Still hanging on in there...
"It is still cause for wonder that Bolet tenaciously clung to the periphery of the concert world, alternately waiting for his moment or threatening to give up and make his hobby, photography, his profession. The better portion of forty years lay ahead [from mid 1930s], a seemingly never-ending crucible in which Bolet through some mysterious alchemy evolved his inimitably pellucid sound, his unique 'touch' that grew both larger and more intimate, and in the opinion of Bolet connoisseurs, more beautiful."
Francis Crociata
Hunter College 1970
David Saperton, Bolet’s teacher between 1927 and 1934 died on 5 July, 1970 in Baltimore, at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. His address was given as 344 W72nd Street, New York City.
In 1970 [month unknown]: Casino del Aliança del Poble Nou, Barcelona, Spain - studio recording for the Ensayo label. Liszt: 12 Études d’exécution transcendante, S.139.
There seems to be a gap in the record of concerts in Britain during the period of roughly 1967-74, though further newspaper archival research may change this. But across the Atlantic, Bolet was finally making real progress. In 1970 he gave a recital at Hunter College, New York City on 3 October, in which he played - among other things - Liszt's Rigoletto paraphrase. The concert was recorded by the International Piano Library, a gala benefit for the Library which had been vandalised.
‘What a perihelion of pianists to perform!’
The New York Times, 27 Sept.1970 gave this report: On Saturday evening at Hunter College, the International Piano Library is sponsoring a benefit for itself with 10 pianists. Several months ago it was robbed; thieves broke in. ‘What they did not find was money. The IPL has always subsisted on a diet of dandelions and blue-eyed scallops. The baffled thieves instead found $200,000 of rare piano records or rolls. In fury they set fire to the IPL.’ Fortunately many discs survived including the only know copy of Grieg playing his Humoresque (worth $1,000) from acoustic recordings made for the Gramophone and Typewriter Company in Paris in 1903.
(There were precedents for this type of benefit concert, as Harold Schonberg pointed out. Fifteen pianists played in a benefit for an ill and indigent Moriz Moszkowski, a nineteenth century salon composer.)
The head of the archive Gregor Benko found that many pianists were sympathetic but, like Chilean maestro Claudio Arrau and others, were playing thousands of miles ways on 3 October. ‘He also found that some pianists, especially those concentrating on virtuoso romantic literature, regard each other, if not exactly the way Golda Meir regards Gamal Abdul Nasser, then something the way Elizabeth I viewed Philip of Spain or Arturo Toscanini regarded Serge Koussevitzky. And vice versa. Fernando Valenti, Jesús María Sanromá, Earl Wild, Bruce Hungerford, Ivan Davis, Alicia de Larrocha (president), Jorge Bolet and the great Brazilian first lady of the piano Guiomar Novaes did play.
Francis Crociata takes up the story:
'And, as an afterthought, Bolet [was invited], for Benko had never heard him play and barely heard of him. Jorge recognized the concert as the chance of his lifetime to be heard in the right context and he made the most of it. (...) The final two decades of Bolet’s life, leaving aside illness and a few bumps in the road pertaining to commercial recording, would be good years. From then to the end Jorge had all he ever really wanted.'
4 Steinways and 4 Baldwins. The Library 'was not out to make enemies'. Guiomar Novaes the grande dame of the keyboard, coaxed delicate tones from the Gottschalk's Variations on the Brazilian anthem. 'Dare one say who made the best impression? Okay pin me to the wall, and I will nominate Mr Bolet for his absolutely transcendent performances of a pair of Liszt operatic paraphrases (on Donizetti's Lucia di Lamermoor & Verdi's Rigoletto). (Harold Schonberg
Hunter College
3 October 1970
'There was no question among the audience that a major new star had appeared, unexpected and unheralded.'
When did Bolet emerge from obscurity?
Francis Crociata wrote a letter in June 1990 to the Gramophone magazine. ‘Bryce Morrison dates Jorge Bolet's emergence from relative obscurity to the "genuine and inclusive triumph" of his October 24th, 1974 Carnegie Hall recital. Many who have followed Bolet's career would date the beginning of his widespread recognition to another extraordinary occasion four years earlier... It was one of those rare and legendary occasions, like [soprano Montserrat] Caballé's New York debut, when there was no question among the audience that a major new star had appeared, unexpected and unheralded.'
