At Curtis, 1927

Cine Mundial, May 1928

Voyage

The young Jorge auditioned twice in 1927 at Curtis. Aged 12, he had sailed with his sister Maria Josefa (aged 23) on the SS Governor Cobb from Havana to Key West, Florida, landing on 16 September 1927. The journey was 105 miles and took six and a half hours. From the Island City of Key West, a 'luxurious Pullman train' took passengers on an overseas railway a distance of 128 miles across the Gulf of Mexico to the Florida mainland.

Governor Cobb was an American coastal passenger steamboat built in 1906 by the Delaware River Shipbuilding Company in Chester, Pennsylvania; she had the distinction of being the first American-built ship to be powered by steam turbines. Governor Cobb was employed by the Eastern Steamship Company on the Boston to New Brunswick route. During the winter she was leased to the Oriental and Occidental Steamship Co. (later Peninsular & Occidental Steamship Co.) to operate between Key West ('the only frost-free city in the United States, kaleidoscopic in its variety of colouring, its genuinely tropic atmosphere') and Havana.

Jorge's US visa had been issued on 27 August in Havana. Travel to the United States was not new to the Bolet family. Maria had, for example, been admitted to Key West the previous year (15 October 1926) and her last permanent residence in the United States was Jacksonville, Florida. Father Antonio’s address was given as San Miguel 224, Havana. (A nephew of Jorge, Nico, was living in Jacksonville in 2005)

From the passenger manifest for his sea voyage in 1927 to Key West, Florida:

Audition

The first audition was on 27 September 1927, in which Jorge auditioned for the remarkable founder of the Curtis Institute, Mary Louise Curtis Bok, and members of the Piano Faculty Isabelle Vengerova and David Saperton. There was a second audition on 6 October 1927 for the famous Director, Josef Hofmann and, again, Mrs. Bok. First day of class for the 1927-28 year was 3 October, 1927.

There exist some letters sent by Maria to Mrs Virginia Shaw, of Hastings-on-Hudson, New York at around this time, 1927/8.

‘The Curtis Institute of Philadelphia will give 60 scholarships for people with talent and I hope Jorge will win one. Is it not that glorious, we have to be there the 26th of Sept… Jorge had his piano examination Tuesday and yesterday he had theory. He was accepted and won a scholarship, is not that grand, they will teach him everything so he doesn't have to go to school…

'Jorge…is taller each day I am afraid it will be hard for me to make him do what I want when he grows a little more…he is just as a five years old child and he is 13!! And with a body like a 18 years boy!! I say he has in his head and heart only music so much that he can't do or think anything else…

'Jorge is all right, I suppose he is still bad, he has written me only once since he went to camp the 1st of July, it makes me sorry that he is so lazy, he simply doesn't like to write and [for] that reason he writes to nobody…I only hope he will change…

'Mr Barnhouse, the pastor of our church, is a man willing to help everyone he can. He loves music with a passion not common in many people. [...] Jorge has had so many interruptions this year, four times sick in bed in six months. I haven't made peace with him, he makes me tremble every time he gets sick…that terrible picture of his first sickness, I haven't been able to get it out of my mind…

'I am so crazy about my little brother that I can understand how proud you must be of yours. My greatest pride about my little brother is that he really loves Jesus Christ as his savior and he prizes him more than the world with all its glories. He knows the real value of things and is spiritually alive when so many are dead to God and blind to spiritual things in spite of character and culture. May your brother too find his treasure in Christ…'

Virginia McCall Shaw English (1909-2006), born in Davenport, Scott County, Iowa, features much in correspondence (see also 1940s) She had been a music major in Voice at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, and was recognised as a dramatic concert soprano in New York, Virginia, Florida and in Fountainebleau, France. She studied with Madame Nadia Boulanger in Fountainebleau, France and Oscar Seagle in Schroon Lake, New York. Her first husband was Dr Albert Shaw of Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

Rittenhouse_Square_spring_J.Smith_VP-2200x1237.jpg

Lessons

From 1927-34, Jorge was taught at Curtis by David Saperton, son-in-law of the remarkable pianist-composer Leopold Godowsky (Saperton had married daughter Vanita, sister of silent movie star Dagmar Godowsky). He introduced Jorge to the fabulously complex compositions of Godowsky, which Jorge would champion throughout his career.

