Early Years
1914-1927
Jorge Bolet used an English pronunciation of his name: George Bo-LETTE (with stress falling on the final syllable & with the T pronounced).
Birth
Jorge Leopoldo Bolet Tremoleda was born in Havana, Cuba on 15 November 1914, the son of Antonio Bolet Valdés and Adelina Tremoleda de la Paz. El Cerro, one of the 15 municipalities in the city, is given as the district on his application to the Curtis Institute in 1927. He was the fifth of six children of a disabled Cuban Army veteran and his once upper-middle class bride.
As a historical note, on that same day, 15 November, in 1533 the Spanish arrived in Cusco, the capital of the Inca empire, followed by Francisco Pizarro in March 1534. An ominous, double-edged event.
Both parents were of Catalan descent, and neither was a musician. His mother Adelina (born 1883 in Carballo, Camagüey, Cuba) was an only child, but his father Antonio was one of 8 brothers and sisters; he himself was a lieutenant in the Cuban army.
'Bolet was born ... in Havana into genteel poverty, the fifth of six children. In their reduced circumstances, Jorge’s mother, and to varying degrees her children including Jorge, became evangelical Presbyterians.' (Francis Crociata)
Jorge's great grandfather 'was Josep Llorens Tremoleda i Planas, from Torroella de Montgrí, Girona, Catalonia, Spain. He arrived as a local municipal judge and married Francisca Díaz y Cartaya in Caraballo.' (Daniel Cadiz, from the Tremoleda side of the family)
Jorge had two sisters, Maria Josefa (1904-1991) and Hortensia Adelina (1911 in Guanabacoa - 1981 Hialeah, Miami-Dade, Florida) and three brothers, Joaquin Antonio/Nico (1902-1982), Alberto (1905-1999) and Guillermo (1919-2013).
Aberto, who became a conductor, studied music (violin) at conservatories in Madrid and Paris (1922 -1926). He had previously studied at the Conservatorio Falcón in Havana (1913-1918) - violin with Casimiro Zertuche 1917-1921 and Fermín Touche 1923-25, composition with Silvain Noack 1930-33. (He stowed away on a ship to Spain at the age of 16 to escape from his father's insistence that he become a lawyer)
He was briefly in Budapest before forming a trio that toured across Europe and North Africa in the later 1920s and early 1930s.
‘I am a very even-tempered person. I have my mother’s temperament and character.’ His mother said that as a baby of 2 or 3 months he was unruly but when he heard Maria, his sister, play the piano, he became quiet.
(John Gruen, The New York Times, 28 January, 1973)
Cuba
Cuba is the largest island in the Antilles archipelago. Havana was founded on 16 November, 1519. Havana in the 1920s was a lively international city with a tradition of opera and concert going, but with little to offer other than the standard repertory.
The Orquesta Sinfonica de la Habana was founded in 1922 by Gonzalo Roig and Ernesto Lecuona with the support of the great cellist Pablo Casals. The inaugural concert was in the Teatro Nacional, 29 October 1922: Weber, Oberon overture and Saint-Saens, Piano Concerto No. 2 (Ernesto Lecuona was the soloist).
Education
Jorge began piano lessons with sister Maria. (He said in an interview in 1943 that he was seven years old at the time.)
She then entrusted him - aged 10 - to Attilio M. de Vitalís but he died within a few months (Diario de la Marina 20.6.1929). Professor de Vitalis had advertised lessons November to May 1923/4 when he was residing in Lens Court, Calle 6, Vedado, Havana; he seems to have been based at the Morristown School, New Jersey and in New York, where he was Secretary and treasurer of the Composers' Music Corporation, 14 East 48th Street NYC in 1919. Born in Russia in 1865? (Diario 25.11.1923 etc.).
Jorge then had some lessons, briefly, with María Jones de Castro and Hubert de Blanck who trained him for Curtis. Hubertus Christiaan de Blanck (1856-1932) was a Dutch pianist who had lived most of his life in Cuba. He founded a conservatory of music in Havana in 1885.