Gramophone advert (1978)
1971 Giovanni Sgambati, Giovanni who...?
Bolet marked the concerto in his date book for Wednesday, 1 December 1971, a performance with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Giovanni Sgambati (1841-1914) was one of the few 19th century Italian composers to concentrate on concert rather than operatic music.
Gregor Benko says that Bolet learned Sgambati’s Concerto in G minor (1878-80) at the behest of Dr. Frank Cooper, who was then associated with Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. Frank Cooper sponsored a festival of Romantic music there for ten years. ‘Cooper had owned the score of the Sgambati and loved the piece, and he convinced Jorge to learn it (a somewhat difficult task, as Bolet was not anxious to learn new works). It is one of the best of the little-known Romantic piano concertos and made a "hit" every time Bolet played it, in the US and Holland. His initial performance of it was at the Romantic Festival at Butler University on May 19, 1971, with the Louisville Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jorge Mester. I was there and it was a great success indeed in every way.’
'Sgambati's 'massive three-movement Piano Concerto in G minor from 1880 might be described as a hybrid that fuses the similarly scaled Brahms D minor concerto with piano writing marked by Lisztian bravura. Imagine Liszt reworking the echt-Hungarian finale of Brahms’ Violin Concerto for piano on his own stylistic terms, and you’ll get an idea of what Sgambati’s third movement sounds like. Similarly, the grandiose first movement owes much of its existence to the arpeggiated flourishes in Beethoven’s Emperor concerto first movement and motives from Liszt’s Hungarian Fantasy.' (Jed Distler)
Liszt's Dance of Death
The Miami Herald 17 October 1971 records that Jorge (who will give a recital on Saturday evening) has been missing from the local scene for a decade; last heard here in the small Binder-Baldwin concert hall in 1963.
On 21 September 1971 Jorge performed Liszt's Totentanz with the New York Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez in the Gala opening night (a concert which included Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps). Bolet had last performed with the NYPO in 1965.
Liszt's "Dance of Death" is based on the Gregorian plainchant melody Dies irae, and completed by 1859. In the young Liszt are already observed manifestations of his obsession with death, with religion, and with heaven and hell. He frequented Parisian hospitals, gambling casinos and asylums in the early 1830s, and he even went down into prison dungeons in order to see those condemned to die. One direct source of inspiration for the young Liszt was the famous fresco "Triumph of Death" by Francesco Traini (at Liszt's time attributed to Andrea Orcagna and today also to Buonamico Buffalmacco) in the Campo Santo, Pisa. Liszt had eloped to Italy with his mistress, the Countess d’Agoult, and in 1838 he visited Pisa.
According to fellow pianist Abbey Simon (in his memoir Inner Voices), Andre Watts was indisposed and Jorge took over the performance, though he had never learned the work. He had about a week to learn it. 'You've never seen such a huge hulk of a man so nervous in your life. At the concert he started out and never stopped – he even played through all the tutti sections. It was as if he was saying, "If I stop, I won't be able to start again!" It was probably the poorest concert he ever played in New York but he never had such a success! His whole life changed. (...) There was something that was sort of lacking in his playing, this hysteria.' A student recalls the event...
Stokowski, Prokofiev: October 1971
Prokofiev 2 on 12 & 17 October 1971: Philharmonic Hall, Lincoln Center, New York City
"Leopold Stokowski has always put his personal stamp on the music he makes. It is part of the fascination he holds for listeners, and since he has a kind of genius he makes his idiosyncrasies enjoyable even when they seem wrong. He has never changed.
Tuesday night, at the age of 89, he led the American Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Brahms' Fourth Symphony that was a case in point. The program, which began with the Prelude to Act III of Rimsky‐Korsakov's “Ivan the Terrible,” also offered Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2, with Jorge Bolet as soloist. This is a big, coruscating, youthful piece of enormous technical difficulty for the pianist. It also might be said to be heartless. Its success depends on the soloist's virtuosity, and this Mr. Bolet had plenty of and to spare. He plowed brilliantly and with apparent ease through the maze of notes, giving the concerto coherence and shape. This was a spectacular performance, deserving the cheers it received.
Mr. Stokowski had his ovation, too, at the end of the program. As an encore, he played Virgil Thomson's Tango-Lullaby in honor of the composer's forthcoming 75th birthday. Mr. Thomson was present to take bows. And since the audience seemed loath to let Mr. Stokowski go, he played the work again."
