Indiana
A teaching job 1968
(and a fixed income...)
At the United Nations, 1967
'Tickets are now on sale for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s first appearance in Los Angeles, Sunday, January 22, at 3:00 pm in The Music Center’s Pavilion. The orchestra will perform under the baton of its music director, Sixten Ehrling, who has appeared as guest conductor with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on numerous occasions. Soloist with the Detroit Orchestra will be Cuban pianist Jorge Bolet, playing Prokofieffs Concerto No. 3 in C Major. Other works on the program include Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and “La Valse” by Maurice Ravel.' Palos Verdes Peninsula News, 11.1.67
The New Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
Sunday 16 April 1967 Queen Elizabeth Hall, London recital: Chopin, Ballades; Brahms, Handel Variations; Liszt, Consolation No.3 in D flat & Mephisto waltz. (The concert was under S.A.Gorlinsky management) This hall had only recently been opened on 1 March by Her Majesty the Queen, with a concert conducted by Benjamin Britten (his Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Aldeburgh, Suffolk was also inaugurated in the same year, on 2 June). The composer compiled Choral Dances from his opera Gloriana (1953) for the occasion. 'It was the brainchild of a maverick gang of architects whose inspirations included the terraced mounds that animals roam around on at London Zoo. Soon after opening in 1967, a Daily Mail poll ranked it the ugliest building in Britain.' (James FitzGerald)
Is this Jorge's last London concert until the early 1970s?
In late September, the Wiener Symphoniker and Wolfgang Sawallisch were on tour in North America, beginning at Villanova University, PA and going as far north as Anchorge, Alaska (13 October 1976). Jorge joined them on 24 October at the United Nations, where they performed Beethoven’s Fantasia in C major for piano, chorus and orchestra Op.80. The chorus was the Rutgers University Choir.
In a statement, the UN said that ‘Mr Bolet has taken his phenomenal skill to nearly every one of our member countries; it is both appropriate and delightful to have him with us.’
There is among the Bolet papers at IPAM a letter from the United Nations, dated 27 July 1967 regarding the invitation from U Thant, the Burmese diplomat and the third secretary-general of the UN from 1961 to 1971 (the first non-Scandinavian to hold the position). During his second term (2 December, 1966), Thant was well known for publicly criticising American conduct in the Vietnam War.
Dear Miss Walter (Vice President of Columbia Artists Management),
We understand that Mr Bolet will travel from Midland, Texas on 21 October to NYC and will wish after the concert to fly to Edmonton, Alberta. We shall take responsibility for these travel costs and also for Mr Bolet's living expenses during his two days or so in NYC.
George Moushon.
In November Jorge made his début in Calgary, Canada.
'Jorge Bolet is something of an anachronism in today's world,
but one of those anachronisms one hopes will never die out.
It is unfortunate that the weather kept the attendance small.'
Calgary début
Sunday, 29 October, 1967 at 8:30pm Carnegie Hall: Robert Schumann, Fantasy in C Major, Op. 17 (1836-1838); Franz Liszt, Études d’exécution transcendante, S. 139 (1838-1840).
On Wednesday 1 November Jorge made his Calgary, Canada début in the Jubilee Auditorium. Bill Musselwhite in The Calgary Herald (2.10.67) stated that 'Jorge Bolet is something of an anachronism in today's world, but one of those anachronisms one hopes will never die out. At first he strike you as being immensely dignified, but with an almost sad, aesthetic air. Then he shocks you by unloosing some beautifully controlled pianistic pyrotechnics, and you can't help but sit enthralled. While Mr Bolet's style is better suited to Mendelssohn (Songs without words) than Chopin, this did not make the second half (4 Ballades) disappointing. Mr Bolet's scrap book is equipped with as many rave reviews as any two of many lesser artists. Wednesday, he proved he could still live up to them. It is unfortunate that the weather kept the attendance small.'