Jorge's early education was in the Colegio Metodista Central (from 1926). It was, in his own words, a normal education – ‘My childhood was like that of any other boy. There were no picturesque or striking episodes.’ Aged 8, when he saw a bonfire, he ran home an composed a little piece for piano, Las Barbas de San Juan, inspired by the flames (St John's Eve is closely associated with Midsummer festivities)
The Detroit Evening Times (May, 1941), reported that Jorge knew Irma de Algarra y del Barrio, the daughter of the Cuban consul in the Motor City ('They were playmates in Havana, and took in several parades and revolutions and things back in younger days'). Her first communion was in May 1924 in the Colegio de las Dominicas Americanas.
Diario de la Marina, 1 December 1916 reports that 'we are pleased to inform you that the [2 year old] child Jorge Bolet y Tremoleda is out of all danger. Doctor Antonio María Valdés Dapena had assisted when the child had eaten by mistake a garden plant, Malanga morada, "Purple Morada". (In Cuba, malanga refers to edible plants from the arum family (Araceae), including Xanthosoma saggitifolium. They are herbaceous perennials that produce a large root rich in starch. The purple variety of malanga has a dark brown root and white-ish to yellow flesh, and is round in shape. It is often found cultivated in the Guamuhaya Mountains in central Cuba. Purple malanga is boiled or stewed and also used in recipes for preparing desserts and fritters. Women use malanga to make a kind of mash that they feed to infants.)
The Nuevo Herald Miami interviewed in New York by telephone (when he was en route to San Juan, Puerto Rico in December 1982, during which - in a baritone voice, 'con un accento mas iberico que antillano' (with an accent which was more peninsular Spanish than from the Antilles), he explained that in his youth in Cuba, the violin was considered a boys' instrument ('para varones') and the piano was for girls ('las hembras'), yet he did not encounter any prejudice or opposition.
On Tuesday 8 February 1923, taking part in a 9pm benefit concert at the Conservatorio Falcón (Avenida de Italia, 56),
Maria had played Grieg's Ballade - a piece her young brother would continue to champion throughout his career.
(El Mundo, 7.2.1923)
Jorge and his sister Maria (courtesy of Mattheus Smits)
Diario de la Marina, 1 December 1916 reports the two-year old Jorge's recovery from illness.
El Mundo, April 1921, Ganz's second visit
The first pianist Jorge heard
It was around 1919, that - as a five year old boy - Jorge heard his first professional pianist, the Swiss-American Rudolf Ganz at the National Theatre in Havana. 'Well, that was my moment of decision. I vowed I'd be that man up there on that stage.' (In an interview for HiFi Stereo Review (July 1972), Gregor Benko states that he was actually 10 years old - which makes more sense. 'He decided that night that he could be nothing but a pianist.') Ganz (1877-1972), a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni, intriguingly claimed direct descent from Charlemagne, (Charles the Great), king of the Franks and Christian emperor of the West who died in AD 814 after having done much to define the shape and character of medieval Europe and presiding over the Carolingian Renaissance. On 5 March, 1905, Ganz became the first pianist to perform Maurice Ravel’s music in America, playing his Jeux d’eau in a Chicago recital. He continued his first American performances of Ravel’s music in a New York City recital in Mendelssohn Hall on 8 November, 1907, playing Oiseaux tristes and Barque sur l’océan. In 1908 Ravel dedicated Scarbo from Gaspard de la nuit to Ganz, and in 1923 the pianist was awarded the French Legion of Honour for introducing Ravel and Debussy to American audiences. 'Rudolph Ganz is pianist who believes in playing the American composer rather than talking about him. On his San Francisco recital program for February 2, Ganz played MacDowell’s Sonata Eroica, Stojowski’s Amourette de Pierrot, and Ornstein’s A la Chinoise.' (Musical Courier, 6 February, 1919) Diario de la Marina, 5 April 1921 reports that the eminent Swiss pianist returns to Havana for a second visit after great success in Paris. (André Gresse said that his performance of Saint-Saëns' fifth piano concerto was the best he'd ever heard in the French capital.) Ganz will offer six recitals this winter (the season lasts November-April in Cuba) in Havana, after arriving on Sunday 10 April. The first will be on Tuesday 12. Much later, both Jorge and Ganz both served together on the jury of the first Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 1962. 