(The New York Times 14.10.1971)
NB Rimsky Korsakov: The Maid of Pskov (1872) listed by Stokowski as "Ivan the Terrible" (the title which had later been used by Diaghilev). It was (of course!) a Stokowski transcription.
Oliver Daniel in his biography of Stokowski has this as taking place in Carnegie Hall (p.866). Bolet mentions that the conductor has a lapse during the first of the two concerts. 'The last movement of the concerto has a middle section which is briefly introduced by the orchestra and then the piano takes it alone; it's a rather extended section - rather lyric, poet, and it must be forty-five or fifty bars of music where the piano plays completely alone, and the without interruption or break the orchestra comes in with a bassoon solo using the same theme as the piano had announced before. Well, I got to that spot and there was no bassoon. What does one do in a case like that?... So I played about two or three bars and went back to make the connection again to see if the bassoon would come in. Stokowski was completely on the moon. I don't know whether he was so entranced by the beauty of the music or what. I presume he forgot where he was or that he was conducting. It was a terrible moment. I never exactly found out how he reacted, whether it was some member of the orchestra that made some motion to him but he finally came to. Everything else went like clockwork.' (Conversation with JB, 14 December 1976)
On the above link, you can hear the slight lapse at 23:10 onwards. If this is indeed the moment, then Jorge seems actually to pause, waiting, rather than repeat a few bars.
"The Ruins of Athens" Beethoven/Liszt
11, 12, 15 November 1971 Michael TilsonThomas/ Philharmonic Hall / Manhattan, New York, in a programme which included:
Liszt / Fantasy on Motifs from Beethoven's Ruins of Athens, for Piano and Orchestra
Chopin / Andante spianato and Grand Polonaise Brilliante for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 22
Borodin / Symphony No. 2 in B minor
Pre-concert recital on Monday 15th (some of which is available on Marston CDs but dated to 11th)
Schubert / Winterreise, D.911 "Der Lindenbaum"
Schubert / "Wohin?" No. 2 from Die schöne Mullerin, D.795
Schubert / "Das Wandern" from Die schöne Mullerin, D.795 (Op. 25) (Liszt, Franz)
Wagner / "The Spinning Song" from Der Fliegende Holländer, WWV 63, arranged for piano (Liszt, Franz)
Liszt / Grand galop chromatique
Encore: Schumann/Liszt: Widmung, Op.25 No.1 (S.566)
In The New York Times, Harold Schonberg enthused: 'Most Philharmonic programs this season contain music by Liszt, and this one was no exception. But such Liszt! It was the Fantasy on Beethoven's “Ruins of Athens,” for piano and orchestra. A thorough search of the literature would fail to turn up so equally dated a period piece, one so outrageously out of fashion. What it does have is virtuosity galore and, if approached with due regard for its musical naiveté, it be a lot of fun. Jorge Bolet played it the only way it can be played. Mr. Bolet is one of the few with feeling for the romantic spirit. He did not play down the piece, though most pianists would find it hard not to. Instead he brought to it a golden tone, the suavest of legato playing and an aristocratic line throughout. On his magnificent technique one need not dwell. Only at the very beginning, at his entrance, did he sound a little flurried. The rest was flawless.'
[I actually thought his entrance sounded spectacular, but I also wonder why Bolet bothered to learn this empty piece at all! (ed.)]
In March 1984 in Walthamstow Assembly Hall (England), Bolet, Iván Fischer and the LSO recorded, among other Liszt works, this Fantasia on a Theme from Beethoven’s “Ruinen von Athen” S122, but it went unpublished: perhaps it was not completed within the time available. He had also played it during the summers of 1964 and 1966 with Erich Leinsdorf and Boston SO at Tanglewood, Lenox, MA,
The Ruins of Athens ("Die Ruinen von Athen"), Op. 113, is a set of incidental music pieces written in 1811 by Ludwig van Beethoven. The music was written to accompany the play of the same name by August von Kotzebue, for the dedication of the new Deutsches Theater Pest in Pest, Hungary. Perhaps the best-known music from The Ruins of Athens is the Turkish March. The goddess Athena, awakening from a thousand year sleep (No. 2), overhears a Greek couple lamenting foreign occupation (Duet, No. 3). She is deeply distressed at the ruined state of her city, a part of the Ottoman Empire (Nos. 4 & 5). Led by the herald Hermes, Athena joins Emperor Franz II at the opening of the theatre in Pest, where they assist at a triumph of the muses Thalia and Melpomene. Between their two busts, Zeus erects another of Franz, and Athena crowns it. The Festspiel ends with a chorus pledging renewed ancient Hungarian loyalty.
