1982
"His fingers are made of steel but the tips have the Midas Touch"
Joaquin Antonio ("Nico") Bolet Tremoleda, Jorge's eldest brother, died in Miami on 6 January 1982. He had financed Jorge's first tour of Europe in 1935. He was born on 25 June 1902 in Caraballo, La Habana, Cuba and was married to Emilia Maria del Carmen Ocejo.
8 February 1982: Van Wezel Auditorium, Sarasota, Florida. Recital includes Schumann's Fantasy, 5 Schubert/Liszt Lieder and the Mephisto waltz. 'His fingers are made of steel but the tips have the Midas Touch - except that what he touches turns into liquid, not solid gold. It flows endlessly with a mellifluous shading from strength to gentleness. Surprisingly, he is very undramatic himself. No fuss, no feathers, and rarely a smile.'
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It was in this month (and later, in September) that Bolet recording for Decca the material that would constitute volume 1 of his Liszt series (Decca SXDL 7596 [LP]), the first recording I ever owned of JB, bought just when it was issued in March 1983.
Producer: Peter Wadland
17-19 February, 1982 Kingsway Hall, London
Liszt, Funérailles S173/7
Hungarian Rhapsody S244/12
Rigoletto - paraphrase de concert S434
Mephisto Waltz No.1 S514
On Tuesday 23 February, Bolet gave a recital (not for the first time) in the small but exquisite Wigmore Hall, London, one of the world's leading centres for chamber music and a favourite of many pianists, not least the Hungarian/British pianist Sir András Schiff. According to the Financial Times (25.2.82), in conversation with Edward Greenfield, he told a story, ‘splendid and characteristically zany’ about Moriz Rosenthal, his so-called teacher briefly in the Vienna of 1935/6.
Joseph Marx’s Romantic Piano Concerto in E major (1916-19), with the Bavarian Radio SO under Marek Janowski, was also recorded – probably on 30/31 August 1982 - but only for radio transmission. Jorge had already performed it in Vienna with the ORF Orchestra under Ali Rabhari on Thursday & Friday 13/14 May in the Musikverein; the second half of that concert consisted of Mahler's Symphony No. 4 in G. There were also performances earlier that month in Avery Fisher Hall, New York with Zubin Mehta; there is a recording of the 4 May performance.
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[For more information on this concerto, go to this link on 1976/7 page.]
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Saturday 27 (8pm) & Sunday (5:30pm) 28 March 1982: Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major Op.58 with Musica Æterna Orchestra and conductor Frederic Waldman in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium of the Metropolitan Museum New York City (Handel and Haydn were also on the programme). With the same forces he had performed Beethoven's third concerto in the same locale on 8 December 1973. The Auditorium was built in 1954, and the entrance located - rather exotically - in gallery 135 in the Egyptian Wing.
The Royal Academy of Art, London had put on a show, “The Great Japan Exhibition, Art of the Edo Period 1600 – 1868” (24 October 1981 - 21 February 1982). It was a significant and unprecedented event in UK-Japanese cultural relations. According to the Royal Academy’s Annual Report of 1982 it was the most comprehensive exhibition ever devoted to its subject, even in Japan itself. Bolet talks of failing to see it with David Dubal in April 1982, and gives an interesting insight into the life of a touring musician.
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David Dubal has written of Bolet (I've chosen points of his with which I tend to agree, and have omitted others that seem less just) that 'he spun iridescent webs of pianist gold; cadenzas of colored sprays alighted from the keyboard. When he was really in the mood (for Bolet was at times sadly out of the mood) he could truly be infernal. His sonority was suffocating. At times he became so caught up in his tinting that the playing became more prissy than delectable. He was not at home in the formal gardens of Mozart, Haydn or Beethoven. He glided through them with a smoothness or a ponderousness that missed all points of tension.'
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There were concerts in Germany in March 1981, including those with Christof Prick and the Sechsten Symphoniekonzert der Badischen Staatskapelle (Berlin), and with Ferdinand Leitner and the NDR-Sinfonieorchester Hamburg.