'Jorge once told me that from his first hearing of Ganz, Ganz also taught him that a pianist should have a moustache!' (Mattheus Smits) In December 1916, Ganz had given a recital in the Sala Espadero, and earlier in that same year (March) Leopold Godowsky had performed there. (León Primelles, Crónica cubana 1915-1918, [Havana 1955], p.212) The young budding pianist 'was attentive to concert artists performing in Cuba. The first major figure to have made a lasting impression was Wilhelm Backhaus (German, 1884-1969)'. (Francis Crociata). Jorge once told Ira Levin: '"One of my most vivid memories is of Backhaus playing the most incredible Chopin Étude Op. 10, No. 2 (in A minor) in Havana in the 1920s. I never heard anything like it since." When I played Backhaus’s 1927 recording for him, he said I told you so.”' 29 March 1925 Backhaus played in the Teatro Payret at 10am and gave a second concert, both for Pro-Arte. Alfredo Hola and Irene Agraniente hosted a lunch for him and his wife in their residence of Reparto de la Sierra, early in April. The pianist was back in Havana again in March 1926. On 9 and 14 May, 1928, he performed in the Teatro de la Zarzuela. It so happens that 5 Chopin Études were programmed for the second of these concerts.
Early appearances
'As a child,' Jorge said, 'I would rather stay inside and listen to my sister at the piano than go out and play with my friends. You know there's something wrong with a child like that.'
Washington Post, 6 November 1980
We find in the newspaper archives some early appearances. The Diario de la Marina (22 April 1926) advertises a concert in honour of Jorge, precocidad artística, en su honor y beneficio the following Tuesday 27th at 9pm in the Sala Falcón. Taking part will be Maria Bolet, Josie Pujol (violin), Armando Molina (cello) and Alberto Marquez. Jorge will play Chopin in the final part of the evening. Josie Pujol (born c.1900) had graduated in 1916 from the Conservatorio Peyrellade, named after Carlos Alfredo Peyrellade Zaldivar (1840–1908), a Cuban classical pianist; she is described in 1920 as making a brilliant career in the USA.
Ernesto Lecuona organised a Fiesta de Caridad (Charity Concert - these seem to be a regular occurrence for various causes) on 4 December 1926 in the Teatro Payret. Jorge will play a solo, and there are plenty of songs and dances, including Claro de Luna (Lecuona) sung by Dulce Maria Blanco de Cárdenas and Alice Dano de Pino, with seven guitars. Vals de Pierrot will be sung by Lily del Barrio and Consuelo Miró. One of the helpers from whom tickets can be obtained is Mrs Amelia Solberg de Hoskinson, at Avenida de la República 95-B. (The Payret Theatre had opened in 1877, but two years later its founder Jaime Payret was unable to meet mortgage payments to the government and lost it.)
Christmas Day, Saturday 25 December 1926 at 5pm, an event organised by Pedro J. Hernández, secretary of the Triangulares de la Y.M.C.A. Among the items, Jorge will play a waltz by Levitzky and a study by Chopin. Dr J M Dorado will speak about the significance of Christmas, and at the end Jorge will play Mariposa by Lavallé.
Discovery
Aged about nine or ten, Jorge played in the old-fashioned salon in Havana of Mrs Amelia Solberg de Hoskinson, a Cuban married to an American who worked for the Tropical Engineering and Construction Company.
A house guest, Mrs Maud H Campbell (sister-in-law to Amelia) from Erie, Pennsylvania contacted the Curtis Institute which had just opened in Philadelphia (in 1924) and Mrs Hoskinson organised finance for the trip to an audition. (Maud Campbell was aged 60 at this time; she returned from Havana to New York City on 31 March 1927/ 4 April 1927 on the ocean liner Veendam.)
Amelia Solberg de Hoskinson had ‘a very beautiful old townhouse in the older part of Havana, and once a month she held a real typical nineteenth-century salon... Now I don’t remember who exactly took me there, but I think I must have been ten years old the first time I was invited.
