La Revolución cubana
1955-59
Wild times, south of the border, down Havana way...
Towards the Cuban Revolution
“Havana has been a fascinating city, quite the most vicious I have ever been in.”
(Graham Greene, letter to Natasha and Peter Brook, 6 September, 1954)
On 2 December, 1956, Fidel Castro and the 26th of July Movement rebels had landed on Cuban soil with the intention of starting a revolution. Met by heavy Batista defences, nearly everyone in the Movement was killed, with merely a handful escaping, including Castro, his brother Raúl, and Che Guevara. For the next two years, Castro continued guerrilla attacks and succeeded in gaining large numbers of volunteers.
Using guerrilla warfare tactics, Castro and his supporters attacked Batista's forces, overtaking town after town. Batista quickly lost popular support and suffered numerous defeats; finally, on 1 January, 1959, he would flee Cuba.
Graham Greene began his famous novel Our Man in Havana in October 1956. He had arrived in Havana with Carol Reed to reconnoitre, one week after publication of his novel (6 October 1958). The dictator Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (born Rubén Zaldívar, 1901-1973) was still hanging on by a shoestring. Captain Segura in the novel is based on Batista’s notorious chief of police, Ventura. In the old days, according to Greene in Ways of Escape, for $1.25 ‘one could see a nude cabaret of extreme obscenity with the bluest of blue films in the intervals’ at the Shanghai. In April 1959 Greene and Reed were back in Havana, this time with with a film crew.
Before the Revolution the Shanghai was infamous for its live sex shows featuring Superman and numerous female companions. In Greene's novel, when Milly suggests going to the Shanghai nightclub for her birthday, her father Wormold is startled that she has even heard of it. Superman is actually referred to as performing at the San Francisco brothel, but Greene had seen him at the Shanghai, just as he had seen a lesbian show at the Blue Moon, where Wormold takes Carter in the film (Greene, Ways of Escape 1980:241). Apparently Greene spent quite some time during the filming of Our Man in Havana trying to track down Superman, who had gone underground after the Revolution. (Peter Hulme)
For a contemporary account of the Shanghai, see Walter Adolphe Roberts, Havana: The Portrait of a City. New York: Coward McCann (1953), 226-29. 'On the edge of the Chinese quarter a theatre of his sort has existed for a long time. I shall not name it, but identification by a visitor is not difficult since it advertises discreetly and every bartender and taxi driver knows about it.'
The revolutionary government of Cuba allowed the film version of Our Man in Havana to be filmed in the Cuban capital, but Fidel Castro complained that the novel did not accurately portray the brutality of the Batista regime. In his autobiography, Ways of Escape, Greene commented:
'Alas, the book did me little good with the new rulers in Havana. In poking fun at the British Secret Service, I had minimised the terror of Batista's rule. I had not wanted too black a background for a light-hearted comedy, but those who suffered during the years of dictatorship could hardly be expected to appreciate that my real subject was the absurdity of the British agent and not the justice of a revolution.'
'For them, it minimized the brutality of Batista’s dictatorship, particularly in what they saw as the softening
of the character of the infamous police captain, Esteban Ventura Novo, into the cynical but not absolutely unsympathetic Captain Segura. Ventura Novo (1913-2001) had been responsible for much of the torture and murder in Havana that marked Batista’s repression in the years 1956 to 1958.' (Peter Hulme)
Greene returned to Havana between 1963 and 1966. Some of his novels dealt seriously with the politics of decolonization. The Quiet American (1955) is set in Vietnam, The Comedians (1966) deals with Haiti in the 1960s under the notoriously brutal regime of François Duvalier. Greene was a steadfast supporter
of radical and anticolonial movements: through a personal friendship with Omar Torrijos, the president of Panama, he became closely involved in the return of the Panama Canal to Panama, a process begun in 1977 though not completed until 1999. He was also solidly – if not uncritically – supportive of the Cuban Revolution, as is seen in the two essays he wrote in 1963 and 1966 for the archconservative British newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, and in his admiring 1966 portrait of Fidel Castro.
Most of the novel takes place on the edge of Old Havana, controlled by the malicious police chief, Captain Segura, who has his eye on Wormold’s daughter, Milly: most scenes are set in Wormold’s shop on Calle Lamparilla, in his apartment above the shop, or in local bars. (Peter Hulme)
1956
'If he somewhere finds the demonic quality...'
