Cuban-American
Bolet becomes a US citizen
André Mertens, concert agent
*The important musical manager André Mertens (who represented Jorge Bolet for quite some time) began his career as the directory of the State Ministry of Fine Arts in Germany, before fleeing to the USA in 1933. There he played an important role in developing the careers of artists such as Leontyne Price and Renata Tebaldi.
In the post-war years, he also served as a link between the musical worlds of the USA and Europe, facilitating American tours for European orchestras under Karajan, Walter, Bernstein, and others, and recommending young American artists for European opera houses. After his death in 1963, his work was continued by his wife Clara, who also made several generous institutional bequests in his name, including the André Mertens Galleries for Musical Instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Andre Mertens died in Baden, Switzerland, 9 July 1963 aged 59. At Carnegie Hall, 18 April, 1965, the Munich Bach Orchestra and Choir under Karl Richter performed Bach's St Matthew Passion in memoriam.
Mertens had become a US citizen on 29 February 1944. By this date, he is being described as the Director of South American and Mexican Divisions of Columbia Concerts Inc.
'A New York concert manager has just left - 12 August 1944 - for a quick air tour of what he regards as a gold mine: the recently opened musical field of Latin America. "It's wasteful to an artist when he must lose the hot months, barring a few summer dates. South America is the answer." Inability of the Colón in Buenos Aires and the Teatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro to import artists from Europe was the entering wedge. "But please don't think I mean that we are teaching Latin America to like music. Their musical culture is quite as old as ours. Maybe older."' St Louis Post Dispatch 13.8.1944
'I have to pester Pan-American so much...'
Mertens later said, ruefully: 'Generally I am known as quite a friendly fellow, but I am afraid that the Pan-American travel lines do not think so, because to keep my trip in progress at all, I had to pester them to such an extent that they gratefully put me on a plane to get rid of me.'
In early 1947, Mertens had been in negotiations with the US State department (Dean Acheson) for the conductor Otto Klemperer to visit Austria and Germany. In the end approval was granted only by the American occupation forces in Vienna for that country (see Peter Heyworth's biography of the conductor vol. 1, p.158 + n.33). Contralto Maureen Forrester has kind things to say about her agent and observes in passing that he had a summer house in Westport Connecticut. 'In my own career, after Andre Mertens died, I gradually became dissatisfied with the attention I was receiving from Columbia. My recitals were always in Town Hall, never Carnegie Hall - which was a notch up the ladder.' (She eventually went to Sol Hurok.)
On the morning of the death of the legendary conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, Wilhelm Furtwängler on 30 November 1954, Mertens is said by Herbert von Karajan to have telephoned him and to have said that Furtwängler and the BPO had an American tour booked, but it would be cancelled if Karajan himself didn't take over the baton.
A Cuban in America
Monday, 22 May 1944, Lieutenant Bolet gave a recital at his old school, Stony Brook, Long Island. No admission price, but a collection will be taken for United China Relief. Nassau Daily Review-Star, 19 May 1944. 'In 1937, a dispute broke out between Japanese and Chinese troops near Peking, China. This dispute escalated into a military conflict and marked the beginning of the second-Sino Japanese War. The war destroyed and displaced many Chinese citizens. Most of the displaced had nowhere to go or no way of supporting themselves. As a result, several organizations popped up in the United States led by Americans sympathetic to the plight of the Chinese. In the 1940s, seven of these organizations joined forces to establish the United China Relief. The organization send aid workers to China and aimed to raise $5,000,000 to help the Chinese affected by the war.' (Museum of Chinese in America, MOCA)
The Evening Star, 26 Nov 1944 reported that the new Cuban ambassador Dr Guillermo Belt was due to arrive this week. 'His wife and three young sons will come in the new year. Jorge Bolet is back from Cuba after brief visit.'
On Saturday, 4 November 1944 in the Teatro Nacional, Havana at the hour of midnight, he had performed the Tchaikovsky concerto with Erich Leinsdorf in aid of victims of a cyclone. (Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade and the Rosenkavalier waltzes by Richard Strauss were also on the programme.)
Noticias de Hoy (4.11.44)
The 1944 Cuba–Florida hurricane had been a large Category 4 tropical cyclone on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale that caused widespread damage across the western Caribbean Sea and Southeastern United States in October 1944. It inflicted over US$100 million in damage and caused at least 318 deaths, the majority of fatalities occurring in Cuba.)