'At one of these salons, a Mrs Campbell from Erie, Pennsylvania, took special notice of my work.
When she returned to Erie, she sent Amelia a newspaper clipping touting the Curtis... founded two years before in 1925 [actually 1924] by Mary Louise Curtis Bok and endowed with twelve and one-half million dollars. The article went on to say that [legendary pianist] Josef Hofmann was the director.
Amelia wrote the Curtis Institute and received a catalogue and an audition blank and called my mother and told her that ‘Jorge is going to Philadelphia for an audition.’
The address of the Bolet family at this time is nearby, at San Lazaro 75, Havana, near the Malecón. The address is given as Calle San Miguel 224, when Jorge sails to Florida (and then on to Philadelphia) in September 1927: this is in the heart of El Cerro which is listed on his Curtis application form.
(But there is, in fact, a lot of confusion about addresses in the primary sources.
Amelia Solberg
Mrs Amelia Solberg de Hoskinson was a Cuban married to an American who worked for the Tropical Engineering and Construction Company. They had married in Mexico City on 9 June, 1903 (while staying at a residence in Rincón Antonio, Istmo de Tehuantepec). Their address in Havana was San Lazaro 95-B, listed as such in November 1919 when Amelia applied for a new passport. (She was born Amelia Petrikka Solberg in Baltimore, Maryland in 1875.)
In 1939 she is described as “la bondadosa y gentilísima dama, amante de la buena música y unos de los elementos más entusiastas de nuestra sociedad”, (kind and gentle lady, lover of good music and one of the most enthusiastic elements of our society).
Lucho, 11 May, 1909 states that Mrs Solberg de Hoskinson and Angela Mariana G de Mendoza Guerra had played two pianos, Weber's fantasy of themes from his opera Der Freischütz.
El Mundo, 22 November 1924 reports that at a Pro Arte Musical evening on 21st, Amelia had played a two-piano duet with Ursuilina Saéz Medina: Variations on a theme by Beethoven Op.35 by Saint-Saëns. She is described as “una dama que se conduce en el más adorable medio social de nuetro patria”. “We meet her in every place where Art is cultivated. She supports everything, by the warmth of her enthusiasm and by her exquisite character.”
On the first Saturday of June 1919 Mrs Solberg organised a benefit matinée at the Teatro Payret for hospital invalids.
Above: Diario de la Marina April 1926; (right) 18 August 1927 advertising the 4 September concert
Farewell
There were two benefit concerts to help finance Jorge’s trip. The first was on Friday 13 August 1926 in the Teatro Principal de la Comedia, Havana. The organiser was Maria Jones de Castro, and the event involved performances by her pupils.
Amongst other items, there were: The Fair (by Cornelius Gurlitt, 1820-1901) played by Esperanza Urgell Llado, Serenade Napolitaine by Jules Burgmein (arranged for 2 pianos, 8 hands), the Waltz from Rachmaninov's 2nd Suite or two pianos, played by Angelina Candia Tapia and Cotalia Agiiero Campos.
All these long forgotten names, both performers and sometimes composers. It's rather moving to read through the whole list of performers' names, still remembered in the archives almost 100 years later.
Before the battle of Agincourt (1415) , Shakespeare's Henry V tells of how those present that day will always be remembered.
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
What became of Beatricita Navarrete de Castro, Roshilda Verdeja Aramburo and Berta Vega Flores Delfín?
Jorge also performed. He played a Waltz in A major Op.2 by Mischa Levitzki (this was actually quite a recent composition, from 1921), Waltz No. 2 by Chopin and Le Papillon (Etude de Concert Op. 18) by Calixa Lavallée - a French-Canadian composer. He then tackled Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor K.466 with Mercedita Soler on second piano. The Chopin Waltz No. 2 which Jorge played is likely to be the one in A-flat major 1835) Op. 34/1 dedicated to Josefine von Thun-Hohenstein.)
