1976 January/February in South Africa
On 10 January 1976 Bolet left for a tour of South Africa, with concerts in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Windhoek (Namibia since March 1990), Pietermaritzburg, Durban, Salisbury, Rhodesia. He flew back to the US on 20 February.
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Jorge's Date Book shows the life of a concert pianist in action.
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10 January: leaves for South Africa
23 Pretoria
25 Johannesburg City Hall (Sunday afternoon)
26 Johannesburg
27 Pretoria
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2 February (Monday) Bloemfontein
5 Cape Town
6 Windhoek (Namibia since March 1990) - 1,478 km from Cape Town
11 Pietermaritzburg
12 Durban
14 Salisbury, Rhodesia (from April 1980, Harare/ Zimbabwe)
15 Johannesburg
20 (Friday) return to USA​​​​​​
The recital in Windhoek, South West Africa was actually on 2 February, so there is some mixup in the datebook (Jorge had played there in 1964). The Windhoek Advertiser (16.1.76) reported that there was a strong possibility theatre-goers would boycott the recital of the 'Cuban pianist' as they felt strongly about Cuban involvement in Angola 'and seem to resent the fact that a Cuban pianist is going to appear in the Windhoek Theatre. In an interview this morning Dr E Grobbelaar, Director of SWAPAC, stressed the fact that Mr Bolet left Cuba before the regime of Fidel Castro and is now an American citizen.
'A New York journalist reports as follows: "[When asked, Mr Bolet replied:] I am a hero to the Cubans in exile and I am a hero to my former good friends who are still living in Cuba. Now the name of Bolet is very, very much on the black list in Cuba. I always felt that if I ever got on a plane that was highjacked, I would be separated at once and would probably be grilled and put through the third degree."' The edition of 28 January, however, predicts a full house.
The Windhoek programme was all-Chopin (as in Salisbury). This was the rainy season and there was soaking rain for 20 hours. A Boeing of South African Airways had some difficulty getting in at Strijdom [now Hosea Kutako International] Airport on the morning of 3 February. Jorge's recital was more favourably - though briefly - reviewed, in contrast to Salisbury. 'No music is more fitting to be played these days than Chopin's, for he possessed civil courage, chivalry, modesty, dignity and grace, and all these attributes are expressed in his music.' Etudes 3,4, 7 and 11 Op. 25 and Ballade No. 2 were declared 'a revelation' and his pianissimi and 'delicacy of touch' were generally noted. (Travel permitting, Jorge may have enjoyed dining at the first Wienerwald restaurant to open in Africa - at the Hotel Continental the day after his recital.)
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Tickets were sold by Musikhaus Frewer. In the 1960s Freddy Frewer, born in Windhoek in 1938, took over the business from his father; at the time it was on the corner of Kaiserstrasse and Levinson Arkade. '"Here you will be offered the best of European music. You don't need to bring anything with you from overseas," said the well-known Windhoek art patron Olga Levinson at the time.' Allegemeine Zeitung Namibia (30 October 2008). Miss Levinson observed that 'the 1964 season was brought to a conclusion by the high voltage playing of Jorge Bolet'.
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South West Africa, a former German colony, was a territory under South African administration from 1915 to 1966, and under South African occupation from 1966 to 1990. Renamed Namibia by the United Nations in 1968, it became independent under this name on 21 March 1990. During its administration, South Africa applied its own apartheid system in the territory of South West Africa. The Kaiser Krone Hotel, which had made an experiment in integrating the various peoples by organising mixed dances had suffered an attempted petrol bomb attack, and the Advertiser (2 Feb) reported that Mr Rudolph Morgenroth and his family were leaving for Cape Town; his children had been ostracised at school and 'persecuted by fellow pupils and by certain teachers'.
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SWA was made a League of Nations mandate of the Union of South Africa following Germany's defeat in the First World War. Although the mandate was repealed by the United Nations on 27 October 1966, South African control over the territory continued despite its illegality under international law. The territory was administered directly by the South African government from 1915 to 1978, when the Turnhalle Constitutional Conference laid the groundwork for semi-autonomous rule. During an interim period between 1978 and 1985, South Africa gradually granted South West Africa a limited form of home rule, culminating in the formation of a Transitional Government of National Unity. The Windhoek Advertiser (21.1.76) reported that at a recent conference in Dakar, Senegal "armed struggle" was approved as a means to solve the constitutional problems of South West Africa, and to liberate the country, something rejected by Dr Lukas de Vries, Head of SWA's largest church, the Evangelical Lutheran.
