The Age (Melbourne, Australia), 28 February 1987

Two reviews of the first Jorge Bolet concert I ever heard. At that time, I travelled up from Oxford for the evening and went backstage (of course) afterwards. I remembered being surprised to see him smoking (!) and he had a huge black overcoat/cape lying on a table, every inch the dapper gentleman from a past age.

I hadn't realised Jorge Bolet had performed in Finland and while looking into it, I came across a film from Finnish television. Here he is in the Royal Albert Hall, London, 1 June 1978, before a performance of Liszt - speaking about Finnish conductor Paavo Berglund, whom he first met during his first tour of Australia in 1965. (YLE, Finnish Broadcasting Company, 1979) So this is Jorge one year after he was appointed Head of Curtis and after he recorded his first disc with Dec

On 30 June 1969, Jorge Bolet gave a performance at Bloomington, Indiana, where he had just started teaching. He played Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30. Ralph Vaughan William's glorious Symphony No. 5 in D major was the other item on the programme. On the Palexa CD that came out, Charles Webb is assumed to be the conductor. Several discographies list him as being on the podium. However, The Indianapolis Star  (25.6.1969) mentions that the conductor will

"Jorge had in mind to play Godowsky's Johann Strauss Künstlerleben  at his forthcoming 75th birthday tour as grande finale.  Jorge played this piece on several occasions for me telling me: this is a work in progress, no! a lot of work in progress! He had played a lot of Godowsky for me when I was staying with him in Bloomington. We went to Butler University where he kept his scores and could use his Baldwin SD 10 (in his apartment he had a small grand which he never touched).

New and very much "work in progress", a list of as many concerts of Jorge Bolet as I can find, 1926-1989. It's not a definitive list (that would be a tedious task), but hey...! See link below the photo. Link

A newspaper amusingly reported a few of the pianist's pet hates: playing strange pianos, especially upright pianos in high schools, non-mixing bathroom taps (faucets), Rossini, peanut butter, mint in any form including toothpaste, Berlioz.  The High Point Enterprise, North Carolina, 24 February 1954 Full disclosure: I like both Rossini and Berlioz. Mattheus Smits, a friend of JB, has told me: "Jorge knew the translation of 'onions' in many languages. When ordering meals in G

10 January 1950 Municipal Auditorium, New Orleans, Louisiana Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16 New Orleans Symphony & Massimo Freccia Jorge Bolet's first public performance of the concerto, in an interview with the Times-Picayune  (10.1.1950). He had heard it a few years ago, played by Abbey Simon and had rushed out to buy the score but found to his dismay that it was out of print. Simon had photostats of it form The New York Public Library, obtained at consi

I recently found a review of volume 1 of the Liszt series for Decca in a Uruguayan paper which I have added below Opinar  (1 July 1982) reports of a concert in Montevideo, Uruguay  (Saturday 12 June, in the Teatro Solís) with Brazilian conductor Isaac Karabtchewsky (born 1934) and the Sodre Symphony Orchestra, the national orchestra. 'The great Cuban-American pianist was at the second concert conducted by Karabtchevsky. He belongs to that category of pianists who continue the