Bolet gave a recital on 4 December in Carnegie Hall, his first since December 1951 (and his ninth here). ‘He has impressed, with phenomenal potential yet has never really fused all into something completely his own – until now.’ Chief music critic of the New York Times Harold Schonberg said that this was the best recital Bolet had ever given in New York. Among the items were the Liszt B minor Sonata and Argentinian composer Ginastera’s Sonata No. 1Op.22 (1952). Bolet had been absent from the New York concert circuit for five years (April 1951). ‘If he somewhere finds the demonic quality that the greatest art requires, he will be one of the elect.’
Havana
On 25 September 1956, Jorge flew on TWA from London to New York - or the other way (!), as on 30 September he played Tchaikovsky 1 in the Royal Festival Hall with the RPO and Herman Lindars.
14 November 1956: the Agrupacion Musical Universitaria (Teatro Carrión, Valladolid, Spain) presents JB. 'Beside a Fantasia by Mozart, we shall hear a Sonata by the Argentinian composer Ginastera, a work of exceptional artistic quality and original brilliance'. (Claudia Cassidy would disagree! [ed.]) Also the Liszt Sonata.
In an interview in Libertad 15 November 1956, after his concert the previous evening in the Teatro Carrión, Jorge says he has not played in Spain for 20 years. When asked if he is married or single, he replies: El arte ya es bastante complicado para complicarse más. ("Art is already complicated enough without complicating it more.")
(The boat carrying Fidel and Raúl Castro back to Cuba from Mexico ran aground in a mangrove swamp at Playa Las Coloradas, close to Los Cayuelos, on 2 December 1956. Fleeing inland, its crew headed for the forested mountain range of Oriente's Sierra Maestra, being repeatedly attacked by Batista's troops. Setting up an encampment, the Castros, Che Guevara, and Camilo Cienfuegos began launching raids on small army posts to obtain weaponry.)
On 10 December 1956, Jorge flew from New York to Rancho Boyeros, Havana, Cuba (where the present José Martí International Airport is) on National Airlines 551. There would be a gap of 5 years before hew was next back in December 1959 [?]
Friday, 14 December 1956, 9.30pm: Jorge gives a recital for the Friends of the Pro-Arte in the Auditorium in Havana (as the Diario de la Marina reports). It was the same recital as Carnegie Hall on 4 December. Diario (15.12.56) reports on a cocktail party (in honour of theatre and music critics) on that Friday evening in the Barra Bacardi which Alberto and Jorge attended. They are giving concerts on Sunday morning (10:30am) and Monday evening. Among the other guests were Dr Orfilio Suárez Bustamante, composer Aurelio de la Vega, Clemencia Martinez Alonso de Dias Robaina, and (sister) Hortensia Bolet de Sierra. The bar is an exclusive, private one in the Edificio Bacardi, located just inside the terminus of Havana Vieja (old Havana) at Monserrate 261; the Art Deco building itself has been described as being "to Havana and the Havana skyline what the Chrysler building and the Empire State building are to New York".
Of Monday's concert, Diario (21.12.56) reports that the concert began with the young Samuel Barber's overture, The School for Scandal (he was 23 at time of composition). This was then followed by two concertos, Prokofiev No. 2 two and Brahms No. 2, in the slow movement of which Bolet 'spoke to our hearts'.
And Jorge appeared in chamber music at 6:30pm on Friday 21 December in the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Brahms and Shostakovich with the Sociedad de Conciertos Quartet (members: Professors Odnoposoff, Prilutchi, Hospital and Periche).
Saturday 22 was the Nutcracker Suite (appropriate for the Christmas season) and Tchaikovsky's 1st piano concerto. It was unusual in that it was going to be performed at midnight, something that hadn't been done since the golden days of Erich Kleiber. The paper includes among other Christmas details a photo of boy choristers singing carols in the Tower of London, England.
A headline on page 1 refers to the fearsome Stalinist system that János Kádár was imposing upon Hungary after the failed Revolution in October of that year; but to make himself more presentable to the public, he is reinstating Santa Claus and allowing carols to be sung on Radio Budapest.