2 November 1967, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Chopin Ballades & Franck's Prelude, Chorale and Fugue. The reviewer of the Winnipeg Free Press is impressed by an unusual programme where a pianist would play all four Ballades in succession and hope to do justice to all these masterpieces. 'The whole range of Chopin's discoveries and innovations in the domain of piano technique is exploited.' Mr Bolet is a musicians' musician (though 'perhaps a trifle too pensive at times'), but he was forced to struggle with the piano (the top register of the instrument - not the pianist - was called into question). 'His use of rubato was quite extensive but, one always felt, employed judiciously." The Franck began rather uneasily. 'For a moment, Mr Bolet lost control of the unfolding left hand chromatic passages and there was some hesitancy in the middle of the fugue...the Chorale was wonderfully linked and graded.' (Jeffrey Anderson)
A recording from 6 October 1967 exists, in excellent sound, of Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini Op.43 in Cologne/Köln, Germany with Jorge Bolet and the WDR Symphony Orchestra conducted by Christoph von Dohnanyi.
The University of Indiana, Bloomington
During the years 1968 – 1977, beginning in September, Bolet was on the staff of the Jacobs School of Music at the University of Indiana, Bloomington. This afforded him the security of a fixed income, and in his diaries for this period, he meticulously marks ‘Pay Day’. The minutes of the Board of Trustees of Indiana University, 20 September 1968, state the appointment of ‘Jorge Bolet as Professor of Music in the School of Music for the period of three academic years beginning in September, 1968, at an initial salary rate of $17,000.00 payable on a ten months' basis.’
'I met [JB] in 1968 when he came to Bloomington, Indiana. His hiring by the school was prompted by the recommendations of Sidney Foster, another Saperton student at Curtis. Foster and Bolet were childhood friends. They were 10 and 13 years old, respectively, when they met in Philadelphia. In 1968 Bolet was living in Fuenterrabia, Spain. Foster had been encouraging him to return to the US, thinking that his career prospects would improve back in this country..' Alberto Reyes (in correspondence)
Guy Brackett, who attended Indiana University music school from 1974 - 1977, writes: ‘I did not study with Mr Bolet and only had brief encounters with him. In spite of his fame (the Carnegie Hall concert was in early 1974), he wasn't as in-demand as other teachers on the faculty. Among the piano faculty were Abbey Simon, Menahem Pressler, Sidney Foster, and Gyorgy Sebok. All of these teachers were more sought after. Mr Bolet was not a “mainstream” pianist and that may have led some students to look elsewhere.'
One former Indiana student [John, @John-se5vc] adds a comment on YouTube. 'I heard him play often in his studio--two examples that come to mind are the Brahms F minor Sonata, and the Wagner-Tausig transcription of the Prelude and Liebestod. The Brahms was played a week later at the IU Auditorium, and was not as good as the studio. The Tausig was sight-reading. I watched him open the envelope. Both were absolutely some of the most stupendous music making I ever hope to hear on this earth. (I was the only person present to hear him play the Wagner-Tausig).
Liszt, Totentanz - a student recalls...
Gary Thor Wedow, conductor and faculty member of The Juilliard School, recalls:
I was taking my regular lesson in 1971 when the telephone rang and Jorge interrupted the lesson to answer. He said 'Yes' several times and 'Many times, yes'. He then hung up and said: 'Gary, I must cancel our lesson, I must fly to New York to play the Liszt Totentanz with the New York Phil, a work I have never played. (He had just said: 'Many times, yes!') 'Would you be kind enough to go to the library and get me a copy and bring it to me so I can learn it.' I did.
Since it was my lesson time, I had nothing else to do so I sat in the hallway of the round building at IU and listened to him play---no one played like that! After about an hour, he came out. 'What are you doing here?' Well you can do me another favor. I'm going to the restroom, come in to the studio and when I come back, I'll play it from memory and you follow the score to check me'. It was astounding. It truly was no more than an hour. I asked him, and in his usual humble, self deprecating way, he explained that he had heard it many times, he had played every piece that Liszt had written and he had perfect photographic and auditory memory.