Wednesday 8 November, 1944: El Crisol (13.11.44) reports that the microphones of Havana radio station Circuito CMQ broadcast Jorge in a programme with the radio's own symphony orchestra conducted by his brother Alberto. Pre-revolutionary Cuba was an early adopter of new technology, including TV. Cuba was the first Latin American country to have television.
In December 1944, political changes at home rendered Bolet’s military commission void. The President Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar retired - his handpicked successor, Carlos Saladrigas Zayas, was defeated - and was succeeded by the civilian Ramon Grau San Martin.
In a July 17, 1944, dispatch to the U.S. Secretary of State, U.S. Ambassador Spruille Braden wrote:
It is becoming increasingly apparent that President Batista intends to discomfit the incoming Administration in every way possible, particularly financially. A systematic raid on the Treasury is in full swing with the result that Dr. Grau will probably find empty coffers when he takes office on October 10. It is blatant that President Batista desires that Dr. Grau San Martin should assume obligations which in fairness and equity should be a matter of settlement by the present Administration.
Shortly afterwards, Batista left Cuba for the United States. 'I just felt safer there,' he said.
For the next eight years, Batista remained in the background, spending time in the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City, and at his home in Daytona Beach, Florida.
The pianist-diplomat Lieutenant Bolet answered this challenge by enlisting in the United States Army (31 January, 1945 in Baltimore Maryland). After 6 weeks as a private, he was chosen valedictorian of his naturalisation class at Camp Croft, South Carolina. He now becomes an American citizen.
El Crisol, 4 November 1944
'The silence of his father, ex-colonel Bolet...'
In an interview Jorge gave with Leandro Garcia in a Cuban newspaper in late 1944, his father Antonio was also present. The headline reads dramatically: Jorge Bolet is no longer ‘The Cuban Pianist’
This is the gist of the report. [I had to read the Spanish quite quickly in the archive, and needed more time! If anyone has the article, I'd like to read it again, as it seems important.]
Jorge has had to renounce his citizenship of origin. Headings to various paragraphs include the following:
El silencio del ex-coronel Bolet
Lo que ha perdido Cuba (What Cuba has lost)
Jiras y concientros canceldos, (Tours & concerts cancelled)
Una carrera asombroso
Tristeza y amargura de un gran pianist (The sadness and bitterness of a great pianist)
‘My last visit to Cuba was in November 1944. I gave a concert in the Auditorio and another in the Teatro Nacional, for the benefit of the victims of the cyclone. Then I was 2nd Lieutenant in the Cuban Army. I had a contract with Columbia Artists. 15 concerts in the USA for 1944/5, a tour of 30 concerts in Australia and New Zealand for the spring of 1945/6. [There are no reports in Australian newspapers of this tour so it probably did not go ahead.] My position as Cuban Army official was going to present difficulties. I explained this to President Grau. [etc.]’
The article states that Bolet was born in El Cerro, Havana. He speaks five languages, German, Italian, French, English and Spanish. The following statement is baffling without the context: Habia llegado demasiado lejos par ser criollo! ('I had come too far to be a Creole!') 'One doesn’t know whether the father or the son is the sadder.'
Cuba's Gaceta Official of 11 August 1944 reports decree 2378: declarar extinguidos los beneficios de becarios a favor de Jorge Bolet Tremoleda y Raquel Reyes Martínez ("to declare the benefits of scholarship holders Jorge Bolet Tremoleda y Raquel Reyes Martínez at an end"). Given in the Palace of the President, Fulgencio Batista on 5 August; Anselmo Alliegro, Minister of Education. Alliegro later served as the Interim President of Cuba for one day (1 – 2 January 1959) after the departure of Batista from the country.