Jorge and partner Tex Compton arrive back in Key West, Florida on 26 December 1956, sailing the same day from Havana on the SS City of Havana.
Diario de Noticias (Rio de Janeiro), 23 March 1956 has a notice that the Associação Riograndense de Música, in their upcoming season, would feature Jorge Bolet, violinist Henryk Szeryng and Japanese soprano Tomiko Kanazawa in Porto Alegre
Hungarian Uprising
Photo: John Sadovy
A headline in a Havana newspaper refers to the fearsome Stalinist system that János Kádár was imposing upon Hungary after the failed Revolution in October 1956. To make himself more presentable to the public, Kádár is reinstating Santa Claus and allowing carols to be sung on Radio Budapest.
The Hungarian Revolution ("Forradalom") of 1956 (23 October – 10 November) was a countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the Hungarian domestic policies imposed by the former USSR.
The new government of Imre Nagy declared the Hungarian withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, and pledged to re-establish free elections. By the end of October the intense fighting had subsided.
Although initially willing to negotiate the withdrawal of the Soviet Army from Hungary, the USSR quashed the Revolution on 4 November 1956, and fought the Hungarian revolutionaries until 10 November; repression of the Uprising killed 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet Army soldiers, and compelled 200,000 Hungarians to seek political refuge abroad.
There is a striking contrast, in that Cuba was about to undergo a socialist revolution, something the Magyar people had tried - unsuccessfully - to throw off.
Hofmann dies, 1957
Josef Casimir Hofmann (1876-1957) died on 16 February. He was the Pianists' Pianist for many including Bolet, to say nothing of Rachmaninoff's admiration for him, too. But the end was sad. After his departure from the Curtis Institute in 1938, a combination of his drinking, marital problems and a loss of interest in performing caused a rapid deterioration in his artistic abilities. Commenting on Hofmann's sharp decline, Sergei Rachmaninoff said, 'Hofmann is still sky high ... the greatest pianist alive if he is sober and in form. Otherwise, it is impossible to recognize the Hofmann of old'.
After hearing a performance of Chopin's B minor Sonata by Hofmann, Rachmaninoff is said to have cut that piece from his own repertoire, saying 'not since Anton Rubinstein have I heard such titanic playing'. On BBC Desert Island Discs in 1984, Jorge chose Hofmann playing the Larghetto of Chopin's second piano concerto in F minor as his choice, if allowed only one of his 8 discs. He says that the recording recalled the great magic of his playing. (Jorge, however, did not have the second concerto in his repertoire.)
1957 continued
Tuesday, 26 February 1957, Atlanta, Georgia. 'The physical requirements for three concertos would tax an Atlas. Jorge had performed Schumann, Rachmaninoff 3 ('Bolet was a wonder to hear throughout, but particularly in the explosive solo passages') and Mozart No. 24 in C minor K.491, which came first and was found by Bruce Galphin of The Atlanta Constitution to be a little heavy-handed. ‘It Is essentially a chamber work, and Bolet is definitely a concert hall pianist.’ Jorge once told Alicia de Larrocha that this was his favourite Mozart concerto; he had, for example, taken it to Poland in 1961 and there was a Norwegian radio broadcast with the Trondheim Kammerorkester and Zubin Mehta in March 1962. An obituary notice in the same Atlanta paper (October 1990) reminds readers that ‘Atlanta Symphony audiences were treated to his artistry on three occasions in 1957, 1959 and not again until 1985. Mr. Bolet was scheduled to perform with the ASO again in January 1989, but illness forced a cancellation.’
Cuban composer Aurelio De la Vega’s Toccata, composed during this year, 1957, was one of his most virtuosic works. Dedicated to Jorge Bolet, it was one of the last works of the composer written in his homeland Cuba, just before the Communist takeover of the island.
Unrest in Cuba
Across Cuba, anti-Batista groups were carrying out bombings and sabotage; police responded with mass arrests, torture, and extrajudicial executions. In March 1957, a failed attack on the presidential palace had been launched. [Coltman 2003, pp. 121–122] 'Daily life had developed into a relentless degradation,' writes Louis Perez - a Cuba historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - in his 1999 book On Becoming Cuban, 'with the complicity of political leaders and public officials who operated at the behest of American interests'. In 1957, a group of students fed up with government corruption stormed the National Palace. Many historians consider this a turning point in the revolution. Over the next few years, bursts of violence erupted throughout the city. Bombs exploded in movie theaters and nightclubs. Gunshots rang out. Dead bodies turned up on sidewalks and streets.