My roommate and I and our suite mates drove overnight to NYC, my first visit ever, and saw the rehearsals and performance. I'll never forget it.
I live here now, and have twice conducted the Phil. Jorge was so generous and kind. He and Tex took me to Spain with another student one summer, they came to my hometown in Indiana when I played with the High School Symphony and when I conducted the summer musical. A greater musician, or a kinder gentleman I will never know, nor will I ever be more grateful.
One day I was waiting at his door for him to stop playing to knock for my lesson, and unknown to me Abbey Simon had come up quietly behind me. He slapped me hard on the back and said in his tough New York style:
“Don't worry kid, we all feel like that when we hear Jorge play!”
Gary Thor Wedow in conversation with Berkshire Choral Music Director, Frank Nemhauser (July 2020) recalls Jorge's reaction when he heard him accompanying a singer in music by Spanish composer Joaquín Turina. SOURCE
On the subject of teaching
Pianist Francisco Renno,
a student of Bolet at Bloomington, Indiana
‘I first met Jorge Bolet in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1974 at the Teresa Carreño International Piano Competition, where I was one of the competitors and he served as chairman of the jury. Bolet was one of two people who made it possible for me to leave behind the impoverished conditions of my native Brazil, come to the US to acquire a proper musical education and eventually become a citizen and settle here as a professional musician. As you can imagine, my gratitude and admiration for the man go beyond words. During the two years that I was in his class in Bloomington I had the privilege of having many hours of one-on-one conversations with him, not only in the studio but also in several dinner parties at his place and mine. He and his manager Tex were delightful hosts (and guests), liked to eat well and they both loved my wife's cooking. After a few glasses of wine and some paella the stories and jokes would start to flow, he would relax and come out of his usually very stern public persona, and we would go late into the night laughing, listening to music, and having the best of times. Hard to believe that was almost forty years ago...'
‘My years in Bloomington were the best years of my life and Jorge Bolet played a big part in it.’
Historical context: Vietnam
The Tet Offensive (Vietnamese: Sự kiện Tết Mậu Thân 1968, lit. "Tet offensive of 1968" was a major escalation and one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War. It was launched on 30 January, 1968 by forces of the Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), the United States Armed Forces and their allies. It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam. The name is the truncated version of the Lunar New Year festival name in Vietnamese, Tết Nguyên Đán, with the offense chosen during a holiday period as most ARVN personnel were on leave.
The purpose of the wide-scale offensive by the Hanoi Politburo was to trigger political instability, in a belief that mass armed assault on urban centres would trigger defections and rebellions.
In 1969, following the election of U.S. President Richard Nixon, a policy of "Vietnamization" began, which saw the conflict fought by an expanded ARVN, with U.S. forces sidelined and increasingly demoralized by domestic opposition and reduced recruitment. U.S. ground forces had largely withdrawn by early 1972 and support was limited to air support, artillery support, advisers, and materiel shipments.
1968
27 (?) January 1968, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto in the Teatro Real, Madrid with Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and the Orquesta Nacional de España. "Pines of Rome" by Respighi and a work by Óscar Esplá (1886-1976).
The Teatro Real, located at the Plaza de Oriente, opposite the Royal Palace, had only recently opened its doors again (1966), for in December 1925 a Royal Order ordered its activities to be discontinued owing to the damage that the construction of the Metro de Madrid had caused to the building. The government set out to restore it and ordered numerous projects to be drawn out for its renovation; however, the Civil War and the post-war financial difficulties prevented the completion of these projects and led to a simple restoration.
The theatre reopened on 13 October 1966 as a concert hall as well as the main concert venue for the Spanish National Orchestra and the RTVE Symphony Orchestra. The reopening was celebrated with a concert of the Spanish National Orchestra, conducted by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, in which it was performed Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 – together with the Orfeón Donostiarra – and Manuel de Falla's Homenajes.