A document from August 1942 had stated: 'The Minister of Education, Mr. Ramón Vasconcelos, requested a complete list of the Department's scholarship recipients abroad and how they comply with the obligations imposed by such status. Fulfilling this wish, the Head of the Higher Education Section, Dr. Febles, gave him the interested report with all the details of said scholarships, limited to fifty, granted in accordance with Decree-Law 46 of 1934 and which are of unlimited duration as long as the scholarship recipients comply with the requirement of the monthly report, a condition that the majority of them have not fulfilled, to the point of not knowing the address of some of them, who, however, have not stopped collecting monthly payments. Senator Vasconcelos did not make any statement to the journalists in relation to these scholarships, but we know that he is studying a relationship that will continue to be drastic for many of the scholarship recipients in order to end the abnormal situation reflected in the report. As can be seen from the report - which we reproduce as completely as possible in view of the importance of the matter, most of the scholarship recipients abroad reside in Havana. (...) *It is not known where Jorge Bolet is, nor has he sent information...'
It was on 17 March 1945 in Spartanburg, South Carolina that Jorge Bolet swore an oath of renunciation and allegiance, thus becoming a United States citizen. He states that he had enetred the US Army on 31 January 1945. Two affidavit witnesses were: Charles Angelo Corado (of St Bernice, Indiana) and William Gilbert Rees of Clarks Summit, PA.).
In 1982, a letter to the editor, published by El Mercurio newspaper of Santiago (Chile), raised controversy surrounding Claudio Arrau's acquisition of U.S. citizenship in 1979 and alleged abandonment of his Chilean citizenship. The fact was eventually established that, in acquiring the U.S. citizenship, Arrau had not renounced his original citizenship.
'In the uniform of the Cuban Army...'
8 December 1944: Carnegie Hall; Jorge's fourth appearance here
‘He does not appear to be a pianist of remarkable insight as yet, or to be the possessor of highly individual talents. But there was all-round efficiency.’ His programme included Bach’s French Suite in E major (did he ever play that again?!), where the Courante and Gigue were ‘too fast’. In the Brahms/Handel variations, there was technical security and the necessary brilliance. Dello Joio’s second sonata (the composer was present), Chopin’s G minor Ballade were also included. The review is credited to M.A.S.
Musical America 25.12.44 is a little more favourable. 'Jorge Bolet, young pianist, who is a first lieutenant in the Cuban army and at present assistant Military Attache at the Cuban Embassy in Washington, gave an extraordinarily vital concert in Carnegie Hall on the evening of December 8. Some pianists woo the instrument; others ride it high with spurs and whip. It is to this latter group that Lieut. Bolet allied himself during most of the recital. In the Haydn Variations and in the Forlane of the Ravel Suite, he proved that he can produce a liquid tone and phrase sensitively, when he wants to. And his interpretation of the Chopin Ballade in G minor had an heroic sweep which recreated that much-abused work and made it fresh and vital. But in the hectic speed of the Courante, Bourrée and Gigue of the Bach suite and the rhythmless rush of the Prelude to the Ravel work, Mr. Bolet let his fingers run away with his judgment. His performance of the Brahms Variations, fine as it was, suffered from a lack of imagination in the quieter, more introspective sections. One missed the Sehnsucht, the haunting melancholy of the music.
Mr. Dello Joio has written a strenuous, noisy, strongly-wrought sonata and Mr. Bolet played it exhilaratingly. Especially impressive was the slow movement, in which wide-flung chords build to a tremendous climax over a repeated bass, dying away to a sombre postlude. The first and last movements provide a formidable work-out for the pianist, but Lieut. Bolet took them in his stride most brilliantly. The audience recalled him many times.'
In a letter dated 21 November 1944 which Jorge sent to Mrs Virginia Shaw of Hasting-on-Hudson, NY (written on letter paper of the Hotel Maytag, Newton, Iowa), he refers to his "big night" of the 8th. If she cannot use the box reserved for her, she should contact him at the St. Regis (2 East 55th Street at Fifth Ave.) where he will arrive on 4 December. 'This touring business is hard work and very tiring indeed, and of course I do not like especially to travel.'
He said that in the Training Corps at Fort Benning, Georgia, early in events of World War Two, he stayed with a wonderful family who had an ‘absolutely gorgeous piano’. He came across the music of Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1 which he had never really looked at before. ‘I learned it in 1 hour and 15 minutes’ after saying to the daughter that he could do it in 6 hours.' (But I suspect "learn" means "grasped the basics of it"!). San Francisco Chronicle 11.9.85
Tex Compton
Jorge Bolet and his life partner Houston Larimore ‘Tex’ Compton met in the early (?) 1940s, though it might have been later. A blog by Isabel (who knew Bolet and is later most likely to be identified with R.R. who wrote a published memoir: see 1965-66 page) said that when Tex died in San Francisco in 1980, he had left, at same time, 'a break and a great void in Jorge’s life (un respiro y un gran vacío en la vida de Jorge). Jorge told me sadly that in the last weeks, when he visited the clinic, he did not recognise him. Imagine, after living together for nearly forty years.'