'There had been an idealization of the [Cuba's] War of Independence and of being a revolutionary,' says Uva de Aragon, a Cuban academic living in Miami. 'In this climate, people thought revolution was a solution to problems.' Bloody battles ensued between Batista's troops and the rebels in the mountains. Still, Cubans tried to keep some normalcy in their lives, going to school, watching baseball games and taking cha-cha lessons. 'It was surreal,' says de Aragon. 'There was a lot of fear in those last two or three years. (Natasha Geiling, Smithsonian Magazine, July 2007)
"Sound and fury..."
Sunday/Monday 14/15 April 1957, Rachmaninoff 3 with the U. of Miami Symphony and John Bitter in the Dade Auditorium. The Jewish Floridian notes that members of the Symphony Club can attend an open rehearsal in the Miami Beach auditorium. John F. Bitter (1909 – 2001) - a fellow Curtis student, who met composers Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti there - served as the second dean of the School of Music at the University of Miami from 1950 to 1963. He conducted Barber's Adagio for Strings and Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors throughout his career.
In December 1957, a Cuban newspaper, Diario de la Marina, reported that after a tour of seven months in the USA 'the famous pianist has returned to Havana'. He had covered 30,000 miles in an automobile from coast to coast, as he reported at the airport on disembarking from a Viscount de Cubana de Aviacion flight via Miami.
‘Sound and fury signifying not much in Jorge Bolet's Recital’
So wrote the critic for the Chicago Tribune, Claudia Cassidy, in a review of 1 March, 1957. She talks of ‘what may have been the loudest performance of Liszt's Sonata in B minor yet heard in Orchestra Hall. Not the most powerful, which is quite another matter, not the most eloquent, and certainly not the most beautiful. But the hardest hit, piano-wise, as any seismograph could prove.'
'It was typical of Mr. Bolet's playing as I have known it - loud and bold, with a glittering facility this side of true virtuosity, without imagination and without musicianship - though I really think that last is redundant. There is no point in playing Liszt's period piece without evoking the Lisztian era it personifies, all bravura sweep and romantic afterglow. Bungled, it becomes an interminable version of the ancient "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".
'Happier in Mr. Bolet's hands was the contemporary sonata by Alberto Ginastera of the Argentine, an adroit reworking of familiar material, with little of its own to say.’
Wednesday, 15 October 1957 was Jorge's tenth performance in Carnegie Hall. This included Schubert's
great Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960 (1828) - something not often to be found in his repertoire (?) - and a selection of Liszt's Études d’exécution transcendante, S. 139.
John LaMontaine, Piano Concerto, 1958
Carnegie Hall, 22 October 1958
On Wednesday 22 October, 1958 in New York, Bolet ‘gave his twelfth Carnegie Hall recital - his next solo recital would be on 25 October, 1961 - and wound up with a blazing performance of the four Scherzos by Chopin. This was not pretty-pretty playing.’ He ‘turned his fantastic technical equipment loose with results heroic in conception and pianistically daring.’ Crashing basses, scale passages flying, octaves that threatened to break the strings. He is not a ‘colorist’ but is now searching for more subtle effects, experimentation with inner voices, pedal effects. Ideas about rubato phrasing are 'more valid than they have been up to now'. ‘If he ever conquers his few remaining weaknesses in tone production, he can develop into one of the giants.’ (Harold Schonberg)
Jorge had previously given the same recital on Tuesday, 7 October in the Theatre of the University of Puerto Rico. El Mundo 14.10.58 reported: 'Se trata de un ejecutante de una excepcional brillantez. Tiene una técnica viva y fuerte, de un mecanismo sonoro de grandes proporciones. Es un pianista claro—- aunque su rapidez expresiva y su sonoridad vibrante le hacen a veces menos diáfano de lo que debe ser— y sus interpretaciones producen en el público un efecto fascinante.' This is a performer of exceptional brilliance. He has a lively and strong technique, with a sound mechanism of great proportions. He is a clear pianist—although his expressive speed and vibrant sonority sometimes make him less transparent than he should be—and his performances produce a fascinating effect on the audience. His “Sonata in E Flat Major", by Haydn, was, for my taste, quite disconcerting. Haydn demands a less vehement and aggressive, more nuanced and classical sense. If Bolet had to be judged by that work, the judgment would not be fair, because the rest of the programme increased in quality. In the "Prelude. Chorale and Fugue" by César Franck, the cathedral majesty of Franckian neoclassicism helped the performer to achieve a painting of large dimensions and a sound world more appropriate to his concept of the piano. And the same can be said—with some debatable details—in the four “Scherzi” by Chopin. The lyrical fresco of this author was somewhat obscured by the dizzying and passionate passages of Chopinian virtuosity (el fresco lírico de este autor quedó un poco oscurecido por los pasajes vertiginosos y apasionantes del virtuosismo chopiniano) but Bolet moved in that medium more comfortably, precisely because of the brilliance of the most outstanding passages.'