On 18 April 1972, Leopold Stokowski celebrated his 90th birthday (he was actually 93 or 94 but had mischievously shaved a few years off his age). At a party at the Plaza Hotel, New York City, among musical items, Jorge played a Balade of Chopin and William Masselos played parts of Schumann's Davidsbündlertänze; a section of the Walt Disney film Fantasia was also shown. Mayor John V. Lindsay presented the conductor with a piece of crystal.
Teaching (or playing!) at Indiana
ABOVE: Richard Glazier with Bolet at Indiana in 1976
RIGHT: With Pedro Machado Castro, Central Park NYC, summer 1972
1972 and a contract with RCA
Bolet was still teaching at Indiana, and his submission to Grove's Dictionary of Music this year is from his address at 2611 East 2nd Street, Bloomington Indiana, 47401.
His career is making real progress now as he signs a contract with RCA, but the matter is complicated. ‘RCA Records has signed pianist Jorge Bolet to a long-term contract. The announcement was made by R. Peter Munves who said: “Bolet is recognised by the musical world as one of the foremost pianists of our time.” Bolet will make his first recordings for RCA Red Seal in August in RCA’s Studio A in New York.’
Billboard, July 1, 1972
But this project fell through. A master-tape of an initial recording of works by Liszt was made but never issued. Francis Crociata explains – ‘The reason the master-tape [which was finally issued on CD in 2001 by RCA as Bolet Rediscovered languished on the shelf for thirty years was simple: R. Peter Munves left as head of the classical division at RCA. His successor [Thomas Z. Shepard] scrapped extensive planned future recording projects of two notable artists then on the RCA roster, Earl Wild and Jorge Bolet.
'On the schedule for Bolet were six solo discs devoted to Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn and Liszt and a seventh for which repertory had not yet been decided...and the heart of Jorge's concerto repertory was to be recorded with [Mexican conductor Eduardo] Mata and the Dallas Symphony. Much of that project was reassigned to the then new-star on RCA's horizon, Tedd Joselson. The impromptu Tannhäuser Overture filled a spot on the disc which was reserved for the Norma Fantasy, which Jorge hadn't learned (and didn't like) and would not until the 1987-88 season, if then.
'The most important and unfortunate aspect of Bolet’s RCA experience was its abrupt end, suddenly quashed when he was at the height of his powers and playing as wonderfully as he ever could.'
Jorge's father's brother Domingo Hilario Bolet Valdés (born 1881) died on 22 October 1972 in Orangeburg, South Carolina, USA.
There is an amusing exchange of views in HiFi Stereo Review, November 1972 over Bolet's "Liszt's Greatest Hits of the 1850s" disc. Albert McGrigor takes issue with Igor Kipnis' unflattering review. Kipnis had praised Paderewski, but McGrigor replies: 'Paderewski recorded Spinning Chorus twice (VIC 6538, acoustic; VIC 1549, electrical, the worse of the two). Rhythmic accuracy is essential to the success of thie iece; it is built upon repeated left-hand figurations that must be played effortlessly and accurately. In Paderewski's hands, the purring of the spinning wheels becomes the clangor of the Fruit of the Loom machinery. There is no rhythm, thrust, shape, beauty, or style - only noise, and a desperate effort to keep the music going, somehow, some way. It is in Mr Bolet's performance that one can find "sprightliness,", "humour" and "lovely filigree". How Mr Kipnis can perceive the quality of humour in Paderewski's grimly determined performance eludes me.'
Liszt: Spinning Chorus from Wagner’s opera The Flying Dutchman, S.440 recorded by Bolet in 1969 in the Casino del Aliança del Poble Nou, Barcelona, Spain; issued first on Ensayo, and then in 1971 on RCA Red Seal.
Kipnis (1930-2002, himself a famous harpsichordist and prolific recording artist) replies: 'I continue to find Paderewski's Spinning Chorus full of charm, whereas Bolet's seems to me just too literal. (...) So far as representing "Golden Age" quality is concerned, Bolet's playing leaves me with a feeling of incompleteness.'