The Rhodesia Herald - after April 1980, The Herald (Zimbabwe) - reported on Jorge’s visit, a visit in troubling times. ‘Rhodesia is ready for the worst of terror - we are undoubtedly one of the targets of the communists in Africa,’ announced Prime Minister Mr Ian Smith. President Samora Machel of Mozambique was threatening to attack Rhodesia, but P.K.van der Byl said this was merely a smokescreen to hide the President’s tottering regime. 'Many tourists had been frightened away by the war gripping Rhodesia. Those who came found at certain national parks were closed because of the threat from guerrillas. In 1978 Wankie was termed a “ghost park”. These conditions did not deter visits by influential visitors such as Randolph Hearst, who termed Ian Smith a “miracle man”, actors Cameron Mitchell, Ray Milland, Trevor Howard, Britt Eklund and Roy Ely, who all came to Fort Victoria to shoot a motion picture, the pianist Jorge Bolet, the actors Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton who visited Victoria Falls in 1975, and others too numerous to mention.'
Gerald Horne, The United States and the War against Zimbabwe, 1965-1980 (2001)​​
Harry Margolis Hall, Salisbury, 14 February
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The Rhodesia Herald (13 February) had a short article expressing surprise that TWO visiting pianists should be giving recitals within 7 days of each other. 'Most promoters would try to avoid such near-clashes if possible.' (Israeli pianist Joseph Kalichstein was the other.) This is actually advertised as Jorge’s second visit to Rhodesia, the first presumably being in 1964. There was ‘no violent rush for tickets’ for Jorge’s concert (which had been arranged by the Salisbury Arts Council) and the author wondered: ‘Surely Salisbury is not being so churlish as to hold Mr Bolet’s birth against him?’ This is in reference to Cuban intervention in Angola, which began on 5 November 1975, when Cuba sent combat troops (apparently one-tenth of its army) in support of the communist-aligned People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) against the pro-western National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). The intervention came after the outbreak of the Angolan Civil War, which occurred when the former Portuguese colony was granted independence following the Angolan War of Independence. The civil war quickly became a proxy war between the Eastern Bloc led by the Soviet Union and the Western Bloc led by the United States. South Africa and the United States backed UNITA, while communist nations backed the MPLA.
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Jorge's recital was on Saturday 14 February, Valentine’s Day, in the Harry Margolis Hall; it was an all-Chopin programme (Etudes Op.25 and the four Ballades). The newspaper wondered whether Kalichstein’s programme, being more varied (Brahms, Schubert, Chopin and Bartok), was the more tempting
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Monday's Herald (16th) carried a trenchant review by Rhys Lewis, one of the more hard-hitting Jorge has received. ‘It was, I think, Cortot who observed that Chopin’s Studies are as inaccessible to the musician without virtuosity as they are to the virtuoso without musicianship. The key lies in a fine balance between that exultation in the new-found resources of the piano that Chopin so clearly felt, and their depth of poetic expression.
'To these decibel-assaulted ears, Jorge Bolet did not find that balance. There was plenty of evidence of a big technique, but where soft, light and even playing was called for, we were treated to lumpy phrasing, rhythmic squareness, tonal monotony and a bravera splashiness that, to those of us whose delight in the music's wonders is still undulled, were a travesty. The four Ballades fared rather better. But in responding too generously to every passing change of mood and every minute inner textural detail which he held up for our inspection, Mr Bolet lost the work’s larger design. It was an instructive evening if only that it proved that the accretions of tradition in performing Chopin are far from dead. But in the event, one couldn't help regretting that those who sit in power over whom and what we are to hear…had not chosen the programme Bolet had given in Carnegie Hall two years ago. Far from suffering as I fear Chopin did, Liszt, Busoni and Tausig transcriptions gloriously find their raison d’etre in this particular type of playing.’
Did Jorge avail himself of the candlelight buffet at the Monomotapa or a lantern-lit dinner at The Hunyani Hills Hotel? British readers may be interested to know that Eric Sykes and Jimmy Edwards were appearing on 2 March in Big Bad Mouse at 7 Arts, Avondale (‘Could it be anything but a hoot?’ Adults only. Positively no persons under 18) And we are told - by the WHO at a Brazzaville conference - that witch doctors and fetish priests have a role to play in Africa. ‘Many tribal cures have value.’
