The pianist David Wilde died on 23 October 2025. Although I never met him, I owe a great deal to him (as the video explains). See also this blog entry David Wilde, ‘magnificently berserk’ pianist and composer of The Cellist of Sarajevo Billed as ‘the 10-year-old Boy Prodigy’, he performed the Grieg Concerto at Blackpool, and broadcast it that year on the BBC Telegraph Obituaries 12 November 2025 ​David Wilde, who has died aged 90, was a thoughtful and dazzling pianist, thou

Jorge Bolet and The Devil, 1964: the video will explain! In late October and November, Bolet made a tour of South Africa (spring in the southern hemisphere).    Impresario Hans Adler told the Johannesburg Sunday Times in November 1962 that negotiations for the tour were already under way. This tour would also include a recital in Windhoek, formerly South West Africa, now Namibia)​​​. See South Africa page for more details

After his two month tour of Australia, Jorge gave a recital for the first time in Hong Kong, on 6 July 1965. 'Jorge Bolet - mark that...

1 February 1982, Hamman Hall, Rice University, Houston, Texas. Fantasy in F-sharp minor, op. 28 / Felix Mendelssohn -- Fantasy in C...

I'd always been surprised not to find that Jorge had played in Montevideo, only a short hop across the water from Buenos Aires. I've now...

Jorge Bolet, Hong Kong (March 1987). Two clippings from the South China Morning Post.

RARE VIDEO: Jorge Bolet plays Liszt in Atlanta. The first six minutes of Liszt, Harmonies poétiques et réligieuses, S.173: Bénédiction...

Check the relevant page for more detail on the orchestral concert on Thursday 22nd. On Tuesday 27 October, Die Burger reported on...

In 1983, I was in the audience of a masterclass in what was then called the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland). The pianist David Wilde was in charge of proceedings. I recall he wore a dark blue double-breasted suit jacket. Born 1935 in Manchester, as a boy he had studied with Solomon and his pupil Franz Reizenstein, who had also studied composition with Hindemith and Vaughan Williams. Wilde shared with cellist Jacqueline du P

Did Jorge Bolet play Chopin as well as he did Liszt? A video uploaded to YouTube, hence the bit about "comments" at the end