A whole page of the July edition had been devoted to the disc and the "Romantic Revival". 'I can't get too enthusiastic about some of today's neo-Romantics: the equipment is there but there is too great a generation gap. Few among the pianists of today manage to bridge it; far too many of them stumble and miss the beat - 20th century men merely reading the music through cracked 19th-century glasses.'
Bolet (recorded in Spain) 'is not a speed-demon: tempos are graceful and leisurely, perhaps at times even too much so, for I often itched for a little more daredevilry, less temperateness and complacency. Paderewski set me laughing out loud with appreciation.'
Texas' El Paso Times commented succinctly: 'RCA appears to be feeling very youthful, very commercial, for an album of some weeks ago is billed as "Franz Liszt's Greatest Hits of the 1850s." "Blazing, Brilliant, Dazzling, Demonic, Incredible, Incomparable, Unbelievable, Inimitable, Phenomenal." Played by Jorge Bolet are pieces from "Lucia di Lammermoor," "The Flying Dutchman" and such. Bolet is a very accomplished pianist and this is rather fun.'
'Where have you been, where were you?'
One of the most important articles on Bolet appeared in 1973, written by John Gruen for The New York Times, Sunday, 28 January, 1973. It contains a marvellous character study. ‘To sit in a desperately cheerful New York hotel room with Jorge Bolet is to know the meaning of absolute contradiction. The Cuban-born pianist is simply too imposing and disquieting a figure to meld easily with screaming red-and-orange curtains, and wildly patterned bedspreads...’ He demands a far more austere setting, possibly a sombre Buñuel set with dark, musty wall-hangings, shadows, chandeliers, sinister rugs... In a way he recalls characters out of Poe and Hawthorne.
But he says that ‘I am a very even-tempered person. I have my mother’s temperament and character. My mother was completely even‐tempered—an unruffled woman. Her sufferings, her frustrations, her sorrow were always held in. I am very much like her.’
'Bolet Recital Takes Festival by Storm'
Sunday/Monday, 21/22 January 1973 Auditorium della Conciliazione, Rome. Beethoven's fourth concerto with Guido Ajmone-Marsan and the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, in a concert which also included Bartok's Dance Suite. The conductor was an Italian-American, born in Turin, and attending the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, from where he graduated in 1968. Sir Georg Solti took a keen interest in the development of his career.
On 8 May 1973, Jorge gave a recital at Butler University Romantic Festival, Clowes Memorial Hall, Indianapolis.
'Where does one begin in an attempt to describe the sensation created by Jorge Bolet in his recital last night in Clowes Hall? As a start, it can be reported that this pianistic giant snatched his program of Rachmaninoff and Liszt transcriptions from the jaws of death.
'In one of those mysterious accidents that occur to the greatest of artists, and Bolet numbers among them, the first selection, Rachmaninoff's version of J. S. Bach's Prelude from the Third Partita for Unaccompanied Violin, got away from him. Small errors become noticeable almost immediately and then that horror for all performers occurred, a memory lapse. Finally, Bolet flew through to the end only to hit a terrible clanger on the final note. From there the program became a steady rise...'
Michael Glover adds that 'After concluding this recital, Jorge Bolet paid a immediate visit to the radio engineer personally to oversee deletion from the master of the Bach transcription that had been the concert's opening item.'
Jorge's carnival piece, Godowsky's Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes from Die Fledermaus
can be heard on Marston CDs Volume 2 from a performance on 7 May 1973, in Cologne/Köln, Germany.
The Gardens of Buitenzorg (No. 8 from Java Suite) on 28 November 1983, in Milan, Italy.
Post-concert festivities following upon Rachmaninoff's third piano concerto with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra under Izler Solomon in November 1973 attracted the attention of the 'Don't Quote Me' column of the Indianapolis News:
'Frank Cooper, the Butler University music professor, wrote his old friend Jorge Bolet long ago and offered to take him out to dinner after his performance. Bolet accepted and Cooper invited several people from the symphony and from the city's upper crust to join them at La Tour restaurant. After the pianist's outstanding concert, however, Bolet said he didn't want to go to La Tour. "Where do you want to go?" Cooper asked. Bolet made a suggestion that left blank expressions on the guests' faces, but finally they realized he was serious. And that's how a carload of people in full tuxedos and long gowns wound up at Steak-n-Shake drive-in on 38th Street, sipping strawberry milkshakes.'