Rhodesia was an unrecognised state in Southern Africa from 1965 to 1979. During this fourteen-year period, it served as the de facto successor state to the British colony of Southern Rhodesia, and in 1980 it became modern day Zimbabwe. The rapid decolonisation of Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s alarmed a significant proportion of Southern Rhodesia's white population. In an effort to delay the transition to black majority rule, the predominantly white Southern Rhodesian government issued its own Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) from the United Kingdom on 11 November 1965. The new nation identified simply as Rhodesia.
Following the declaration of independence, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution that called upon all states not to grant recognition to Rhodesia. Two African nationalist parties launched an armed insurgency against the government upon UDI, sparking the Rhodesian Bush War. Growing war weariness, diplomatic pressure, and an extensive trade embargo imposed by the United Nations prompted Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith to concede to majority rule in 1978. One of the nationalist parties, ZANU, secured an electoral victory in 1980, and the country achieved internationally recognised independence in April 1980 as Zimbabwe.
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'A tiny white population, about the size of Newcastle, governs 6 million Africans.' TV News report for ABC's Four Corners (Australia)
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Alicia de Larrocha had performed in Salisbury on 17 March 1966 (Courtauld Concert Hall) and in the Harry Margolis Hall on 7 February 1969, 29 April 1972 and 7 July 1975. The 1972 recital was: "Tres danzas fantásticas" TURINA / "Valses Nobles y Sentimentales" RAVEL / "L'isle joyeuse" DEBUSSY // "Iberia. Rondeña, Almería, Triana, El Albaicín, El Polo, Lavapiés" ALBÉNIZ. She had performed in Windhoek in February 1966 (in the Windhoeker Theater) and again in April 1972 (in the Aula of the Deutsche Höhere Privatschule Windhoek).
What the South African newspapers said...
Percy Tucker, Jorge's South African agent, was written about this. 'The return of Jorge Bolet [in 1973]
was a personal highlight of the year for me. He and Tex Compton stayed with me and Graham [Brian Dickason], and Jorge practised daily on the baby grand belonging to our then next-door neighbour, Anthony Farmer. Our townhouses bordered on a park where, every morning, people strolling or sitting in the open air revelled in what amounted to a free recital as Jorge went through his repertoire.
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In a long interview with Die Transvaler (13.1.76), Jorge is asked whether he practises for hours and hours. He smiled slyly before replying: "I let people think so! I solve my biggest technical problems far away from the piano. If you cannot do that, then you are the piano's slave.'
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On 26 January 1976, the Rand Daily News reported that 'because the new concert grand for Pretoria's City Hall did not arrive in time for Jorge Bolet's PACT concert [Performing Arts Council of the Transvaal] this weekend, a piano had to be hired from J'burg. (The new piano has now been traced at the coast where shipping and transport probmens have now been solved.)
The RDN 27 January 1976 reviewed the Sunday Summer Concert J'burg recital of 25th.
'Bolet's passionate belief in the musical values of Liszt's Concerto in A major and Hungarian Fantasy may not be shared by everyone, but without it his performance would not have been lifted above the mere commonplace technical brio which is often their fate. The conductor was the young Russian Israeli Shmuel Freidman. Also on the programme were Rimsky Korsakov's Russian Easter Overture and Stravinsky's Petrushka. Mary Rorich in The Sunday Times (J'burg), 1 February thought the Pretoria performance a little disappointing. 'He was too concerned with sheer dynamite.' But the Hungarian Fantasy brought 'the famed Bolet battery of pyrotechnical effects into full and unnerving display.'
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Die Transvaler (26.1.76) found the guest conductor 'not exactly exciting' (nie juis 'n opwindende). 'No technical pitfall seems too difficult for Bolet to overcome with seemingly nonchalant ease' (Geen tegniese lokval is blykbaar vir Bolet te moeilik om met skynbaar nonchalante gemak te oorbrug nie). 'As we remember from his previous visit [JB's second, in 1973], his attack is big and fearless (is sy aanslag groot en oonverskrokke), and every little detail is finely rounded.' Wouter de Wet
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Earlier (19 January), the newspaper had informed its readers of the conductor Shmuel Friedman, a 35 year old Russian emigrant to Israel (he had settled in Haifa), 'who a few years ago conducted the world's most northernly symphony orchestra, near the North Pole. He will make musical history in Pretoria and J'burg this week, as the first Soviet maestro to make a debut here.'