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17 April 1982 at the Ocean State Performing Arts Center, Providence, Rhode Island USA, Jorge played with the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, under Alvaro Cassuto's direction. 'One is the Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat by Liszt, who epitomizes that era's extravagance of spirit. The other is Franck's Symphonic Variations, a piece which, while not completely a contradiction of its time, contains elements that keep it just outside the mainstream. Heard cheek by jowl - although separated by an intermission - differences quickly become apparent. Surrounding Bolet's performances will be two scores tied to Terpsichore. The first is Copland's evocation of a onetime Mexico City dance hall, El Salon Mexico, and after the Franck comes a Suite from Stravinsky's Firebird ballet.' Providence Journal 16.4.82.
Edwin Safford (18.4.82): 'Bolet gave the piano a better sound in the Ocean State than any previous performer this listener has heard. Nor was it simply a case of his gloriously subdued passages alone, for at climactic moments there was not a bit of distortion either. The Franck's meditative sections, such as the "Swan" variation (if it does not bear that title, it should), were produced with an absorbed attention which correspondingly had ears hanging on every measure. Brighter pages showed digital lucidity as well and, like the whole, were stated in a manner you would call patrician, nothing less.'
Perth, May 1982
"It became clear that great music was finding a great performer'
Jorge was in the city of Perth, Scotland on Friday 21 May 1982, where he gave a recital of Liszt, Schubert and Chopin in the City Hall. In advertising the recital, the Aberdeen Evening Express teasingly stated that 'he is said to be something special'. 'The most disquieting thing...', wrote Raymond Monelle in The Scotsman, 'was the audience - or the lack of it, for this distinguished performed, whose Edinburgh Festival recital of 1980 is still talked about, can seldom have seen so many empty seats... He sets himself against empty display. The acrobatics of the Mephisto Waltz were coolly encompassed.' Chopin's Barcarolle was 'a slow pageant of stately pomp and sage resignation'. Of Chopin's third sonata, 'it became clear that great music was finding a great performer'.
(This city, by its location, is sometimes called "Gateway to the Highlands". Close to it is Scone Abbey, which formerly housed the Stone of Scone - also known as the Stone of Destiny - , on which the King of Scots was traditionally crowned.)
On 24 May there was a recital at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. It ‘should have made a fine contrasting postlude to Horowitz on Saturday – for to the Russian, the Cuban is both antithesis and sibling’. There was an ‘almost studied avoidance of the manic and mercurial’ but Bolet was ‘a brother from the same age of keyboard sensibility’. He was ‘not on best form’ and the Schumann Fantasy was ‘laboured, pedantic, heavy in spirit, fragmented in impetus’. Financial Times 26.5.82
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26 May, Oosterpoort, Groningen, Netherlands: Rachmaninoff concerto No. 3 with the Noordelijk Filharmonisch Orkest under Lucas Vis. 'Perhaps interest in the composer Jan van Gilse is beginning to revive: two seasons ago his opera "Tijl" was performed at the Holland Festival. His Concert Overture from 1900, a piece in which the then nineteen-year-old was still deeply obliged to Brahms, was performed at the NFO. Bolet performed Rachmaninoff brilliantly, and was impressive not only because of his technique, but also through the care with which he approached small elements. He fully exploited the specific timbre of his Bechstein grand piano. After an ovation of applause, he gave another encore: an étude j by Chopin arranged by Godovski (or Moskovsky or Anton Rubinstein). Dvorak's Eighth Symphony ended the evening.'
(Nieuwsblad van het Noorden)
"Has my playing changed?"
This video has sound
The Joseph Marx Concerto again
​May 1982, New York
''In the piano part, he uses four- and five-note chords in each hand, and he's all over the keyboard. So memorization has been a tremendous problem. Unfortunately, my first performances of it are the ones I'm doing with Mr. [Zubin] Mehta and the Philharmonic, and I can tell you, I'm going to be nervous. Normally, I would prefer to try out works this complicated with three or four smaller orchestras before coming to New York, but that wasn't possible. And from here, I'm taking it straight to Vienna, Berlin, Hamburg, Linz, Zagreb and Munich. But I'm a sucker for this kind of music, and the opportunity to play it was something I couldn't resist.''