Of David Saperton, Jorge has said:

'My teacher didn’t have to correct any purely mechanical aspects of my technique. He more or less took off from where I was. My sister must have taught me extremely well.

Mr Saperton suggested my working on a good number of exercises, mostly from the Joseffy School of advanced piano playing. I use these studies very religiously with my students.' (Interview in Adele Marcus, Great Pianists)

In 1875 Moriz Rosenthal - with whom JB would later study in 1935 - and his family had settled in Vienna, so that he could study with the Hungarian Rafael Joseffy (1852-1915, who had been born in what is now Huncovce, Slovakia) and who had been a pupil of both Franz Liszt and Carl Tausig.

Philadelphia

‘In Cuba (in 1929), Jorge Bolet, who is being assisted in his music study by the Pro Arte Musicale Society of Havana, gave a piano recital before the members of the society, especially arranged for July 4 as a gesture of appreciation of the Curtis Institute. 'A second concert was given later, on September 10, publicly, with much success, in the largest auditorium in Havana.’

Overtones, Curtis Institute of Music

In conversation in 1973, prior to a rehearsal of Rachmaninoff's notoriously difficult third piano concerto, Jorge said, 'I am rather familiar with the work. I learned it in 1929 when I was 14 years old and first played it publicly in 1937 with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. And, of course, I heard Rachmaninoff play it under Ormandy two or three times, and with other conductors several times in New York prior to his death in 1943.'

Jorge chose ‘The swan of Tuonela’ by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius as one of his eight discs on the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs in 1984. Playing the cor anglais was Marcel Tabuteau, first oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1915 to 1953 and teacher at the Curtis Institute of Music. Jorge revered his playing, and sometimes played the accompaniment for his students during these years.

Advert for a concert on Wednesday 11 September in the Auditorio.

Jorge's teacher

David Saperton

David Saperton (1889-1970) was born David Sapirstein in Pittsburgh, PA.

Leopold Godowsky heard David when he was eight, and the youngster was soon taken to New York, where he worked intensively with the German-born August Spanuth (1857–1920), who had arrived in 1886 after studies at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt.

When he turned fifteen in 1904, he made his debut, as David Sapirstein, performing the Chopin E Minor Concerto at the Metropolitan Opera House, and though he may have made a solo debut shortly thereafter, the New York Times reported that his first New York recital did not occur until 27 October, 1912, at the Republic Theatre, after he had returned from studies in Europe. He chose an enormous programme which included the Beethoven's Sonata No. 29 in B flat, “Hammerklavier,” the Brahms/Handel Variations, Chopin’s twenty-four preludes, and Liszt’s Réminiscences de Don Juan, but the Times gave him a rather negative reception, insisting that he 'has not yet developed to a point where he should attempt to be an interpreter to the public of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata.'

A coast-to-coast tour in 1917/18 took in all the major cities, from 27 August to 14 April. 'After that, nothing. Silence.' (Sidney Foster)

However, he remained a presence on New York stages for the next fifteen years, and by the early 1920s, he was the piano soloist for the Capitol Grand Orchestra (alongside concertmaster Eugene Ormandy), which performed nightly at the Capitol Theatre at Broadway and 51st Street. In 1924 he joined the Steinway roster as “David Saperton”, and in the same year he married Godowsky’s eldest daughter, Vanita. Through Godowsky, he met Josef Hofmann, and in May 1927 when Hofmann was appointed director of Curtis Institute, he chose Saperton as his teaching assistant.

(A Dictionary for the Modern Pianist by Stephen Siek, 2016)

Pianist Abbey Simon, Inner Voices, says that during his time at Curtis, Saperton lived in New York (diagonally across the street from the Ansonia Hotel - where his father-in-law Godowsky lived - on 71st street), and commuted to Philadelphia three days a week to teach; he stayed at a hotel in the city. Shura Cherkassky who started at the school in 1925 spent one summer having lessons with Saperton on Coney Island.