The Rand Daily News 28 January
'For piano students sorting out the complicated fingerings and phrasing of the Tausig transcriptions of Strauss waltzes we heard in the RAU auditorium on Monday night (26) this type of music can be a nightmare; for JB it was a virtuoso's dream come true.
'The buoyant waltz rhythms and lilt-and-lift effects, marvellously conveyed by Bolet, added to the impression that Tausig had his tongue in his cheek as he out fingers to keyboard and pen to paper
'The Mozart/Liszt Don Juan called for the kind of power and prestidigitation for which Bolet has a hard earned reputation. Not so satisfying was the Bach/Busoni Chaconne. Robbed of the challenge to the solo violin to enunciate point and counterpoint in its part-playing, and (robbed of) all the power for the lack of subtle nuances (that) bow, fingers and vibrato can give the ebb and flow of phrasing, the piano version is commonplace. Paradoxically Bolet's quite correct insistence on a classical style did not help matters, for it put a dryness in the time and line where it should have had a bloom. The Chopin Preludes were a revelation...' Wouter de Wet for Die Transvaal, also found that while marvelling at the stunning virtuosity of the programme, it was the Chopin preludes which would stay in the mind - he singles out the legato of the B minor one. (He tells that he heard someone whisper behind him "How does Bolet keep all those notes in his head?")
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Brahms's 2nd piano concerto in B flat major was performed on 1 February (not listed above); Pact Symphony Orchestra under Shmeul Friedman, including Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini. Joe Sack said that 'drive and intensity sometimes robbed the tone of the sheer seductive beauty Brahms intended to have, but elsewhere the soloist lined his phrasing with delicacy that belied the strength that preceded and followed it'.
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11 February 1976 reporting a Monday (9th) concert at 8:15 (not listed above); Sanlam Auditorium, Rand Afrikaans University (RAU). Die Transvaler reported that Bolet had changed his programme: instead of Chopin's second book of Etudes Op.25, he would be playing the Reger/Telemann.
Harold Steafel (The Rand Dail ) writes:
'Because of the freedom granted a composer using the "theme and variations" form, - which is a vehicle for skill in writing, and execution - it holds traps for the composer given to prolixity, and Max Reger was one of these. His Telemann Variations had its first playing in this country by Bolet on Monday evening.' Great keyboard proficiency, but 'this is an opus that is rather over-long and which finally has little to say.' Also on the programme were two of Chopin's polonaises Op.26 and Op.44 and all four Ballades.
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Mary Rorich, in The Sunday Times (Johannesburg), 8.2.1976: 'Jorge Bolet's colossal pianism has dominated the Transvaal concert scene during the last few weeks. Predictably, his reading (of Brahms 2) was one of ebullience and propulsive energy. Admirable qualities both, but, taken one step too far, they make for playing that is hard-bitten, heavy-handed and the little bloodless. That was the case, I felt, with Bolet's Brahms - with the notable exception of the finale, where he explored with far happier results a lighter textured range of sonorities. Shmuel Friedman continues to get gratifying response from the players, though the wild orgies of gesticulation and facial contortions in which she indulges don't make him specially easy on the eye.'
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In a Feature on January 18 she wrote: 'You couldn't paint American pianist Jorge Bolet in watercolours or inks. You'd have to use oils, –dark, sombre colours, thickly applied – and make the picture a little larger than life. Because that's how he is. He has the air of well-being of a South American coffee tycoon.'
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A bit of history...
Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu–Natal/South Africa (uMgungundlovu, Pietermauritzburg)
Dingane (1795–1840), the Zulu paramount chief (1828–40), built a new capital c.1828 which he called uMgungundlovu ‘Secret Place of the Elephant’.