It is interesting that all the names of the pianists, apart for Jorge, are female. He did once say in interview that the piano was an instrument for girls, the violin for boys in Cuba. Steinway pianos had been provided by Casa Giralt. (Bohemia magazine, 8 August 1926)
At some stage, Jorge also performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor K466 in the Teatro Nacional with the Havana Sinfonica under Gonzalo Roig, co-founder of the orchestra in 1922 and a pioneer of the symphonic movement in Cuba.. The programme included Valse Fantasia by Glinka and Les Préludes (Liszt). Jorge (in the review he is mistakenly called Alberto!) is described as 'a talented 12 year old boy'. In the Mozart, ‘his playing was so clear - his marvellous ability coupled with his boyish grace touched the heart of the audience'.
A year after that first benefit concert, on Sunday 4 September at 10am in the Gran Teatro Nacional, Havana, there was an even larger affair, ‘a concert for the benefit of the young Jorge Bolet, so that with the receipts he can go to complete his piano studies in the United States'.
Various artists performed in the first half, including the famous pianist-composer Ernesto Lecuona, many of whose works have become standards of the Latin, jazz and classical repertoires. These include popular tunes such as Malagueña and Siboney. Señorita Consuelo Miró sang a Cuban song, there was a recitation by Señorita Dalia Iniguez; the Dance of the Hours (a short ballet in Act 3 of the opera La Gioconda by Amilcare Ponchielli) was performed on 2 pianos/8 hands.
In the second half Jorge played various items: a Prelude (Bach/de Blanck), a study by Henselt, Impromptus by Chopin, a Waltz by Levitzki, "Nocturno" (which is probably Liszt's Liebestraum 3), the Allegro Appassionato by Saint-Saens, then the Konzertstück by Weber with the Havana Symphony under Gonzalo Roig.
Pro-Arte Musical
The Pro-Arte Musical, a musical society founded in Havana in 1918, was to be instrumental in helping young Jorge’s career. It was established on 2 December, 1918 by María Teresa García Montes de Giberga and a group of enthusiastic collaborators; its first activity was 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.
Havana in the 1920s was a lively international city with a tradition of opera and concert going, but with little to offer other than the standard repertory. Sociedad Pro-Arte Musical and others - so critics claimed - ‘pandered to the tastes of Havana’s ruling classes’ by programming popular classics from Bach to Wagner, together with virtuoso concertos by Heifetz, Casals, Arrau and the young Jorge Bolet.
The Orquesta Sinfonica de la Habana was founded in 1922 by Gonzalo Roig and Ernesto Lecuona with the support of the great cellist Pablo Casals. The inaugural concert was in the Teatro Nacional, 29 October 1922: Weber, Oberon overture and Saint-Saens, Piano Concerto No. 2 (Ernesto Lecuona was the soloist).
The writer Alejo Carpentier despaired of the city’s entrenched conservatism. In opera, singers ‘were being observed with the same anxious expectations circus acrobats’. (Revista Musical Chilena, December 1947)
Señora García Montes de Giberga’s initiative for Pro-Arte Musical had not been due to the fact that until then Havana lacked decent artistic presentations - on the contrary, she and her friends had been able to applaud in the National Theatre, Adolfo Bracale’s opera seasons as well as the concerts given by Polish virtuoso pianist Ignaz Paderewski and the legendary Anna Pavlova’s ballet seasons. But such events had depended upon the whims of impresarios, and upon the whims also of a very limited public who could afford the expensive seats and who sometimes did not know how to behave correctly in the theatre. (In fact, a paper aeroplane thrown from one of the Colisseo's top floors landed on top of the piano of the famous Paderewski during one of his concerts.)
By 1924 there were so many members that the board of directors had to say that it was necessary to limit the admission of members “because none of the theatres of Havana, not even the Payret, which had the largest capacity, have sufficient seats to accommodate them.”
An extraordinary general meeting of the board of directors agreed in May 1925 to build their own theatre. Through a competition, they got the most attractive blueprint, conceived by architects Moenck and Quintana, and on 6 August, 1927 they were able to place the first stone of the building. The theatre was inaugurated on 2 December 1928, with a concert by the Havana Symphony Orchestra directed by Gonzalo Roig.
