manager, actor, musician, singer, reciter and improvisator, all in one, - recites classic Hindu epics, or modernized and localized versions of them, or other mythical or historical tales and East Indian legends, while grotesque, flat leather puppets throw shadows on a white screen to interpret and illustrate the reciter’s stories. These puppets the Dalang manipulates by means of bamboo rods. Wayang-Purwa is somewhat of a combination of Punch and Judy and Chinese shadows.'
3. Hari Besaar, The Great Day (A minor → C major)
The Kermess - the Country Fair - is here. From plantations and hamlets natives flock to the town that is the center of the bright, joyous celebrations, naive, harmless amusements.
5. Boro Budur in Moonlight (E minor)
On a sacred hill, in the heart of Java, some thirty miles from Djokja, stand the colossal ruins of the most imposing and gigantic Buddhist monument in existence, the world-famous temple of Boro Budur, “The Shrine of the Many Buddhas.” No matter how blasé the weary traveler may be, he cannot fail to be stirred and bewildered by the stupendous masonry and by the hundreds of sculptured Buddhas, images and bas-reliefs. The amazing dimensions and incredible craftsmanship enrapture the senses; the loftiness of conception, the luxuriance of imagination thrill the beholder.
In moonlight, Boro Budur is most fantastic. “An uncanny, eerie, melancholy mood permeates the whole almosphere.Deep silence and a sense of strangeness and out-of-the-worldness contribute to the impression of utter desolation and to the feeling of inevitable decay ‘and dissolution of all things earthly, the hopeless struggle of human endeavor against eternity.”
9. In the Streets of Old Batavia (D♭ major → C major → D♭ major)
‘To stroll in the old streets of lower Batavia is an exhilarating experience. As we wander near the seashore, through the crowded bazaars and busy, narrow streets, many of which are intersected by bricked canals lined with weather-beaten buildings in the Dutch style, we meet exotic crowds, consisting mainly of Chinese, Arabs, natives and other Asiatics, interspersed with Europeans, of whom the Dutch form a large majority.
A ramble through the hectic Chinese quarter leads us to a quiet and contemplative corner of the Arab settlement. Another turn brings us to the native quarter. And when the bazaars are reached, a kaleidoscopic, multifarious conglomeration of humans bewilders even the most seasoned globe-trotter.
Erich Kleiber (1890-1956)
Erich Kleiber was born in Wieden, Vienna, on
5 August 1890. After studying at the Prague Conservatory, he followed the traditional route for an aspiring conductor in German-speaking countries of the time, starting as a répétiteur in an opera house and moving into conducting in increasingly senior positions. After holding posts in Darmstadt (1912), Barmen-Elberfeld (1919), Düsseldorf (1921) and Mannheim (1922) he was appointed in 1923 to the important post of musical director of the Berlin State Opera.
Photo: holding his equally famous son, Carlos
In Berlin, Kleiber's scrupulous musicianship and enterprising programming won him a high reputation, but after the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933, he resigned in protest against its oppressive policies, and left the country, basing himself and his family in Buenos Aires.
Insofar as Kleiber had a base during these later years it was in Buenos Aires; he became an Argentine citizen in 1936. At the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Kleiber conducted 29 different operas (a total of 181 performances) during 10 seasons (1937–41, 1943, and 1946–49). The operas he conducted the most were Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Der Rosenkavalier. He also conducted in Chile, Uruguay, Mexico and Cuba. Kleiber gave the Western Hemisphere's premiere of Richard Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten in Buenos Aires in 1949.
Kleiber was regarded as an outstanding conductor of Mozart, Beethoven and Richard Strauss and encouraged modern composers, including Alban Berg, whose Wozzeck he premiered. He died suddenly in Zürich at the age of 65.
On 25 March 1943 Kleiber gave his first concert in Havana. During 1944-1947 he was the chief conductor of the Havana Philharmonic. He built upon the work of his predecessors Tomás, Roig, Sanjuán and Roldán, offering first performances in Cuba of international work (e.g. Hindemith, Mathis der Maler symphony, Alban Berg's Three Fragments from Wozzeck, de Falla's Homenajes,) but with greater interpretative skill and orchestral training. He was to give 80 concerts between 1943 and 1954. He also included many Cuban composers: Ardévol, Pablo Ruiz Castellanos, Roldán, Caturla, Gilberto Valdés, Julián Orón and Joaquín Nin-Culmell, as well as Argentinians alberto Ginastera and Juan José Castro. He introduced the piano concerto of Héctor Alberto Tosar Errecart (Montevideo, Uruguay, 1923 - 2002)
In March 1947 Kleiber left for Buenos Aires and would only return to Cuba seven years later. (From an article by José Aníbal Campos, 2005)
See also: Andrea Orzoff, Citizen of the Staatsoper: Erich Kleiber's Musical Migration' Central European History, 54 (June 2021), 326 - 351
Military work 1943-1944
Jorge Bolet was seconded to Cuban Embassy in Washington as Lieutenant (Cultural) during World War II.