(Allan Kozinn, New York Times, April 1982)
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'Asked to elaborate on the character of the work, Mr. Bolet hid a faint smile under his thick mustache and asked, ''Do you know 'Death and Transfiguration,' 'Till Eulenspiegel' and 'Don Juan'? Well, that's the character. It's very Straussian.'' Then, sitting at a slightly out-of-tune piano piled high with scores, he opened his two-piano reduction of the work and read long sections from each movement. With its often dense piano textures, its stretches of lugubrious melody, and its stream of Romantic gestures, the work easily lives up to its title. It seems, in fact, an entirely fitting vehicle for Mr. Bolet, whose reputation rests on his ability to render such splashy scores in a manner that has struck many reviewers as entirely coherent and aristocratic, preserving what Harold C. Schonberg called ''virtuosity on the most supreme level'' without allowing the music to lapse into superficial displays of technique.'
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And on his career:
''You know, I've had a long career,'' the 67-year-old Havana-born pianist reflected recently, ''but it's been such a slow one. It seems that only now, when I should start taking things a little easier, I have to keep going harder than ever. All of a sudden, everyone wants me. Why now? I've been told by many people that my playing has undergone a transformation in the last few years - I don't know, a kind of super-ripening, or a projection that I haven't had in the past. I'm not sure this is something I can feel myself..."
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The performance on 4 May 1982 Avery Fisher Hall, New York. Jorge then flew on the 8th from New York to Vienna where there were two days of rehearsals with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, and then on 13/14th two performances of the Marx concerto.
What might have been...
Jorge's itinerary states that 1-15 June 1982 were reserved for Mexico, and then 16-24 for London with famous Spanish pianist and friend Alicia de Larrocha (1923-2009). It was intended that they record two-piano music for Decca, but this never in the end came about. 'I think this never took place because of Alicia. Every time I talked to her about this project, she cried: "No, no, I am not good enough, I am not good enough for that."' (Mattheus Smits) Alicia Torra de Larrocha, the pianist's daughter, has however informed me that the reason the recording never took place 'is because her husband (my father) was very sick and she decided to cancel all her commitments (from June 1982) to be by his side. Finally, my father passed away on 9 August of that year surrounded by his wife and children. In September, she resumed her concerts. I was not aware of the recording project, but, since the dates coincide, I am sure that this was the reason. My mother greatly admired Jorge Bolet.'
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That pause in the record of Ms de Larrocha's concerts is between 21 June (Palau de la Música Catalana, Barcelona) and 10 September (Berwald Hall, Stockholm) of that year.
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Alicia De Larrocha had recorded for Hispavox, CBS/Columbia/Epic, BMG/RCA and Decca/London, winning her first Grammy Award in 1975 and her last one in 1992, at the age of almost seventy. She received the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts in 1994.
August 1982, Usher Hall, Edinburgh
On Saturday evening, 28 August, he appeared in the Usher Hall, Edinburgh with the Scottish National Orchestra and one of the most important figures in the musical life of Scotland, Sir Alexander Gibson (1926-1995), the founder of Scottish Opera in Glasgow in 1962. Gibson had a particular affinity for Scandinavian music, particularly Jean Sibelius, whose work he recorded several times, and Danish composer Carl Nielsen. He was awarded Finland's Sibelius Medal in recognition of his distinguished service to the composer's music.) Jorge's first appearance in Scotland's "other" city Glasgow had been on 24 June 1963, again with "Sandy" Gibson.
​Maurice Lindsay in the Glasgow Herald 30.8.82 was unimpressed with the programme, which he believed had to be constructed around the performance by JB of Liszt's second piano concerto in A major. "To this dreadful farrago of strutting pomposity, vulgar flamboyance and empty rhetoric Mr Bolet brought an effortlessly massive brilliance and a contrastingly rich dimension of delicacy that was nothing short of breathtaking."
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Maurice Lindsay [1918-2009] was a tireless champion of Scotland’s literary and artistic renaissance in the 20th century. As a prolific poet, broadcaster and all-round man of letters, he was at the heart of his country's cultural life for over sixty years. In 1962, Scottish composer Thea Musgrave set five of his children's poems in Lowland Scots to music for voice and piano, in a song cycle called A Suite o' Bairnsangs.