Célida Parera, Historia de la Sociedad Pro Arte Musical [History of the Pro Arte Musical Society]
(New York: Senda Nueva de Ediciones, 1990 - which I have not seen - is the most detailed publication available on the history of the organisation. 'Parera combines her analysis of sources with her own testimony of having worked for Pro-Arte between 1941-59. It features chronologies that list the artists and ensembles that collaborated with the institution. It also reprints almost all of the programmes for opera and dance performances from the 1920s to the 1950s, as well as an important numbers of programs for theatre and classical music presentations during the same period.'
Jorge Bolet speaks about going to Curtis
María Jones de Castro (1895-1963)
Born in the Cuban city of Trinidad, Sancti Spíritus in 1895, Maria had begun her piano studies with Gustavo A. Quiróz from Leipzig (who had become a Professor at the Conservatorio Falcón in 1910).
After furthering her studies in the USA, she returned to Havana where she set up a school in her unusual house in Calle F, No. 660, Vedado, Havana. Gonzalo Roig, Elisa Espinosa, Antonio Mompó, Josué Pujols, Modesto Fraga, Valero Vallvé, Gloria Anne Hollis and Fernando Anckermann among others became professors there. The building is now the Escuela Manuel Saumel.
Jorge himself wrote a preface to a book on piano technique which Maria published - Leyes científicas aplicadas a la enseñanza del piano (1957):
'María Jones de Castro has chosen the best among the many existing methods, and shows us, clearly and briefly, what turns out to be a universal technique based on immutable laws of muscle relaxation and the logic of mechanical processes [...]. In my opinion, the secret of this admirable book is found in the paragraph on page 100, in which the author emphasises the fact that "the piano is played more with the mind than with the fingers."'
For a brief survey of the early years of another wunderkind from Latin America - Claudio Arrau León
(born at midnight 6/7 February 1903 in Chillán, Chile - click the button below to be taken to the page.
Hubert de Blanck
Hubertus Christiaan de Blanck, born 14 June 1856, Utrecht, the Netherlands, died 28 November 1932 in Havana, buried in the Cementerio de Cristobal Colon. He lived most of his life in Cuba.
He studied with Ferdinand Hiller in Köln/Cologne and 1873 moved to the imperial city of St Petersburg in Russia where he made his formal debut as a concert pianist aged 17. He landed in Rio de Janeiro in April 1880, with the Brazilian violinist Eugène Maurice Dengremont (1866-1893) and was received at the court of Emperor Pedro II of Brazil. On 24 December 1881 in New York, he married Anna Maria Garcia-Menocal (a cousin of the future president of Cuba, General Mario Menocal); she died in September 1900.
De Blanck spent the Christmas holiday of December 1882 in Havana, and in 1883 moved there, settling in a large house located at Calzada Real de Puentes Grandes, No. 130 in a neighbourhood called La Ceiba.
Fully ensconced in Cuba's musical community, he began contemplating Havana's lack of a conservatory of music, which was founded in October 1885, at Calle del Prado, No. 100 (the building no longer exists). It moved to Calle Galiano, at the corner of Dragones in 1898, and then in 1903 to Calle Galiano No. 47, between Concordia & Virtudes; by this time it had 680 students. Ernesto Lecuona y Casado (1895-1963) was one of the first students.
In 1895, at the outbreak of the Cuban War of Independence, de Blanck sympathised with the revolutionary movement and he had to leave Cuba (he was deported on 6 September 1896).
The family settled in New York. During his stay in this city, he accompanied several musicians on tours of the United States and Canada. In 1898, after the Cuban War of Independence had ended, the family returned to Havana, where de Blanck continued his musical activities as teacher, pianist, composer, publisher and organizer.
In 1902 de Blanck married his second wife Pilar Martín (d. 1955).
At the end of 1890 in the Centro Canario in Havana, de Blanck had given two piano recitals, the first time that such events had been given in Cuba. Interestingly, on 6 September 1896 he was deported from Cuba for being involved with revolutionaries, leaving by steamer for New York. In December 1898, after the Cuban War of Independence had ended, he returned with his family to Havana.
See further: Frank Rijckaert, Hubert de Blanck - the Patriarch of Cuban Music (Calbona Uitgeverij Rotterdam, 2013)