Sidney Foster
Sidney Foster (23 May, 1917 in Florence, South Carolina — 7 February, 1977) studied with Isabelle Vengerova and David Saperton at the Curtis Institute. He gave concerts over four decades in the United States, and performed in Europe, the Soviet Union, Israel and Japan. He was Professor of Piano at Indiana University from 1952–1977.
The Japan Times said of Foster's tour of Japan in 1962, in which he gave recitals, concertos with orchestra, and chamber music with violinist Toshiya Eto: 'Rarely has Tokyo heard such beautiful playing.'
In the 1940s, Foster had premiered Norman Dello Joio's First and Second Piano Sonatas, as Bolet did with the Third.
'As insightful and inspired as Foster was in his teaching, his modesty prevailed there too: he asked Jorge Bolet to coach Alberto Reyes in Prokofiev’s Second Concerto as he knew the work better than him (having made its first recording), something the equally modest and congenial Bolet – also teaching at Indiana – was more than willing to do. The standards he held for himself as a teacher were as high as they were with his playing, and he was as lionized by his students and colleagues as he was by audiences and critics for his concerts. His students were an extension of his family: to ensure that Reyes would be able to afford studying in the US from his native Uruguay, he had his pupil stay at his own home, and he hosted an annual Thanksgiving dinner for his students who were unable to travel to see their own families.'
Vedo Zuponcic (in interview with Imelda Delgado) recalls a lesson on Liszt's Venezia e Napoli, where 'Mr Foster provided me with phenomenal fingerings, concepts about style and fresh ideas that were eagerly received'. Venezia e Napoli, S. 162, No. 3, “Tarantella” can be heard from a recital by Foster in 1954 on the Marston CDs.
Sidney Foster (photographed above with composer Aaron Copland) lived in a lush, leafy neighborhood of Bloomington, not far from some of the other great musicians who graced that musical Parnassus, luminaries such as Josef Gingold, János Starker, Abbey Simon, György Sebők, Menahem Pressler, Margaret Harshaw, and, later on, Jorge Bolet.
The dinner table was the daily centre of family life, as we assembled punctually at 6:00 p.m., to eat and to watch the CBS News broadcast with Walter Cronkite. With the Vietnam War raging at that time, politics was always a topic of discussion. The Fosters were ardent supporters of the Democratic Party, and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were their heroes. But although they professed sincere admiration for Lyndon Johnson and his political prowess in legislating the socially progressive Great Society programs, Johnson’s hard-headed pursuit of the war in Indochina was starting to appall them.
Foster’s childhood friends, pianists Abbey Simon and Jorge Bolet had come to teach in Indiana, arriving from Geneva and Spain, respectively, at Sidney’s initiative, and were weekly, sometimes nightly, dinner guests. The conversation centered on political or artistic subjects, and often, to my delight, on pianistic matters. It was a privilege to listen to three towering pianists relating their memories of great pianists I never got to hear, such as Hofmann, Rachmaninoff, Moiseiwitsch, Mischa Levitzki, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, the young Horowitz, and their contemporary William Kapell.
They expounded on diverse topics such as musical interpretation —both their own and their colleagues’—the vagaries of modern recital programming, the tastes of Soviet audiences (“La Campanella country,” as Simon called them), and the challenges of teaching. Sometimes they would reminisce about their salad days at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. In that great school, the three of them had studied with David Saperton. There were tales about the imperiousness of Isabelle Vengerova, the meanness of composition teacher Rosario Scalero, and the strict theory lessons of Madame Longy-Miquelle. Humour was never absent in those conversations, as they recalled, with glee but without malice, some anecdote about their fellow Curtis student Shura Cherkassky...