Sample of his schedule for the second half of 1982
25 August (Wednesday) he flies from San Francisco to JFK
26 JFK– London
27 London - Edinburgh
[28 Aug] with Scottish National orchestra and Sir Alexander Gibson
29 Edinburgh to Hannover, via London
30 (Monday) Hannover, NDR (North German Radio): Marx concerto
31 recording for NDR
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1 September (Wed) 6:40am flight Hannover – London
2 London Prom: Liszt Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, S.124 with Paavo Berglund + BBC Welsh Symphony
4 (Sat): British Airways BA4732, 9.40am London-Edinburgh.
Between hours of 2-6pm Freemasons' Hall: piano practice
6 (Mon) Edinburgh - London, after a morning recital in the Freemasons' Hall (Beethoven Les Adieux, Rachmaninoff, Variations on a theme by Chopin, Liszt, Sposalizio, Campanella).
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7 Competition, Wigmore Hall
9 Lufthansa LH053 14.50 – 17.05. Staying in Eberfeld at the Kaiserhof Hotel
10 Rehearsal Wuppertal, then concert
13 Dusseldorf-London LH050 9.35am
14 Recording DECCA (material for volumes 1 & 3 of Liszt series); evening Janet Baker recital
15 Recording; 8pm dinner with Robin Ray
16 Recording. Mac and Tex arrive [= Mac Finley and Houston A Cummings, now known as TEX after the death of his uncle Tex Compton]
17 Recording
18 (Sat) Ivan Fischer, LSO concert in Croydon
19 (Sun) Recording of Rachmaninov #3 [also 20th when he dines at 7.30 with Mr and Mrs Myers]
21 Recording (DECCA; auditions Kingsway Hall, 6pm)
22 (Wed) Recording
23 London-Dusseldorf 9.45am on Lufthansa LH051
24 (Sat) Dusseldorf – NYC on Lufthansa LH 408 at 1.20pm
26 2pm photo session, Beethoven Society, 875 Park Ave., 77/78th streets
27 A meeting with impresario Hubert Breslin)
28-30 at Curtis Institute, Philadelphia, giving lessons.
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Recordings during 14-17 & 21-22 September 1982 in Kingsway Hall, London
Liszt
[a] La Campanella S140/3
[b] Liebestraum in A flat S541/3
[c] Piano Sonata in B minor S178
[d] Valse impromptu S213
[e] Grand Galop chromatique S219
[f] Liebesträume S541/1&2
[g] Années de pèlerinage : Italie S161/1-6
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Producer: Peter Wadland, Engineer: John Dunkerley
19-20 Sep 1982 Kingsway Hall
London Symphony Orchestra, Iván Fischer
RACHMANINOV Piano Concerto No.3 in D minor Op.30 (which was issued in August 1983)
Christian Johansson has noted that, as an encore in the 2nd September Prom, Jorge played Liszt: Funérailles, S.173 No.7 (from Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses). 'The encore was dedicated to the memory of Sir Clifford Curzon (1907-1982), who had died the previous day.' To which can be added that this famous British pianist, who had studied for two years with Artur Schnabel in Berlin (1928-30), was buried next to his wife in the churchyard of St Patrick's, Patterdale, near their holiday home in the Lake District. On his gravestone are inscribed the opening words of Franz von Schober's poem "An die Musik": "Du holde Kunst" (O fairest art), familiar from Schubert's setting.​
San Rafael, California recital, October 1982
A recital at Dominican College , San Rafael California. 31 October, 1982
Sunday 3pm, in the Angelico Auditorium
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Schumann, Fantasiestucke Op 12, Brahms, Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op 24, Rachmaninov, Variations on a Theme of Chopin, Op 22, Kreisler-Rachmaninov, Liebeslied & Liebesfreud. Encores, of course.
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The Schumann is not otherwise available in JB's discography, though the pianist had a long acquaintance with the music. For example: on Thursday 27 October 1932, students of the Curtis Institute played in Bomberger Hall, Ursinus College, a liberal arts college in Collegeville, Pennsylvania (25 miles from downtown Philadelphia). Jorge performed four pieces from Schumann's Fantasiestücke (Des Abends, Fabel, Aufschwung, Ende vom Lied). 'Very noticeable were [JB's] clarity and melody in the slow parts.' (He also included Paul de Schloezer’s notoriously difficult étude, the Albéniz-Godowsky Tango and Andaluza by Manuel de Falla.) A report by The Ursinus Weekly, 31 October, 1932.