Alicia de Larrocha
A pianist much admired by Bolet gave a recital in Carnegie Hall on Sunday, 25 March 1973 at 3pm. She performed the complete Iberia suite - apparently this was one of the 80 times that she performed it complete; she last performed it in New York, to critical acclaim, in 1966.
The work was composed between 1905 and 1909 by the Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz. Iberia was highly praised by Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen, who said: "Iberia is the wonder for the piano; it is perhaps on the highest place among the more brilliant pieces for the king of instruments".
'One has no choice but to call ''Iberia'' excessive. This is not a condemnation, only a description of its essence. Isaac Albéniz's 12 piano pieces are a hymn to overabundance. He was a Catalan who spent much of his incredible childhood in the New World and his later productive years in Paris. But Andalusia was closest to his heart, and the florid vegetation of this music seems to rise up like a mirage out of the hot, dry Spanish landscape.
'The composer himself despaired of the troubles he was making for pianists, once complaining to Manuel de Falla, whom he met on a Paris street, that what he had written was unplayable and perhaps should be burned. Maybe ''rarely playable'' is the better term, which translates further into ''rarely heard.'' Items like the ''El Corpus Christi en Sevilla'' are discouraging to the ablest pianist who, having struggled through pages of profuse filigree, is punished, not rewarded, at the end by a coda which magnifies, even doubles, the problems preceding it. Many pianists work at ''Iberia'' in their studios, but few dare bring it to the recital stage.
'Miss De Larrocha is not the only pianist today who can play ''Iberia,'' but she is perhaps the only one who approaches it minus the palpable sweat and fear that exude from the recorded efforts of her competitors.' Her extraordinary ear 'seems able to command color and fineness of detail with an imperiousness that the musculature has little option but to obey.
'The newer playing is as sure and as interesting as it has been in the past. New York will have a chance to confirm or deny this on Nov. 22 when Miss De Larrocha plays ''Iberia'' complete at Carnegie Hall.'
Bernard Holland, The New York Times, 16 October 1988 (of her second recording for DECCA/London)
AdL with JB and Garrick Ohlsson, March 1972. source
South Africa, May 1973
The Rand Daily Mail 17 May 1973 states that Jorge had changed the programmes for his Pretoria and Johannesburg recitals, at the suggestion of friends assisting him in his SA tour. They wanted more Liszt, and he ditched the Spanish Rhapsody for Tannhäuser Overture.
In a piece by Joe Sack in the same paper on 23 May 1973, we are told that 'The famous Bolet brothers will both be in South Africa this year but Jorge on a recital and concerto tour, will leave the Rand just before Alberto arrives in July.' (Witwatersrand ["white waters' ridge" in English, rand being the Afrikaans word for 'ridge'], the ridge upon which Johannesburg is built and where most of South Africa's gold deposits were found.)
'Whenever we can arrange this, Jorge Bolet told me yesterday shortly after his arrival, nine years after his last visit on the Rand, we meet in different parts of the world and appear together.' What was originally intended to be purely a holiday visit to SA turned into a concert tour for Bolet when Johannesburg pianist Adelaide Newman persuaded him to devote part of his time here to recitals and recordings for the SABC
Jorge had brought a battery of cameras and telephoto lenses. 'With these I hope to get colour slides of the animal life in the Kruger National Park. and when I leave here in the wild life park near Nairobi.'
Jorge gives an account of his time just before departing for South Africa. 'After my recent Bakersfield, California concert with Alberto, I had five days of dashing across the country, from there to Saratoga, then on to San Francisco, New York, Indianapolis and then across the Atlantic to London. Almost as bad was last week's routine. I had two performances in Lübeck, Germany, the last one ending late at night, and then snatched a few hours sleep before leaving shortly after six the next morning for Bremen where recording sessions started at the radio station at 10am.'
Friday 25 May: lunchtime all-Liszt recital in Pretoria at the Musaion
(concert hall of the University, pictured above).
Sunday 27 May: recital Johannesburg Civic Theatre 3pm. He will also
perform in Durban (4/5 June) and Cape Town (7).
Jorge plays the Grieg concerto with the SABC orchestra in Johannesburg
City Hall on May 29 and 30. Edgar Cree conducted Nielsen's third symphony
after the interval.