‘I was just about to be called up in the US army because I’d made my home in America by then, when the President of Cuba heard about it from my brother. I got a cable immediately ordering me back to Cuba, so I served President Batista and eventually went back to America to assist the military attaché in Washington.’ [Interview with Nicholas Kenyon, The Times 6 October 1980]
On Monday, 12 April 1943 in Havana, Jorge played Rachmaninoff 3 with Erich Kleiber and the Havana Philharmonic. The programme also included Mozart's Symphony No. 33 in B♭major, K. 319 finish 9 July 1779 and requiring the smallest orchestral force the composer employed in his last ten symphonies:
In Noticias de Hoy, the music critic known as 'Custodio' said that the concert marked the high maturity of the orchestra in its last concert of the season, and that Bolet's performance was splendid.
Custodio was less impressed with a concert later that year (Monday, 29 November 1943), involving Beethoven's 3rd piano concerto, with José Echániz (who was himself a pianist) conducting the Orquesta Filharmónica de La Habana, followed by Shostakovich's first symphony. In Noticias de Hoy (1.12.43) he didn't enjoy the Shostakovich, and claims that the audience was unresponisve, "ya un tanto 'groggy' por la apelmazada versión de Echániz-Bolet en Beethoven" (already a bit groggy from the thick/ lumpy/ clumsy Echanic-Bolet version of Beethoven).
'We have never heard such a poor intepretation of a Beethoven concerto. To whom should we attribute this lamentable false step?' Echániz? Bolet? One must bear in mind that the conductor was also a pianist and where he should have taken charge, he seemed to wish to allow the pianist to do so ("en quien se adivinaba el deseo de dejar al pianista ejecutante expresarse por su propia cuenta y someterse así la orquesta"). 'If Bolet wished to show off at the expense of Beethoven, Echániz should not have allowed this.
Friday 10 December 1943: a celebration in honour of the Cuban Republic, La Noche Cubana in the Department of the interior, DC; Dr. Aurelio F. Concheso, Ambassador of Cuba was an honoured guest. Jorge played; Gloria Estevez sang. Evening Star (Washington) 5.12.43
During these years, some recordings were made and issued under the label Lira Panamericana series of radio transcription discs. Not much is known about the circumstances or indeed the dates (Marston Records gives a general date of 1944 on the CD set). Francis Crociata has told me that be believes the recordings were made in conjunction with one of the Pan American Union occasions.
The recordings comprise:
Bach, Toccata in D, BWV 912
Mozart, Rondo in D, K. 485
Abram Chasins, Schwanda Fantasy (after Weinberger)
Surprise Washington debut, December 1943
Bolet’s Washington debut as a pianist was purely accidental. ‘A member of an audience of 3,000 assembled to hear a wartime performance of the Sigmund Romberg Orchestra, Bolet heard Constitution Hall’s frantic manager explain an unavoidable delay and beg for local talent to come to the fore.’ The Evening Times (Washington) reported this on 17 December 1943, but the Mifflinburg Telegraph (Pennsylvania), 15 March 1951 has it as happening on 11 January 1944. (Romberg finally arrived at 10:30pm)
'The train bringing Sigmund Romberg from Canton, Ohio had not arrived by 8.50pm Dorothy Sandlin would sing if someone in the audience would accompany her. A young Cuban army man got up. He played Chopin’s B flat minor scherzo and the audience realised that he was no amateur; they clamoured for more. He will appear tomorrow in Carnegie Hall.' The New York Times, 6 February, 1944
Charles van Devander’s nationally syndicated Washington Memo added that 'with sure touch and supreme artistry, he dashed off Chopin’s F-sharp major Nocturne and A-flat Polonaise followed by Alec Wilder’s Neurotic Goldfish (originally an Octet for wind, harpsichord and drums, but the composer also published a volume of the octets arranged for piano solo). The applause was tremendous.' Three months later, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in her syndicated column My Day : 'I went to a concert at the Pan-American Building ... The young pianist from Cuba, Lt. Jorge Bolet played, and I enjoyed again his great artistic gift.'
On Monday 7 February 1944 , Bolet (presented by Arthur Judson Management, Inc.) gave a major recital at Carnegie Hall - his third appearance here - including Debussy and Shostakovich Preludes. Paul Bowles - born in Jamaica, Queens, New York City, he was a composer, author, and translator who became associated with the Moroccan city of Tangier, where he settled in 1947 and lived for 52 years to the end of his life - reviewed the concert.
‘The Cuban pianist played last night at Carnegie Hall. Like most Latins, he seems to prefer and understand best that kind of piano music whose principal interest lies in its physical sound: music like that of the French impressionists and the latter-day Spanish composers. And like many Latins, he is inclined to consider practically any piece a legitimate place to hang a curtain of shimmering, aqueous sound texture. It sounds well in Ravel. Why shouldn’t it in a similar passage in Scarlatti? There are plenty of reasons why it doesn’t, but the important thing is that it never can sound well and thus should never be tried.’ New York Herald Tribune
A Washington DC diplomatic list for May 1944 notes that while he was at the Cuba Embassy, Jorge lived at Dorchester House - a giant apartment building, 2480 16th Street, N.W., at 16th and Kalorama. 'When constructed between January and October 1941, the Dorchester House was one of the three largest apartment houses in Washington, with a thousand tenants occupying the 394 apartments. It was across the street from then-fashionable Meridian Hill Park. The streamlined buff-brick facade make the Dorchester House one of the city’s most distinctive Art Deco apartment houses.