(Alberto Reyes's liner notes for Marston's FO)
Isabelle Vengerova (Belarusian: Ізабэла Венгерава; 1877 – 1956) was a Russian, later American, pianist and music teacher. Born Izabella Afanasyevna Vengerova in Minsk (now in Belarus), she studied piano at the Vienna Conservatory with Josef Dachs, and privately with Theodor Leschetizky; in St Petersburg she studied with Anna Yesipova. From 1906 to 1920 she taught at the Imperial Conservatory in St Petersburg and then toured the USSR and Western Europe from 1920 to 1923, when she settled in the USA. In 1924 she helped found the Curtis Institute and in 1933 joined the faculty of the Mannes College, teaching at both institutions until her death in New York City in 1956. Leonard Bernstein was a pupil.
Renée Longy-Miquelle (1898–1979) was a French-American pianist and music theorist; she was awarded the Handel and Haydn Society Medal in 1974. Her students included Leonard Bernstein (1940-41).
Jorge Bolet played the "Naila" Waltz in a radio broadcast in 1929. A private recording of him playing it - and a waltz from "Coppélia" - at Wynyard Hall, home of the 9th Marquess of Londonderry (1937-2012) are among the treasures which may still be unearthed.
Léo Delibes, Naïla Waltz
Jorge Bolet played the "Naïla" Waltz
in a radio broadcast in 1929.
A private recording of him playing it - and a waltz from "Coppélia" - at Wynyard Hall, home of the 9th Marquess of Londonderry (1937-2012) is among the treasures which may still be unearthed.
Ernő Dohnányi (1877-1960)'s Naila Waltz, from Delibes’s ballet La source, ou Naila, is based on a ‘Pas des fleurs’ that Delibes actually wrote as a divertissement for a ballet by another composer (Adolphe Adam's ballet Le corsaire), one year after composing La source. The ‘Pas des fleurs’ was later incorporated into a production of La source and became one of the work’s most memorable numbers. Dohnányi follows the basic form of Delibes’s original, but enhances the melodic and harmonic vocabulary by infusing his own distinctive voice as a master composer and virtuoso pianist. Dohnányi created the Naila paraphrase in 1897, shortly after graduating from the Academy of Music in Budapest. The work quickly became a staple of his repertoire as a concert finale, but he did not publish the work until 1916, when he joined the faculty of the Liszt Academy.
(James A Grymes)
Abbey Simon, Jorge Bolet, David Saperton & Sidney Foster (30 March 1960)
Whitestone photo, 124, W72 Street, New York City
Mozart and Carl Maria v. Weber
1968 continued (April)
From these years, Bolet can be heard in Mozart's Piano Concerto K450 (No. 15 in B flat), recorded with the Bavarian Radio SO under Jan Koetsier, 4 April 1968. Listening as I add a "button" link renews my delight not just in Jorge's playing but in the concerto itself [Sunday 30 July 2023]. Mozart composed the concerto for performance at a series of concerts at the Vienna venues of the Trattnerhof and the Burgtheater in the first quarter of 1784, where he was himself the soloist in March 1784. In a letter to his father Leopold, Mozart compared this concerto with the 16th concerto in D: "I consider them both to be concertos which make one sweat; but the B flat one beats the one in D for difficulty."