The Rand Daily News 30 May 1973 questioned 'Are transcriptions really
necessary when there is a wealth of original literature? Yes, when a pianist with the power and insight of Bolet plays them.' That Sunday concert had included Brahms' Sonata in F minor op.5, and Liszt's Gnomereigen.
Bill Brower in The Sunday Times (J'burg), 27 May 1973 said that today wasn't his cup of Sunday afternoon tea. Brahms' Sonata in F minor Op. 5, 'a complex and perplexing gambit, prolific in its technical demands, which were marvellously met but it lacked the (John) Ogdon hand of gentleness. I longed for a singing piano string, not merely exploding cascades of tonal dynamite. Liszt filled the second half, an hour almost totally devoid of human feeling. Gargantuan effort was there in abundance... What was missing for me were the unfathomable depths which no human accomplishment or instrumental arrangement can plumb, as for example, in The Art of Fugue or the Grosse Fugue. I suppose when you climb Everest, the feelings do become numb.' [Not convinced by his final sentiments! (Editor)]
E. Ahlers for Die Transvaler (29.5.73) was more convinced, talking both of a pianist's dream of a technique and of considered musical depth (oorwoë musikale diepgang). The powerful and sparkling scherzo was the highlight of this work (is he speaking of Brahms or of the pianist?). Jorge played the Tannhäuser overture and two encores, Liebesträum 3 and Widmung.
Die Transvaler (named after Transvaal province, once part of the Boer republics) was established in 1937 as a newspaper that would promote the cause of Afrikaner nationalism within the Afrikaner-dominated National Party. Edited by Hendrik Verwoerd—future prime minister and architect of the apartheid regime—Die Transvaler was notorious for its racism, antisemitism, and opposition to South Africa’s entry into World War II.
In 1948, the National Party won its first election in a decade and, shortly thereafter, implemented apartheid. The apartheid regime stripped non-white South Africans of their political rights and strictly limited their housing, travel, employment, and social opportunities—using a surveillance and violence to enforce its policies. The pinnacle of Die Transvaler‘s influence was in the 1960s and early 1970s, under the governments of Afrikaner nationalists Hendrik Verwoerd and B.J. Vorster.
Saturday, 25 August 1973, Gibraltar Auditorium, Fish Creek, Wisconsin. Sgambati, Concerto in G minor along with Mozart 39th Symphony in E flat and Copland's Appalachian Spring. Part of the 21st Peninsula Music Festival; conducted by Dr Thor Johnson (who founded the festival and had accompanied JB in the Prokofiev 2 recording with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, a landmark recording in that it was the first recording ever made of this work). Jorge was interviewed by The Door County Advocate (28.8.73): '"The US allowed the Cuban situation to develop," Bolet states firmly. "This is due to a national reluctance on the part of American to look the problem of Communism straight in the eye. Americans tend to think Communism is not as bad as it really is. I am a rabid anti-socialist." As a final remark, Bolet recommended reading The Fourth Floor by Ambassador Smith. The book records the progress of Castro's rise to power.'
The book to which Jorge refers is The Fourth Floor. An Account of the Castro Communist Revolution, by Earl E. T. Smith (New York, 1962)
Wednesday, 10 October 1973, Colston Hall, Bristol UK: Rachmaninoff 3 with the Bournemouth Symphony and Paavo Berglund. The programme also included Vaughan William's' 6th symphony and Panufnik's Heroic Overture. Sir Andrzej Panufnik (1914 – 1991) was a Polish composer and conductor. He became established as one of the leading Polish composers, and as a conductor he was instrumental in the re-establishment of the Warsaw Philharmonic orchestra after World War II. He also served as Principal Conductor of the Kraków Philharmonic Orchestra. After his increasing frustration with the extra-musical demands made on him by the country's regime, he defected to the United Kingdom in 1954, and took up British citizenship.
1974
Geneva, Switzerland, 23 January, 1974: Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953), Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor.
Live concert at the Victoria Hall, Geneva; Swiss Radio live broadcast.
Gazette de Lausanne, 26.1.74 reported that 'Jorge Bolet, a splendid artist of rare intelligence and emotional power, knew how to articulate the sequence of these pages with incredible brilliance: the prodigious cadence of the Allegretto, the vivacity of the Scherzo, the marvellous lyricism of the Russian theme of the Finale took on a tragico-epic meaning under his fingers. His art of timbre attained incredible subtlety. The accompaniment was also remarkable for its precision and breadth.'