Tex was born on 31 May 1910, in Kirkwood, Missouri. He died on 9 December 1980, in Santa Clara, south-east of San Francisco. By then Mac Finley and Tex had invested in Jorge's career, forming the Arcoiris Corp.
A report in the Las Vegas Daily Optic for 5 February 1952 shows Tex firmly ensconced in his role of manager. ‘The dinner was given complimentary to the artist, Jorge Bolet, who was presented in a piano concert. Others attending were Mrs Thompson, Mr and Mrs Larry Gold, Mrs Susan Valentine, Mr Bolet's manager, "Tex" Compton, and Carl S. Sporleder, chairman of the Walsenburg, Colorado Community Concert Association, who came here especially to hear the Bolet concert.’ On 3 Jun 1954 they are listed as pianist and manager on the passenger manifest when travelling from Southampton, on the Queen Mary (in transit from Switzerland) to New York.
Albert McGrigor fondly recalls accompanying Bolet on concert tours throughout the United States, with Bolet and his personal manager, Tex, sharing the driving of a Lincoln Continental and with a Baldwin grand piano in tow.
By the mid-1960s the original money was gone and Jorge's concert and teaching income sustained them but with difficulty. By the late 1960s, they needed a stable income, and it was then that Bolet applied for the piano jobs at Cincinnati (losing to Earl Wild) and Indiana, which he got.
Bolet grew up very much in age when discretion about relationships was a requisite. In an interview, pianist Stephen Hough has said Bolet ‘had a partner for decades who travelled with him always. He was just always there but it was never really laid out clearly who this was. You could think he was a boyfriend, you could think he was a secretary, a manager or whatever you chose, but there he was.’
One blog on the internet, by a resident of Geelong - a port city located on Corio Bay and the Barwon River, in the state of Victoria, Australia, south-west of Melbourne - has the following reminiscences: ‘Bolet and his life’s partner, Hank [who I presume is Tex, but cannot verify] latched on to me whenever they arrived in town. Jorge was a laconic man and Hank did all the talking for him. They were absolutely devoted to one another. We went for coffee in Geelong after rehearsal in the Geelong Performing Arts Centre – I’m making this up, as I have no idea what it was really called – it was a very down at heel building, paint flaking off the walls and the back stage facilities were a disgrace. Strangely, Jorge felt quite at home. He had played in flea-palaces much worse he opined.’
The author is touched by their relationship: ‘the two of them were two sides of the same coin’.
They used to stay at the Sheraton Hotel in Spring Street and seemed unconcerned at its 2 star rating. It was not one of the 5 star International Sheraton chain. Jorge had to endure the after-performance reception at John Brockman’s house. Hank blindsided Pat Brockman on one occasion declaring ‘We just love Australia – especially them Pavalova (sic) cakes!’ Which of course, she had not provided. The next time Jorge came to town (1981?) Hank had died. So too had part of Jorge – he had visibly aged.’
It has been suggested again and again in comments that Tex Compton's behaviour was a factor in alienating some concert management. The behaviour of his partner/manager was 'incredibly brusque and he had a habit of blurting out wholly inappropriate comments'. (Tourrette's Syndrome has been mentioned, and that this was later brought under control with medication.)
The relationship, though long-lasting (some 40 years) was - as I believe - an open one.
Below is an imigration card for a trip to Rio de Janeiro. Tex Compton's profession is listed as "travel agent". When he flew back on 17 March 1948 on PanAm, his address is listed as 71, Washington Square, NYC. On other occassions, his profession has been listed as "business" or "diplomatic".
Tex, four years older that Jorge, had worked in the oil industry and had received a bequest in excess of 100,000 dollars which enabled him to live modestly off the invested sum.
He invested in Jorge's career and travelled with him as his road manager/secretary. By 1951, Jorge and Tex were both residing at 71, Washington Square, New York City.
It was at times apparently an 'open' relationship.
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