The SD-10 piano supplied by Baldwin had loose tuning pins in the register above middle C. The Baldwin technician tried to address this in the interval but without success and the tuning slipped even more during the second half.
'For the 12 years (1970-1983) I lived in San Francisco,' recalls Ray Edwards, 'I heard Bolet play once, in San Rafael 20 miles north, despite the fact that his home was in Mountain View, 40 miles south. It was an interesting program, although not for the repertoire, which I don't remember, but for the fact that the Baldwin piano he was supplied with had a loose pin in the wrest plank in the octave above middle C that gradually slipped quite noticeably out of tune. The technician at hand bought it back up at the intermission, but it slipped again even more.'
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JB had, in fact, given a recital in the Dominican College much earlier on 16 August 1953
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Puerto Rico
Saturday 13 November 1982: with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Puerto Rico under John Barnett in the Sala René Marqués of the Centro de Bellas Artes, San Juan. The 'archiconocido' (well-known) Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 2 in C minor. El Mundo (19.11.82) reported: 'Impeccably correct and stately in his distinguished demeanour, Bolet transported us to the world of the grand Romantic piano. There were no “gestures”, there were no (thank God!) "fireworks", there was extraordinary good taste, an individual interpretation [...] There was a feeling that everything was surprisingly simple, with the lapidary simplicity of the great truths. The ovation was endless.' (Una interpretación propia de quien tiene que haber analizado “palmo a palmo” cada frase y cada acorde; hubo una sensación de que todo era sorprendentemente sencillo, con la sencillez lapidaria de las grandes verdades.)
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Cristobal Diaz writing in El Mundo 7.11.82 recalls an unforgettable night at the Teatro Tapia in November 1977, which seems to be when he last heard Bolet in San Juan, or it may be the last time JB performed in the city. He also recalls hearing Bolet in the same concerto (Rachmaninoff 2) in Havana in 1943 under José Echaniz. ​
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November 1982: with John Schubeck and the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra.​
7 December 1982
Aberdeen, "The Granite City", Scotland.
(During the mid-18th to mid-20th centuries, Aberdeen's buildings incorporated locally quarried grey granite, which may sparkle like
silver because of its high mica content.)
Dvorak, Scherzo Capriccioso;
Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor;
Ralph Vaughan Williams, Symphony No. 4
Scottish National Orchestra and Paavo Berglund.
Scotland
​On 3 and 4 December, Jorge was in London's Kingsway Hall, setting down Liszt's Années de pèlerinage : Italie S161/7, which would become Volume 4 of the series when it was issued in June 1984.
​'The Scottish National Orchestra returned to the Music Hall, Aberdeen, last night with what, for them, was one of the more adventurous programmes of the session. The soloist in Rachmaninov's Third piano concerto, one of the greatest of romantic concertos, was the famous Cuban pianist Jorge Bolet, and it was stimulating to hear such an artist In a work so full of musical and technical challenges. The slow movement had the requisite ardour and the exhilarating finale was propelled with vigour and brilliance. However, this is by no means an easy work to bring off with complete success, and on this occasion there were many discrepancies of ensemble, some obvious, some less so, between soloist and orchestra. The symphony was the extraordinarily violent Fourth of Vaughan Williams which seems to have lost little of its impact in its 50 years’ existence.' Aberdeen Press and Journal (8.12.82)
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Record critic David Hurwitz has memorably described the violence of RVW's fourth symphony as 'Godzilla eating Tokyo, if Tokyo were the English countryside'.
15 December 1982, Teatro Olimpico, Rome: an all-Liszt recital at 8.45pm
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Jorge records Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 2 in A major, S125 with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under Edo de Waart: 19 December 1982 in the Großer Sendesaal, Haus des Rundfunks, Berlin, Germany (available on the Audite label, RIAS Recordings Vol. 2)
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Photo: the fairytale Craigievar Castle (begun 1576), 27 miles inland from Aberdeen