Premiere
Chicago-born composer John LaMontaine (who died in April, 2013 at his home in Hollywood, California aged 93) enjoyed the premiere performance of his first piano concerto - played by Bolet - which took place in Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C., on 25 November, 1958 He won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for the work the next year.
‘I've had very, very great performers of my pieces including Leontyne Price, Jessye Norman, Jorge Bolet. You know, those are such great players that you don't need to talk about correct notes; you don't need to talk about correct rhythms. They're in the field of calculus, not of addition and subtraction. [...] I didn't hear all of Jorge's performances, but the one that I heard him do with (Charles) Munch and the Boston Symphony, I cannot imagine anything closer than that.' (In conversation with Bruce Duffie)
In an interview with the Somerset Daily American, 27 Nov 1958 (Somerset, Pennsylvania), on the LaMontaine concerto, Jorge, who 'had on the loudest pair of socks ever spotted on a concert pianist' said: 'When I first heard it, I said, all those octaves are going to take a lot of carrots.'
17 June 1958, when Jorge flew back to NYC from Havana, his address is listed as 30 E.9th Street (a few blocks from Washington Square). The Lafayette, at 30 East 9th Street, is a 6-story postwar building located in Greenwich Village’s Gold Coast on the southeast corner of University Place. It was built in the early 1950s on the former site of the Lafayette Hotel, an old favorite of the artistic and literary crowd and international celebrities for nearly a century, drawn to its French food and service.
5 November 1958, Conestoga High School, Berwyn, Pennsylvania: recital
4 December 1958: Florida Gymnasium, U. of Florida, Gainesville, FL. ("The famous South American pianist") Admission free for students on production of ID, reports The Florida Alligator. The Florida Gym opened in 1949 as a 7,000-seat multi-purpose arena that was home to the Florida Gators men’s basketball team and was known as “Alligator Alley.”
In a publicity poster from 1958, Jorge's exclusive management for Europe is listed as: Nederlandsche Concertdirectie J. [John] Beek, Koningsinnegracht 92, The Hague/Den Haag. In 1928 John Beek had started his agency “Concertdirectie J. Beek”. In 1937 John married Johanna, who quickly managed the daily routine at the agency, becoming very well known for her personal commitment to both artists and promoters in the Netherlands and abroad. (On September 1, 1971 “Concertdirectie J. Beek” merged with the agency of Johan Koning who himself started in 1924 when he took up the management of Dame Myra Hess. The new agency was named Interartists.)