An article in the Michigan Daily (10 May 1968) muses about Bolet, one of the artists in the summer series at the Rackham Auditorium, Ann Arbor. 'He has won a greater reputation in Europe than he has in the States, but his pianistic technqiue has made him something of a myth. He has made fewer records than the pianists who precede him (Alicia de Larrocha [27 June], Vladimir Ashkenazy [10 July] and the young Israeli David Bar-Illan [16 July])
22 July 1968, Rackham Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan. 'Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words are usually considered as lyrical cream puffs, to be tossed off by the pianist with graceful sentiment and drowsy reverie. Therefore, the depth of poetry, the profundity of feeling, and even the overtones of tragedy that Jorge Bolet discovered and revealed in these works last night, not only raised the stature of the pieces but also indicated what a supreme artist Bolet is'. The reviewer says that, knowing about the pianist's virtuosic, gigantic technique, but also about the mild stigma of Hollywood associations: 'I did not know what truly to expect.' The Liszt Transcendental Études were played with unflagging technical prowess, poetic intensity and introspective, searching. C.Franck's Prelude, Choral and Finale: 'I was about to say "a memorable experience", but really the "experience" soon evaporated, in that Bolet penetrated form to reach D'Indy called "the luminous serenity" of Frank.' The Michigan Daily
Carl Maria von Weber’s Konzertstück in F minor, Opus 79, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Erich Leinsdorf was recorded live in the Koussevitzky Music Shed, Friday 26 July, 1968 at 9pm during the summer festival of that year. Jorge and Weber go back a long way together: as the 12 year old boy he played this piece at a benefit concert in September 1927 in Havana to fund his audition trip to Curtis. Much has changed. ‘[Bolet] is a bulking man, seemingly too big for the keyboard, but his fingers are nimble enough for the ornate lightning of Liszt [and Weber]. He has the good judgment, also, to play this theatrical music fairly straight, let it display its own elements of sentiment, melodrama and fire without adding gilt to its gold.’ R.C. Hammerich, Springfield Union
‘Next was Weber's Konzertstück, with Jorge Bolet as soloist. This delightful piece is not performed often these days, perhaps because of the frankly tear-jerking, heart-on-sleeve story that goes along with it. The pianist must be an incurable romantic to play it: in fact he sounded like one as the performance unfolded. Barring several wrong notes here and there, Bolet's playing was really nice. It's good to hear someone play smoothly these days. There was intelligent use of the pedal and a 'rounded' sound that were just what this little piece requires.’ Milton Zapoliski, Schenectady Gazette.
From the same concert (from a live radio broadcast) on 26 July 1968 can be heard Liszt's Hungarian Fantasy ("Fantasie über ungarische Volksmelodien" S.123) William Kraft's Concerto for percussion and orchestra and Schumann's Symphony No. 2 in C Major Op.61 were also on the programme.
Sunday 4 August 1968 at 2:30pm: Sergei Rachmaninov/ Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43 Tanglewood - Shed, Lenox, MA with the Boston Symphony under William Steinberg. A recording exists.
Also 20 & 22 November, Philharmonic Hall (Lincoln Center) New York, NY, with Boston Symphony Orchestra under Erich Leinsdorf, in a concert which included Kurt Weill's Kleine Dreigroschenmusik (Little Threepenny Music) and Brahms' Symphony No. 4 in E minor
1969
Recordings for the Ensayo label were made in Spain during 1969/70, of which Michael Tumelty in the Glasgow Herald wrote of the discs' reincarnation in 2011: 'Mention the name Jorge Bolet in piano circles and listeners will freeze; but Bolet is not a household name. He is not in the Hall of Fame, yet I would defy anyone to claim there was a more articulate and aristocratic exemplar of the grand Romantic tradition of pianism. And nor have I heard a player, however poetic, who could rival Bolet’s sleight of hand and mind in creating the illusion of the piano being capable of sustaining a melodic, singing line. You can hear that flowing cantilena in his performances of songs by Schubert and Schumann, Liszt’s own operatic paraphrases and the best performance of the Quartet from Rigoletto that I have ever heard. And even those listeners who hate Liszt’s Transcendental Studies, which occupy the second CD, will marvel at the absence of bombast and clatter. A joy.'
Many of the smaller Liszt items were recorded in 1969 in Barcelona - Casino l'Aliança del Poblenou; then the 12 Études d'exécution trancendante, S.139 (complete) in 1970. The recording company was founded in 1968 by Antonio Armet. Esteban Sánchez recorded (1968-69) a much-lauded Albéniz's Iberia for this label.