The modern city was founded by Boer Voortrekkers ‘Pioneers’ in 1838 after victory over the Zulus at Blood (now Ncome) River. A town developed around the church and this was called Pietermauritzburg after the Boers’ leader, Pieter Retief (1780–1838), who was killed on Dingane’s orders while accepting his hospitality. In time the u was dropped and, at the time of the city’s centenary in 1938, it was decided also to honour Gerrit Maritz (1798–1838), the leader of the second Boer trek into Natal. It remained the Boer capital only until 1843, the British having annexed the Republic of Natal the previous year. The city is generally known as Maritzburg.
'This tall, heavily-built Cuban, with his carefully clipped moustache looked nothing like one imagines a concert pianist. He had played the piano for fifty-two of his fifty-eight years, but his journey to the top had been slow, painful and fraught with difficulties. By 1973, however, he had broken through to be acknowledged as one of the world's finest exponents of Liszt. The tour, for which I had made all the arrangements, was a success.
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'Jorge Bolet returned here again in 1976 when he was the first classical concert pianist to play on South African television. When we arrived at the studio for the broadcast, the programme director greeted the artist with the information that he had three minutes of air time, and ordered him to 'play loud, play fast and play something I know - and it must be by Liszt'. Jorge said nothing, seated himself at the piano, and when his cue came, played a slow and delicate Chopin étude!'
Christ Church, German Lutheran Church, Windoek, Namibia
Pasadena, March 1976
Sunday, 29 February 1976 Amsterdam.
De Volkskrant 1.3.76 reports 'Thunderous. Bolet gave his Bechstein, specially flown in from Hamburg, the full pound and stunned the subscribers of the International Piano Series with the thunderous violence he managed to elicit from the grand piano. It was striking that his musical creativity was not completely pushed into the background by all that emphasis on technique. Even in Reger's Telemann Variations — too many notes, modulations and reminiscences of Brahms's Handel Variations — he sometimes still managed to make strikingly beautiful music.'
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'Jorge Bolet also seems to belong to a rare category: no longer existing any more and from another world, that of nineteenth-century virtuosos such as Rachmaninoff, Hofmann and Horowitz.'
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In die categorie lijkt Jorge Bolet ook thuis te horen: niet gewoon meer en van een andere wereld, die van negentiende-eeuwse virtuozen als Rachmaninof. Hofmann en Horowitz.
(Hans Heg)
Het Parool: 'In the Reger, 'Bolet could well demonstrate his great technique. After all, these variations offer all the elements by which the virtuosity of the player can be measured. lightning-fast, brilliantly twisted sweet melodies, formidable expressions of power and complicated counterpoint.' Sabine Lichtenstein concludes with saying of the Mozart/Liszt Don Juan fantasy, that 'One cannot imagine a better interpretation than that of Bolet.'
A recital in sunny Pasadena, at Ambassador College, on 7 March 1976 was taped and it allows us to hear Jorge in superbly commanding form.
'The audience erupts into spontaneous applause after a couple of Max Reger's Telemann variations, which I suspect must have been a first in this work's history!’
(Michael Glover)
You can hear it here the variation with spontaneous applause here
 Japan, May 1976Â
On Saturday, 9 May, Bolet flew from San Francisco to Tokyo for recitals/concertos in Japan on 14, 19, 20, 21 and 22. This was the first time he had been back in Japan since 1946. He was to perform there again in 1988.
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On Friday 14 May, he gave a recital in the Bunka Kaikan Hall (Ueno Koen, Tokyo). The hall (built in 1961 in celebration of the five hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the mediaeval city of Edo, as Tokyo was formerly known) is in Ueno park, which is celebrated in spring for its cherry blossoms and hanami. High wind, however, had blown early blossoms off the cherry trees in Tokyo that April, but sufficient remained to give the city a springtime atmosphere.
Japan, May 1976
​On this occasion, Jorge played:
Bach-Busoni: Chaconne
Chopin: 24 Preludes Op. 28
Liszt: Three Petrarca Sonnets (From "Italy", Second Year of "Year of Pilgrimage")
Mozart-Liszt: "Don Giovanni" Fantasia
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On 19 and 20 May in Tokyo's NHK Hall in Shibuya, he performed Brahms, Piano Concerto No.2 in B flat op.83 with Wolfgang Sawallisch and the NHK Symphony Orchestra (who also played Schumann's 4th symphony)​. And on Friday evening, 21 May 1976 with the same forces, he played Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.3 in C minor op.37, repeating it at a concert the next afternoon.