The Revolution
By 1958, Batista in Cuba was under increasing pressure, a result of his military failures coupled with increasing domestic and foreign criticism surrounding his administration's press censorship, torture, and extrajudicial executions. Influenced by anti-Batista sentiment among their citizens, the US government ceased supplying him with weaponry. The opposition called a general strike, accompanied by armed attacks from the MR-26-7. Beginning on 9 April, it received strong support in central and eastern Cuba, but little elsewhere. Batista responded with an all-out-attack, Operation Verano (“Summer Offensive” of 1958), in which the army aerially bombarded forested areas and villages suspected of aiding the militants, while 10,000 soldiers commanded by General Eulogio Cantillo surrounded the Sierra Maestra, driving north to the rebel encampments.[ Coltman 2003, pp. 131–133] Despite their numerical and technological superiority, the army had no experience with guerrilla warfare, and Castro halted their offensive using land mines and ambushes.Many of Batista's soldiers defected to Castro's rebels, who also benefited from local popular support. In the summer, the MR-26-7 went on the offensive, pushing the army out of the mountains, with Castro using his columns in a pincer movement to surround the main army concentration in Santiago. By November, Castro's forces controlled most of Oriente and Las Villas, and divided Cuba in two by closing major roads and rail lines, severely disadvantaging Batista. The US instructed Cantillo to oust Batista due to fears in Washington that Castro was a socialist, which were exacerbated by the association between nationalist and communist movements in Latin America and the links between the Cold War and decolonization. By this time the great majority of Cuban people had turned against the Batista regime. Ambassador to Cuba, E. T. Smith, who felt the whole CIA mission had become too close to the MR-26-7 movement, personally went to Batista and informed him that the US would no longer support him and felt he no longer could control the situation in Cuba. General Cantillo secretly agreed to a ceasefire with Castro, promising that Batista would be tried as a war criminal; however, Batista was warned, and fled into exile with over US$300 million on 31 December 1958. Cantillo entered Havana's Presidential Palace, proclaimed the Supreme Court judge Carlos Piedra to be president, and began appointing the new government. Furious, Castro ended the ceasefire, and ordered Cantillo's arrest by sympathetic figures in the army. Accompanying celebrations at news of Batista's downfall on 1 January 1959, Castro ordered the MR-26-7 to prevent widespread looting and vandalism. Cienfuegos and Guevara led their columns into Havana on 2 January, while Castro entered Santiago and gave a speech invoking the wars of independence. Heading toward Havana, he greeted cheering crowds at every town, giving press conferences and interviews. Castro reached Havana on 9 January 1959.
1959 Bolet leaves Cuba, never to return
A victorious Fidel Castro reached Havana on 9 January 1959.
After the Revolution, Bolet never returned to Cuba. He was an opponent of the régime and in an interview, he claimed his life would not be safe if he returned.
His brother Alberto also left. ‘In 1959 with Castro now in power, Alberto Bolet found out that he was to be arrested, his daughter Adela Maria Bolet recalled, adding that he 'wasn’t really a political figure, but he was a cultural icon'. He fled to Britain, followed by his family, his daughter said, and later became the musical director of the Bilbao Symphony in Spain from 1963-1968 and musical director of the Long Beach Symphony from 1968 to 1978.
Another Cuban child prodigy-turned-adult-pianist did remain in the country, at least until 1968: Ivette Susana Hernández y Alvarez (born on 24 May, 1934), who had appeared in concert with no less figure than Erich Kleiber with the Havana Philharmonic on 25 February 1945 and was also awarded a scholarship to study abroad by Pro Arte. Miss Hernández passed away on Wednesday, 26 May, 2021, in Manhattan, New York. [See further below]
Promotional material stated that Bolet had an annual European tour (England, Germany, Holland) in January/February 1959 and in America during March/May. (He arrived in Boston Massachusetts from Paris on 30 January 1959 and lists his address as 30 E9th street, NYC.)
A Brigham Young University recital in Salt Lake City in March 1959 elicited the following comment.
'Transcendental Etudes of Liszt. One seldom hears these pieces because pianists seldom have the technic or inclination to play them. Bolet seemed to have no trouble in recreating them. Liszt, looking over his shoulder, must have been delighted. But you know, as exciting as virtuosity is, I was terribly bored by the time the concert ended. Oh, for a little more poetry, a little more surrender to the soul of Man, a little less emphasis on trills, runs, arpeggios and so on ad infinitum. Art music is more than virtuosity.'
Merrill Bradshaw, Provo Daily Herald.
Royal Festival Hall, London, 11 January 1959
The Netherlands
Monday, 12 January 1959, Residentie Orkest under Louis Stotijn in Delft, Holland. Smetana, Mendelssohn, Franck and Ravel. (Delft is a popular tourist destination in the Netherlands, famous for its historical connections with the reigning House of Orange-Nassau, for its blue pottery, for being home to the painter Jan Vermeer. Historically, the city played a highly influential role in the Dutch Golden Age.)
Wednesday, 14th January in Concertgebouw, Amsterdam: recital
Thursday, 15th, a recital in the Diligentia, The Hague, Holland: Beethoven, Liszt, Ginastera, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev.