Abbey Simon has less pleasant memories of Saperton. 'He was a difficult person, and there was never a sign of affection. I never thought he taught us anything. You waere coming to the lesson and you knew he was there because you saw this huge cloud of cigar smoke around his desk.' Simon's memoirs are quite acidic. Jorge 'was a very easygoing person and a sweet guy, and he was a lazy fellow. He was a wonderful reader (of music), but he really played a relatively small repertoire.'

Jorge's own view of Saperton was at times obfuscated by tact. He seems to have been more forthcoming (and critical) when speaking to friends outside the immediate environment. Bryce Morrison, who knew Bolet, has spoken of a 'punishing régime' of work, and of a teacher who approached lessons 'in the manner of a drill sergeant'.

Hofmann and Saperton were fired from Curtis in 1940.

After his departure, Saperton established a private studio in his New York home at 344 West 72nd Street, where his other prominent pupils included Julius Katchen and William Masselos.

Until a revival of interest in Godowsky began in the 1970s/80s, Saperton, in the words of Abram Chasins, 'alone had both the will and the skill to play and record a sizeable number of Godowsky’s compositions'.

Pianist Andrew Kraus who studied with Saperton in the last months of his life - while waiting for his Vietnam War draft in 1970! - writes: 'Experiencing his playing in the intimacy of his studio was, for me, an initiation into a way of playing the piano that had been lost ,as well as an introduction to a genre of wonderfully beautiful and interesting music that had fallen out of fashion.'

In an interview, Kraus said that he spent one lesson - almost an hour ($50) - just being asked to 'drop his hand' weightlessly. When his parents suggested that Saperton was a con-man, Kraus told them: 'No! This is the secret sauce!'

Sidney Foster, one of his most distinguished pupils, has written: 'In spite of his exceptional achievements, his life was one of disappointment and frustration, and he died relatively unknown in 1970, mourned by a son. Nevertheless he left his mark on an ungrateful world.'

"This is the secret sauce!"

A charming and fascinating reminiscence: Andrew Kraus speaking about Saperton with whom he studied in the 1970s (edited)

Source = David Roberts Piano, Interview No. 7)

The beginning

"Shy, sweet, private" (in the words of Eleanor Sokoloff)

1928
On 28 February 1928 the legendary pianist Moriz Rosenthal (a pupil of Liszt) gave a recital at Curtis which Jorge probably heard. His programme included Beethoven's Sonata No. 30 Op.109 in E major, Schubert's Wanderer Fantasie, Chopin's Barcarolle, Albeniz's Triana (from the Iberia Suite) and Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. Jorge - who knew at the time? - was later (1935) to have some lessons in Vienna with Rosenthal.

1929
'George (sic) Bolet, 14 year old and Fiorenzo Tasso, Italian tenor, will be starred in the Curtis broadcast over WKRC [one of the oldest radio stations in Ohio] and the Columbia network at 9pm tonight. Bolet will play Chopin’s F minor Fantasy and Naila waltz (Délibes, arranged by the Hungarian pianist/composer Ernő Dohnanyi). It will be heard at 6pm in San Francisco, Los Angeles... Tasso is a pupil of Emilio de Gogorzo. Various listeners on the West coast will hear it at 10pm, preceded by Under The Gaslight, that famous old thriller of the Civil War days.'

[Commercial Tribune, Cincinnati, 21 May 1929]

Jorge arrives back from Havana [25 September] aged 14 on the Governor Cobb at Key West with his sister (who is going to the Philadelphia School of the Bible). Their father’s address is given as Santos Suarez, Havana. He was beginning his second year.

He had spent the summer of 1929 in Havana. There was a farewell recital in the Auditorium on 11 September, 'patrocinado por un grupo de damas' led by the First Lady of the Republic, Elvira Machado de Machado. [See the panel below]

Diario de la Marina (1 June 1929) had a long editorial which stated that 'just two years ago, we saw him leave for the United States after his timid, but auspicious public presentation in Havana. He was immediately forgotten by the audience at that first concert, which was asked for its financial contribution but then believed itself immediately freed from the commitment.