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In the Japan Times 23 May 1976 (= SHOWA 51, the reign of Emperor Hirohito), Donald P Berger reports: 'In addition to Bolet's ability to thunder out the complex (at times overly complex) musical lines [of the Chaconne], his playing also exhibited a control of dynamics which brought the piano to the point of near inaudibility - a hushed whisper. In the Chaconne his immense power tended to cloud over many of the musical issues - in the busiest sections, lucidity was not always the finest performance feature - and imparted a certain heaviness to the music that seemed at times clumsy and intruded upon the clarity. In the Chopin Preludes his technique overwhelmed the delicacy of the music at times. The Preludes most enjoyable were those which permitted the pianist's brilliant flashes of technical wizardry, and others where he could go to work on the deep-seated sonorities. He performed with a searing intensity.
The Mozart/Liszt Don Juan was truly a fantasy of cascading sound; he unleashed a furious display of technical fireworks, and after the thunderous conclusion you fully expected to see the piano collapse into a smouldering heap upon the stage.'
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Donald Berger had been drafted into the US Army in 1950 and was stationed in Tokyo where he met his wife Kaori. In 1959 he moved back to Tokyo where he taught choral music at The American School in Japan for 36 years. He became a scholar of Japanese music, and published several books and articles on the subject.
Japan Times (Sunday, 30 May) reviews 19 May concert. Even the best seats in NHK hall present acoustical problems. 'Bolet has the ability to make the piano sound like an orchestra but he was not all hammer and tongs, and could be quite personal. The performance was one of highly concentrated intensity from start to finish.' (Berger spent a little longer on Martha Argerich with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony and Yukinori Tezuka in Liszt's first concerto and the Ravel G major, on 20th May; the other items was Mozart's Symphony No. 36 in C major "Linz".)
A recording exists of the Beethoven in the 21 May concert (presumably from an NHK broadcast on Sunday evening 25th).
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An advert for the Tokyo recital on 14 May of 'First visit of keyboard giant to Japan announces the Wagner/Liszt Tannhäuser overture, rather than the Don Juan Fantasy. The Japan Times (8.5.76) announced the recital as being in Tokyo Metropolitan Festival Hall, which is the Bunka Kaikan.
Headlining the Saturday edition of The Japan Times (15 May) was an article detailing the arrest by the Metropolitan Police of a correspondent of the Soviet Novosti Press Agency - Alexandr E Machekhin - for attempting to obtain military secrets from a U.S. sailor (aged 31, of the US aircraft carrier Midway, berthed in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture). They had met about ten times; an officer challenged both as they emerged from a restaurant in Ikebukuro on Wednesday evening. (Machekhin was held for 10 days in Tokyo as a possible spy, but left for Moscow with his wife and child on 24th—by request of the Japanese Government.). The "Cold War" leaders in 1976 were Leonid Brezhnev & Gerald Ford.​
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The Japanese for his name was: ホルヘ・ボレー Horuhe borē / "Jorge Volley" in 1976 (a version that presumes his surname had a French pronunciation). This was modified to ホルヘ・ボレット Horuhe boretto, ("Jorge Bolet") by the time of his visit in 1988.
The conductor for these concerts was Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013). 'Once described as "a sphinx in a tailcoat", the German ...conducted supremely idiomatic performances of Richard Strauss. His personality always melded seamlessly with the music he conducted. Though he enjoyed great veneration, the suave and personable Sawallisch did not cultivate it. 'He never made a star of himself,' said the soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. She added that making music with him 'is a wonderful sensation. It's as if you're in private.'"(David Patrick Stearns)
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He was Honorary Conductor Laureate of the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo and for over 30 years (from 1964) he appeared with the orchestra annually in Tokyo. He was the recipient of a Suntory Music Award in 1993. In the repertory for May 1976 were also: Bruckner's Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony and R. Strauss' orchestral suite Le bourgeois gentilhomme ("Der Bürger als Edelmann")
My film of Asakusa, Tokyo: February 2023
"A bear hug big enough to embrace
Willy Wonka’s entire chocolate empire."
It was in 1976 that Joseph Marx's Romantic Piano Concerto was finally resurrected – and by Jorge who reported that he had discovered the score in a private music collection in the mid-seventies. He found it difficult to read from the orchestral score, but then a friend found a two piano edition in Patelsons Music House, 57th Street, in New York.