Het Parool reported on the Amsterdam recital. 'Last night, we met the Cuban Jorge Bolet, a grandmaster from the pianist world in Amsterdam's Kleine Concertgebouwzaal. A figure whose physical, "craft", as well as musical aspects are of colossal dimensions. While his clear and flashy rapidity of finger technique is astonishing, the power of his fortissimos is no less frightening... Thus, during Liszt's Sonata I wondered who would survive this work, the grand piano or the soloist... Fortunately they both made it to the last bar and unscathed — it was a particularly fine manifestation of virtuoso romantics. 3 lesser-known preludes by Rachmaninoff were rendered proportionately in more muted tones. But the Sonata 1952 by the Argentinian Alberto Ginastera (an often somewhat hollow opus, based on South American folkmusic ) and especially the Toccata by Prokofieff were given the ultimate in stirring tension and "barbaric" power. It is surprising that this Jorge Bolet can often "whisper" with his fingers; one would not expect it from a pianist whose touch is so overwhelmingly geared for super-explosions. Jorge Bolet has been applauded for a long time; this was rewarded with two masterfully played encores.' LEO HOOST.
Ivette Hernández
Another Cuban child prodigy-turned-adult-pianist did remain in the country, at least until 1968: Ivette Susana Hernández y Alvarez (born on 24 May, 1934), who had appeared in concert with no less figure than Erich Kleiber with the Havana Philharmonic on 25 February 1945 and was also awarded a scholarship to study abroad by Pro Arte, firstly in New York with Sidney Foster and Claudio Arrau. Between 1957 and 1959 she lived in Paris, taking classes with Marguerite Long. In September 1964, the renowned magazine Cuba dedicated its cover to her, with a photographic triptych taken by the eminent photographer Mario García Joya “Mayito”. In it, Ivette talks about her life and her dedication in recent years, to, like many other musicians, take her art beyond the usual venues, offering open-air concerts, in schools, rural areas, where, according to the columnist Alfredo Muñoz Unsain, “…the music of Bartok and Schoenberg has become known, alternating that virgin auditorium with the consecrated halls where the opinion of critics hums.” (La música de Bartok y Schoenberg, alternando ese auditorio virgen con las salas consagradas donde zumba la opinión de los críticos) She toured Germany, Russia, Hungary and Romania. Married to Cuban diplomat Armando Flores Ibarra, who had been Cuban ambassador to Czechoslovakia between 1963 and 1965 and had held other positions since 1959 in the Cuban embassies in the United States, Belgium and Romania, Ivette received permission to travel with her husband and two children to France in 1968. Marcel Ciampi, one of her teachers in Paris and to whom she was deeply attached, was seriously ill and had requested her presence at his side in view of his imminent death. On that trip, Ivette and her husband decided not to return to Havana and to live outside the country. The media in Spain and the United States echoed the decision of the couple, who settled temporarily in Spain. Ivette told the Spanish newspaper ABC that she disagreed with certain regulations that she considered restricted her freedom of creation in Cuba and did not correctly value her artistic dedication, limiting it to an evaluation based on the number of concerts and recitals offered. [ Cuban diplomat fled his country ABC Spain, 11 May, 1968] The young pianist had lived outside Cuba, between New York and Paris, since she was 15, for most of her life, and mainly during her years of training and studies and also concerts and recitals. By then, commercial and patronage structures - such as Pro-Arte Musical - that fostered the presence of artists in theatre spaces and in the media had disappeared and, despite the positive actions undertaken by the new management to bring art closer to the most popular strata of society, as occurred with many artists, Ivette could not understand the methods and decisions of those who at that time began to govern the destinies of the guild. Interviewed years later, in 1976 by The Intelligencer Journal (Lancaster, Pennsylvania), 9 February, 1976 , she said: “I sympathised with the Cuban Revolution from the beginning, and in reality, I would never have wanted to leave my country, but dealing with an unbearable and senseless bureaucracy made me change my mind.” Source: Rosa Marquetti Torres
Source: Rosa Marquetti Torres
Norwegian début
On 6 May 1959 Universitetets Aula (University Hall), Oslo, 'the world-famous Cuban pianist Jorge Bolet comes to Norway for the first time'. (Aftenposten). Arbeiderblad (5 January 1959), however, says JB will visit at the end of February.