'To put it bluntly, we are all a little tired of child prodigies. And Jorge furthermore, was disadvantageously heard that afternoon; the audience also tired of an extensive programme. Jorge,

a 12-year-old boy (chiquillo), as if unaware of himself - dazzled, hesitant - could not arouse enthusiasm in that audience of his first concert.

'Those of us as who saw in him something more than the well-known appearance of a Wunderkind, however, closely followed his footsteps abroad.

'Without financial assets, meanwhile, without official protection of any kind, and without anything other than the remainder of the money raised in the benefit concert, our compatriot and his heroic sister soon found themselves in the air - ?living on this air (se vieron pronto en el aire). The Curtis Institute from that moment on also ended up meeting their needs; this spiritual adoption crystallised in a monthly pension, modest, but enough.

'He had performed on Curtis public radio broadcasts which were transmitted from the Atlantic to the Pacific on 27 of the best stations. "The Cuban Pianist" proclaimed adverts in more than 6,000 newspapers in the United States. Almost like "Kid Chocolate"! Jorge is coming to Cuba in mid-June [Wednesday 19th on the vapor Pastores (steamship Pastores).'

Diario (25 June) adds that Pro Arte Musicale has awarded Jorge a monthly scholarship of 100 pesos. On the afternoon of 4 July he will give a concert in the Auditorio: César Franck, Beethoven Appassionata, Chopin, Manuel de Falla and the Leo Delibes Naila waltz.

In early August he played at the Vedado Tennis Club; Consuelito Miró also sang. On 18 September he underwent an operation on his tonsils under the care of Dr Cándido Toledo Osés.

Wednesday, 25 September 1929: Jorge and Maria depart for Florida on the SS Governor Cobb.

‘In Cuba, Jorge Bolet, who is being assisted in his music study by the Pro Arte Musicale society of Havana, gave a piano recital before the members of the society, especially arranged for July 4 as a gesture of appreciation of the Curtis Institute. A second concert was given later, on September 10 (11?), publicly, with much success, in the largest auditorium in Havana.’

Overtones, Curtis Institute of Music [15 October, 1929]

In the fifth of the series of twenty half-hour radio concerts broadcast over the Columbia System (Station WCAU in Philadelphia and Station WABC in New York, with a nation- wide network of stations), on Friday evening, December 20, at 10:30pm, The Curtis Institute of Music presented eight of its artist - students in the following programme. The Delibes-Dohnanyi Naila Valse was played by Jorge Bolet, pianist.

Havana's Sociedad Pro-Arte Musical Journal (15 May, 1930) published a letter from the Curtis Institute of Music, Rittenhouse Square (dated 1 May, 1930) to Mrs Maria Teresa Garcia Montes de Giberga [1880-1930], President of the Pro-Arte Musical Society, Calles Calzada and D, Vedado, Havana. It would seem to suggest a single-minded intensity and drive by the Institute that is not - with hindsight - healthy for family life.

‘We are happy to report to you on the excellent progress of Jorge Bolet...during the past season. Our Director is of the opinion that he will be one of the foremost Cuban pianists of whom all Cubans may be proud. Instead of coming to Cuba for the summer as he did last year, we would suggest that he continue his studies with Mr. Saperton during the early part of the summer, and take a vacation in the mountains during July and August, returning to his studies early in September.

Very truly yours, N. C. Nood.’

The Pro-Arte Musical, a musical society founded in Havana in 1918, was instrumental in helping young Jorge’s career. Its first activity on its foundation had been a recital in the Espadero Hall of the Hubert de Blanck Conservatory, located at No. 47 Galiano Street, of the Society of Classic Quartets of Havana, and in March 1919 it presented on the same stage the first hired foreign artist: violinist Mayo Walder.