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Over the following decade, Jorge performed his ‘favourite concerto’ with well-known orchestras all over the world, including Germany (Berlin, Hamburg, Hannover, Munich) and other parts of Europe - Vienna, Linz and Zagreb...
​​Of the piece, Jed Distler writes: ‘Simon Rattle once deemed Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony 'a Mars bar of a piece' (*a very sweet chocolate and toffee candy bar). If that’s the case, Joseph Marx’s seductive early-20th century Romantic vocabulary wraps Delius’ sensual landscapes, Rachmaninoff’s swirling keyboard idiom, Korngold’s fluid authority, and the chiaroscuro effect of Respighi’s orchestral palette in a bear hug big enough to embrace Willy Wonka’s entire chocolate empire.'
Bolet himself described it as ‘a bitch of a work...Much as I like it, I have played it seldom. Although I’ve played it several times in Germany, I’ve only played it in New York in America with Mehta.’ He had looked at Castelli Romani by the same composer but felt it was more like Respighi’s Pines of Rome or Feste Romane than Marx. In the same interview he praised Ginastera’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and John Corigliano’s Piano Concerto – ‘a truly marvellous, wonderful work’.​
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When Jorge was playing with Winnipeg Symphony under Piero Gamba in December 1976 a Canadian newspaper (amusingly) stated: 'Defying the British tradition for understatement, the London Times has called him "A Titan of the Keyboard".'
In the mid-1970s, Mattheus Smits mentioned to Jorge the Marx concerto, which he did not know. Here is an autographed programme which JB sent to him.
Canada, 1976
On Monday 27 September 1976 in L'Institut Canadien in Québec City, Canada:
Haydn's familiar E flat major Sonata, Schumann, Carnaval Op. 9 and the third sonata of Brahms in F minor (Op. 5). The concert hall of the Institute was packed to capacity, almost 'taken by assault'. Marc Samson says the Schumann was unsettling (désarçonnant): 'As if he had just put this piece back into his repertoire, Bolet seemed uncomfortable there, showing himself to be cautious... se montrant prudent quoique enlignant les fausses notes plus qu’ il n’ est permis, saisissant le sens juste d une de ces courtes scènes qui composent cette oeuvre pour errer le moment après.' ('Producing wrong notes more than is allowed, seizing the right meaning of one of the short movements that make up this work, only to wander off in the next moment.')
Nothing like this in his superb Brahms. Of one of his encores there is the charming comment: 'Généreux, Jorge Bolet a également présenté, avec un chic sans pareil, une "Valse Caprice” [Liszt] qui pourrait bien être de Mozkovsky.' ('He played - with an unequalled elegance and style - a Valse Impromptu by Liszt that could have been by Moriz Moszkowski.'). Judge for yourselves from a stylishly elegant white-tie-and-tails 1984 recording (*button in opposite panel).​
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Thursday, 30 September, 1976, Ottawa, Ontario. 'Jorge Bolet must be one of the world's most travelled concert pianists. Last season he gave more than 90 performances on five continents but he manages to fit teaching duties into his staggering schedule because he considers it a necessity. The Cuban-American pianist, who will be appearing with the National Arts Centre Orchestra at its opening concert of the season Thursday, reports The Ottawa Journal (25.9.76)
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'He remarks that he dislikes the word "specialize" because a specialist has been described as "someone who plays everything else worse. But I do play a great deal of Romantic music," he said. "It's the richest and most extensive of all periods of piano writing and it's an area which many of my contemporaries have more or less neglected. And I have found that audiences really lap it up."'
'Following his NAC appearance, he is scheduled to go to Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., and then he'll be off to Europe for a month. "I always say there is nothing more physically tiring than travel, but it's a necessary evil in our profession," he commented. He added that he finds recital work much more strenuous than playing with an orchestra. Giving a recital is a "physical drain". Immediately after his European jaunt, he will be going to Puerto Rico and Caracas. In February [1977], he will have engagements in Scotland and England, including an appearance with the New Philharmonia Orchestra in London.'
'It's nearly 22 years since Mr. Bolet made his only previous Ottawa appearance, but he remembers it well. He performed Beethoven's Concerto No. 4 with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of the late Josef Krips at a concert in the Tremblay series in the Capitol Theatre, Nov. 30, 1954.