'During World War II numerous prominent residents lived here, the most notable being a twenty-four-year-old naval ensign, John F. Kennedy, who occupied apartment No. 502 from October 1941 to January 1942. During his brief residence he was romantically involved with a beautiful blonde Danish journalist employed by the Washington Times Herald.' *James M. Good, Best Addresses: A Century of Washington’s Distinguished Apartment Houses (District of Columbia: Smithsonian Books, 1988/2003)
Order of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes
La Gaceta (Tampa, Florida) 22 February 1944 reports that JB was awarded the Order of Manuel de Céspedes last October by Fulgencio Batista. The Detroit Evening Star (23.2.44) says: 'Lt. Bolet was awarded the Order
of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, the highest award of his government at a concert in Havana In December when he appeared as soloist with the Havana Symphony Orchestra.'
He joined other illustrious (or notorious) awardees: Leonid Brézhnev (1981), Brazilian author Jorge Amado, Ernest Hemingway, Ernesto Lecuona, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Douglas MacArthur.
The Order was instituted on 18 April 1926 and awarded to recognise especial merit and service to the Republic of Cuba. It was named after Carlos Manuel de Céspedes del Castillo (1819-1874), a Cuban planter who freed his slaves and made the declaration of Cuban independence in 1868 which started the Ten Years' War. Céspedes was born into a prominent plantation family who had been granted their Cuban estate in 1517. By 1868 Céspedes was made chief of the revolutionary movement in the Oriente region, and on October 10, 1868, at the head of only 147 poorly armed men, he proclaimed independence for Cuba in the Grito de Yara (“Cry of Yara”).
Pan American Day
In Washington, 14 April 1944 'with the free nations of the world still engaged in a gigantic struggle for the preservation of their freedom, the solemnity of the fourteenth celebration of Pan American Day echoed throughout the Western Hemisphere.' At the evening concert JB performed Schubert's Impromptu, D. 899, No. 2 in E flat, Chopin's Nocturne in F sharp major, Scherzo in B flat minor, then more unusual repertoire: Roberto García Morillo (Argentina, b.1911), Canción triste y Danza alegre, Mozart Camargo Guarnieri (Brazil, 1907-1993), Toada triste & Alberto Ginastera (Argentina, b.1916) Piezas infantiles.
The United States Navy Band Orchestra ended with Guarnieri's most famous piece, Dança Brasileira.
Signs with Mertens & Parmelee, of Columbia Concerts
Andre Mertens and Horace J. Parmelee, heads of the Haensel & Jones division of Columbia Concerts Inc., announced the addition of three new artists, Lt. Jorge Bolet, Cuban pianist, John Sebastian, harmonica virtuoso and Portia White, 'Negro contralto' (sic). (Musical America, 10 April 1944).
Pan American Day, Washington 14 April 1944, was reported in the Evening Star. 'A distinguished audience was headed by Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt in the stately Hall of the Americas. The presence of Lieutenant Bolet was most appropriate, for this gifted young Cuban has in his concerts here and abroad fulfilled a mission in gaining recognition for the talents of Latin American artists.
'As a Chopin interpreter, he captures with rare felicity the very essence of the music. Prodigiously endowed from a technical standpoint, his pianistic ability lends itself to both dramatic and poetic feeling. The Latin American group were “choice works by these outstanding men”. They represented an unusual range of fantasy from moods of sadness to the whimsies of the Piezas Infantiles, expressed with originality and sound craftsmanship. Bolet’s delivery of them was brilliant and full of sentiment.'
WASHINGTON, Sunday—On Friday evening, I went to a concert at the Pan-American Building, which was attended by many of the diplomats. The young pianist from Cuba, Lieutenant Jorge Bolet, played, and I enjoyed again his great artistic gift.
My Day, Eleanor Roosevelt, 17 April, 1944
Chávez occasionally quotes indigenous or popular melodies, as in his popular “Obertura republicana” Chapultepec. Rather, he recreates Indian sound-landscapes in a free manner; another trait he shares with his peer, Villa-Lobos. (Elbio Barilari)
Carlos Chávez, Piano Concerto
Fellow Latin American, Chilean maestro Claudio Arrau was much more adventurous than Bolet (above) in his choice of music, giving a performance of Mexican composer Carlos Chávez's Piano Concerto with Mexico's National Symphony Orchestra [Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México] under Chávez on Friday 8th and Sunday 10th September, 1944. [El Informador, Guadalajara, 18 May 1944]. The concerto was premiered by Eugene List with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Dimitri Mitropoulos on 1 January 1942. Arrau had given the Mexican premiere at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City on 1, 3, 7and 15 August 1943.
Eugene List described the work as 'the most difficult composition I have ever tackled. It is a piece of immense rhythmic complexity, great technical difficulty and unrelenting thrust and pressure. It requires tremendous concentration, strength and stamina. The learning process was torture.'