(There was another performance in the University Hall, Fribourg on Friday 25.1.74)
28 February 1974: Heinz Hall, Pittsburgh. Jorge replaced an indisposed Radu Lupu in Beethoven's 3rd concerto with Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos.
Radu Lupu CBE (30 November 1945 – 17 April 2022) was a Romanian pianist. Born in Galați, Romania, Lupu began studying piano at the age of six. Two of his major piano teachers were Florica Musicescu, who also taught Dinu Lipatti, and (going aged 16 to Moscow) Heinrich Neuhaus, who also taught Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels. From 1966 to 1969, he won three of the world's most prestigious piano competitions: the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (1966), the George Enescu International Piano Competition (1967), and the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition (1969). These victories launched Lupu's international career.
(*He had performed Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Charles Groves (Op. 37) in the Leeds final.)
In 2016 was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2016 New Year Honours for services to music.
In a 2002 interview, Japanese-British pianist Dame Mitsuko Uchida said of Lupu that "there is nobody on earth who can actually get certain range of colour, and also the control – don't underestimate this unbelievable control of his playing".
25th February, 1974 at Carnegie Hall
‘Stung by years of neglect’,
Bolet roared to the heavens –
and the microphones were there
to witness it.
The most important event, conceivably, in his career awaited Jorge in February in that battleground of the pianistic giants, Carnegie Hall. He'd played there before, quite a few times in fact, but 25 February, at half past eight in the evening, turned out to be different. 'I am big, it's just that the public now got me', to adapt a famous line from Sunset Boulevard.
It was a courageous and unforgettable programme of mammoth transcriptions, ending with Liszt’s version of the Overture to Tannhäuser, Bolet piling Pelion upon Ossa in the incremental programme (as one critic put it). (Pelion and Ossa are two mountains in Thessaly, in northern Greece, and the phrase alludes to Greek mythology: two giants, Otus and Ephialtes, tried to pile Pelion and Ossa on Olympus in order to reach the gods and overthrow them.) Somehow an original composition - Chopin’s Preludes Op.28 - got into the mix!
'As one of the most prominent pianists of the romantic revival, Jorge Bolet put on his program a great deal of music that was popular at the turn of the century but that has since slipped into disrepute. The audience reaction he evoked, with a standing ovation and all, showed that there is life in the old girls yet.
'Mr. Bolet has a technique equal to any in the world today, and in music that is a technical stunt, such as the Schulz‐Evler “Blue Danube,” he does bring that element to the fore. On the whole, however, his playing is if anything reserved. There is an element in Mr. Bolet's make‐up that obviously shrinks from pointless display, and often as a result he will underplay.
'It was in many respects a remarkable concert — the playing of a stupendous workman at the piano determined to prove that certain aspects of the repertory remain viable when played with the charm and pianistic finish that the giants of the past used to bring to it.'
The “Tannhäuser” Overture in Liszt's transcription: 'Naturally it brought down the house. For encores, Mr. Bolet came up with three more forgotten pieces. The dead past lived once again under Mr. Bolet's fantastic fingers.'
Mel Taub, The New York Times 27 February 1974
In September, Eric Salzman reviewed the LPs when they were issued. Of the Chopin Preludes: 'There was no hyphen involved in these, but the program might just as well have read "Chopin-Bolet", for he takes every possible expressive liberty, playing off the beat, sustaining tones, arpeggiating chords, creating new lines and cross -rhythms, playing fast and free with the tempos, even changing the text here and there. Yet all of it has such authority and sensibility of touch, nuance, color, line, and phrase that one ends up agreeing with Bolet and not the dry-bone notes of the printed music! He re-creates it all afresh.'
Concerning the transcriptions of Viennese waltzes (by Carl Tausig and Schulz Evler): 'In a way, it's a pity that so much skill - and I mean musicality, sensitivity, swiftness, sureness, taste, and communicativeness, not mere facility - is tossed away so lightly, so prodigally, on so many soap bubbles.'
Here is Jorge's performance of J.Strauss/ Schulz-Evler, "Blue Danube" 26 May 1974 in Arnhem, Holland, bubbles, froth, spume, foam and all...