Sidney Foster

A fellow student in the same year was Sidney Foster (born in Florence, South Carolina, in 1917) who was aged 10, the youngest student Curtis ever took. (In 1968 Foster, a Professor at Indiana School of Music 1952-77, was to coax Bolet there from Spain as a teaching colleague.) Imelda Delgado in a book on Foster relates a shocking event in which in 1929 the young Sidney was dismissed from Curtis for being a "bad boy", though it later turned out that individuals in the school's administration had been embezzling funds from his Miami sponsors and somehow shifted the blame in an incident of "contrived mendacity". When Foster returned to Curtis, in 1934, he studied with Saperton until his graduation in 1938. Among the other students were Nadia Reisenberg, Shura Cherkassky and the now-forgotten Lucie Stern. Born in 1913, a year earlier than Bolet, Stern died in 1938. In 1925, one year after Curtis's founding, Josef Hofmann had accepted 11-year-old Lucie Stern into his highly competitive piano studio. She was born in Riga, Latvia. Hofmann served as her examiner during the audition, and immediately accepted Stern as his pupil. In addition to piano, Stern’s other main area of study was composition under Rosario Scalero. Stern’s classmates at Curtis, including Shura Cherkassky (Piano '35) and Jorge Bolet (Piano '34), remember her as a free spirit who found it difficult to cope with the rigid structure espoused by Curtis at the time. Her inability to thrive became so evident that Hofmann, in December 1927, took the unprecedented step of granting her permission to live in New York and commute to Philadelphia on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for her lessons at Curtis. Unfortunately, despite an increasingly successful solo career outside Curtis (The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote in 1926 that Stern 'possess[ed] a talent which is met with only once or twice in a musical generation') this accommodation of Hofmann's proved insufficient, and Stern was dismissed from the institute after the 1929 spring semester. From Curtis archives website

Another prodigy

Shura Cherkassky (Odessa, 1909 - London, 1995), who was a student of Josef Hofmann at Curtis from autumn 1925, had actually been making concert tours while still having lessons. The most sustained period of teaching - when he was present in Philadelphia - was 1925-28.

He was already making intense preparations for a 1927 autumn season of concerts when Jorge joined, the highlight of which would be his Carnegie Hall appearance on 7 December. Hailed by all as Shura's passage to artistic manhood, the concert elicited rave reviews, citing particular 'an emotional power that put many older pianist to shame'. His programme included Schumann's Carnaval, Chopin's Barcarolle and the F minor Ballade; the concert ended with Strauss-Schulz Evler's Arabesques on the Blue Danube. While still a student at Curtis, Shura even embarked on his first world tour in 1928, triumphing sensationally in 120 concerts that included appearances in England, France, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. The decision for him to go abroad was made by Josef Hofmann and Mary Louise Curtis Bok. The trip started by boat from New York City to Montréal, continued from Montréal on the Canadian Pacific Railway to Vancouver, whence he embarked on an ocean voyage on the RMS Niagara to Australia, that took 19 days. The first two months of the world to overspent in Australia and New Zealand as the result of an invitation from EG Gravestock, a local impresario and artist manager who handled some of the finest virtuosi in the world. There were six recitals in Adelaide alone, where he was described as being able to do what the giants of the piano had been striving to do all their lives. One critic who went under the colourful pseudonym of "Treble Violl" in the Rand Daily observed of the Johannesburg recitals that 'Cherkassky's pianism was so complete, so remarkable, so easy in its workings, as to make the audience after the unbelieving first gasp, unaware of the colossal nature of what Cherkassky was doing.' In the spring of 1929, the soon-to-be 20-year-old pianist proceeded to Switzerland joining Josef Hofmann at his home in Vevey. Hofmann and his first wife, Marie Eustis, daughter of the United States senator and granddaughter of W W Corcoran after whom the Washington DC art gallery was named, had been entranced by the village of Vevey on their visit in 1908. Flowers in blazing colours blanketed Mont Pelerin as it sloped towards the blue waters of Lake Geneva. Less well known than his association with Hoffman was sure as pianistic relationship with David Saperton. During his early years of the Curtis Institute Shura spent one summer studying with Saperton on Coney Island in New York, and often recalled how he could do "anything" at the piano after those lessons with him. Saperton insisted that his student learn the exercises of Rafael Jossefy, which Shura considered to be extremely important in his technical training. He described Saperton as a marvellous teacher, who knew how to train a pianist's hand, and who left nothing to chance. Elizabeth Carr, Shura Cherkassky: the Last Czar, pp.53ff.

16 November 1923