Hans spill er ikke bare teknisk perfekt, som når han som kanskje ingen boltrer seg i Franz Liszts komposisjoner.
'His playing is not only technically perfect, as when he, like perhaps no one, frolics in Franz Liszt's compositions. (...) It would have been interesting to hear this piano giant in a task other than Liszt's B minor sonata, but even this long and bland, but extremely demanding sonata came to life and shine under Jorge Bolet's fable hands.' Erling Westher, Arbeiderbladed
6 July 1959, Robin Hood Dell, Philadelphia: Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff with Alexander Hilsberg conducting (1897, Warsaw - 1961 Camden, NJ). Philadelphia's premier outdoor venue; it opened in 1930 as a summer home for The Philadelphia Orchestra. (The opening of the new Robin Hood Dell West in June 1976 was many years in the making. The original Robin Hood Dell, which opened in 1930 on the east bank of the Schuylkill River in East Fairmount Park, was a beloved venue but presented problems. The most challenging was the weather. As an open-air venue, the Dell was at the mercy of summer storms that often swept through Philadelphia, wreaking havoc on concert scheduling and attendance. Even the threat of bad weather would keep audiences away. Another major problem came with the opening of the Schuylkill Expressway in 1958.)
On 9 (a Friday afternoon) and 10 October 1959, Bolet played the Variations Symphoniques by César Franck with the Boston Symphony under Charles Munch in Symphony Hall. (In the first half he had played John LaMontaine's concerto, and Munch had conducted Haydn's Symphony No. 100 in G major, "The Military", ending the concert with Franck's Le Chasseur maudit.) Jorge told friends that this 1959 performance of the Franck with Munch had been the finest concerto collaboration of his career - 'a meeting of minds'.
The Club Cubano Interamericano (CCI), a social organisation for Cubans living in New York City, had been established in May 1946 on 914 Prospect Avenue in the Bronx. In autumn 1959 the Club held a celebration for Jorge Bolet. The Club announced that that it would be donating a piano, which Marco Rizo - best known for his role as pianist, arranger and orchestrator for the American television sitcom "I Love Lucy"-, Cuban singer-pianist Bola de Nieve, and Puerto Rican pianist and bandleader Charlie Palmieri had once played, to the Fundación Fernando Ortiz.
17 November, 1959: Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Kansas City Philharmonic Orchestra & their director (1948-71) Hans Schwieger, the second concert of their season which opened on 3 November. Schwieger (1906-2000) was born in Cologne, Germany; he was only 21 when Erich Kleiber hired him as third assistant conductor for the state opera house in Berlin, a huge honour for such a young man. Hans later took a conducting job with the Imperial Orchestra in Japan. On his arrival, though, he saw a swastika in a shop window. A man who worked in the American embassy encouraged him to emigrate to the United States. Hans arrived in Los Angeles on March 4, 1938. Then came Pearl Harbor. In the early hours of December 9, 1941, Hans was arrested as an enemy agent. Among the items taken by FBI agents were letters written in German. Hans was jailed and eventually sent to a German internment camp in Oklahoma. At first, he thought he would soon be released, but then he learned that the Justice Department had revealed to the news media that he had two letters from high ranking Nazis, one from Joseph Goebbels and one from Rudolph Hess. It later turned out that the incriminating letters didn’t exist. Hans was released after more than a year in confinement. He became an American citizen on July 5, 1944.
(Heather N. Paxton)
3/4 December 1959: Tower Theater, Atlanta Georgia with the Atlanta SO and Henry Sopkin.
'For some reason or other, Cuban born pianist Jorge Bolet had not appeared with the Boston Symphony in this city until Oct. 9 and 10', - though in fact Bolet had performed Prokofiev's Concerto No. 2 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on 5 August 1951, in the Berkshire Festival at Tanglewood.
Monday 12 October 1959, Théâtre Capitol, Quebec: the "Havana pianist" with Wilfrid Pelletier, a Canadian conductor Canadian conductor who was instrumental in establishing the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. Schumann's concerto, Saint-Saens,
Organ Symphony, Handel's Fireworks Music.
L'événement-journal: "Jorge Bolet a tenu son public en haleine durant tout le concerto". (The Handel seems to have been a bit of a disaster!)