'Jorge Bolet, pianist, will be the guest at Symphony Seminar at 8 p.m. Jan. 29 at the Jewish Community Center, 6701 Hoover Road. In September Mr. Bolet joined the faculty of the School of Music at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.' Jewish Post (Indianapolis), 24.1.69
4/6 March 1969: Sergei Rachmaninoff / Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 4 with Charles Wilson and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Symphony Hall, Boston, MA.
August, 1969: With Franz Allers and the Washington National Symphony (D.C.)
30 June, 1969, Bloomington, Indiana: Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30; Charles Webb conducting Indiana Symphony
15 October 1969, Bloomington, Indiana: Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 23 in F Minor, Op. 57 'Appassionata'; Chopin, Scherzos,; Liszt/Donizetti's Réminiscences de Lucia di Lammermoor, S. 397, Wagner's Spinnerlied aus Der fliegende Holländer, S. 440, Mephisto Waltz No. 1 in A Major, S. 514 'Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke', Schubert's Die Forelle, S. 564. A 2 CD set is available on St-Laurent Studio label.
October/November, 1969: Germany
There could be no greater contrast to Jorge Bolet at the University of Bloomington, Indiana than pianist John Ogdon (1937-1989), who taught there – whenever he turned up for lessons – between 1976 and 1980 (Bolet left in 1977 to go to Curtis, so there was only one year of overlap).
One of the greatest British pianists, a musician of rare understanding and phenomenal technical gifts, able to play and memorise just about any score at sight, tales of his impossible exploits at the keyboard are legion.
So far, so similar.
John Ogdon
Following Ogdon’s coveted Tchaikovsky prize in 1962 (which he shared in Moscow with Vladimir Ashkenazy) and frequent tours of the globe, the meteor crashed to earth in 1973 ‘when he suffered a severe mental breakdown. Over the course of several harrowing years, Ogdon would spend large periods of time in and out of psychiatric wards and halfway houses. The drugs and treatments prescribed sometimes affected his coordination, and his reputation suffered as a result. Yet Ogdon's commitment to his art remained undimmed, and until the end he drew out performances of tremendous beauty and conviction from the depths of his ravaged heart’. (Publicity material for Charles Beauclerk’s 2014 biography)
Beauclerk refers to Judith Kerr’s popular book for children, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, and compares this with Ogdon, who was known to drop into friends’ houses and demolish their pantries and pianos.
Beauclerk is insightful on the place Herman Melville’s gargantuan Moby-Dick had in Ogdon’s thinking, comparing his ivory limb (the piano) to Captain Ahab's ivory prosthesis, and exploring Ogdon’s obsession with Herman Melville’s masterpiece.
Fellow Curtis student Abbey Simon says that Jorge was very unhappy with Ogdon's first recital at Indiana because Ogdon played well and 'Bolet felt threatened. Bolet was a terrible teacher - all he did was play for you. You got a piano recital. He had no patience with your problems'. On the other hand, Alberto Reyes (in correspondence) said: 'He was a wonderful teacher... He had wonderful interpretive suggestions, fingerings and textual amendments in Liszt, and he communicated these very clearly and patiently.'
Beauclerk observes that faculty members were allowed 15 days' absence from campus per semester (and no more than 30 per academic year) for personal business. There was always tension in the Faculty between the big names who toured widely and brought prestige to the University, and the more workaday teachers. Abbey Simon told one prospective student 'I'm never here. If you want detailed tuition, go to someone else'.
'Faculty recitals had something of a gladiatorial vibe to them: the piano professors, always supercritical of their peers, would huddle in the audience like a knot of vultures, listening intently for any slips. Zadel Skolovsky (1916-2009, Canadian-American) got so spooked that he refused to play in front of them.'
(He studied at the Curtis Institute with Isabelle Vengerova, later working as her assistant, and also took lessons from Leopold Godowsky. Abram Chasins: 'I once heard Zadel Skolovsky play both books of Milhaud's Saudades do Brasil. He represented them so faithfully that the composer, who was present, turned in his seat to express his appreciation to Ross Parmenter, who was reviewing for the NY Times.')