The Ottawa Journal
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20 October, 1976 Teatro Real, Madrid (Haydn, Schumann, Liszt)
Friday/Saturday 10/11 December 1976 with Winnipeg Symphony (under Piero Gamba, an Italian born in Rome in 1936, its chief conductor 1971-80) in the Centennial Concert Hall. A Canadian newspaper review states: 'Defying the British tradition for understatement, the London Times has called him "A Titan of the Keyboard".' Liszt's Hungarian Fantasy and Prokofiev 2, topped and tailed by Glinka's Kamarinskaya and Liszt's Les Préludes.
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Prokofiev 2 was receiving its first local performance. 'It just fails to disabuse us of the feeling that its many changes of moods seem to stem from the movies, rather than be a work built on germinal ideas.' Of the Liszt, 'we have rarely heard such thrilling playing' (even though the piece was called into question by the reviewer, on the basis that alternation of tonic and dominant becomes tiresome).
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The tune of Kamarinskaya is a Russian traditional folk dance, arranged by Russian composer Mikhail Glinka in 1848: the first orchestral work based entirely on Russian folk song and the first to use the compositional principles of that genre to dictate the form of the music. It became a touchstone for the following generation of Russian composers including the Western-oriented Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (who incorporated the techniques in his "Little Russian" Symphony, no. 2 in C minor, 1872, using three Ukrainian folk songs). In Kamarinskaya lay the core of the entire school of Russian symphonic music, 'just as the whole oak is in the acorn', as he would write in his diary in 1888.
A “breathtakingly sublime recital” in Groningen
October 1976: First concert In the piano series of De Oosterpoort. Location: small village of Oe Oosterpoort in Groningen. Program: Joseph Haydn, Sonata In E flat (Hoboken 16 no. 52); Robert Schumann, “Carnaval” opus 9 Johannes Brahms, Sonata in F opus 5. Audience size: 280.
'Every once in a while a concert is simply too good for words afterwards, and indisputably. Such a concert was Jorge Bolet's recital, but now that it only attracted around three hundred visitors and was not sold out - as expected - seven to ten times over, I have to say a few words about that. Moreover, Bolet could come back at some point, although, apart from a concert in Rotterdam during the last Holland Festival, he has not played in a sold-out hall in years....
'Jorge Bolet, who always brings his own Bechstein, is still in the great romantic tradition with all the interpretative courage and allure that that entails. It was to be expected that he would excel in romantic music, but the rare intensity of his performance was still surprising. Schumann has called Brahms' sonatas opus 1, 2 and 5 "veiled symphonies". This certainly applies to the form, but Bolet also extracted such a fragile, timid tenderness that Brahms could also be the vulnerable lyricist here in that poignant combination of emotional restraint, hesitation almost with a single passionate outburst and on the other hand incredibly poetic, formative power.' Renske Koning, Nieuwsblad (13 October 1976)
Indiana Masterclass, 1976
A yearly event with Jorge Bolet. Michael Geblen observed for The Piano Quarterly (Winter 1976-77).
There were participants from Scandinavia, South America, the Far East, and many of the American states. Several had attended previous classes (morning and afternoon events for 5 days, the most unusual items among the pieces being the Keltic Sonata by MacDowell).
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"Avoid playing too fast.' Use controlled energy, not merely speed, to create a sense of tension and excitement. Another plea of Bolet was to remember the different sonorities of the instrument. He divided the keyboard into four registers. To be expressive, one must be free to take liberties with rhythm, tempo, and the composer's dynamics. He discussed 'negative accent' - drive to the top of a melodic line but restrain the top note.
1977 and a return to Great Britain
Saturday, 5 February 1977: Hill Auditorium, the largest performance venue on the University of Michigan campus, in Ann Arbor. Susan Barry for the Michigan Daily (9.2.77) says that Jorge 'rapturously enfolded himself in the opening Allegro of Haydn's sonata in E flat major. The intensity of his concentration sparked an electric current through the audience that caused it to sit, as if suspended.' Schumann's Carnaval Op.9 and Brahms's F minor Sonata. (To be carping, the review seems to be written by someone more enthusiastic and wide-eyed than expert, but I could be wrong.)
It is usually said that Bolet finally made a return to United Kingdom in 1977 for regular concerts, but he seems to have visited periodically in the 1970s, see for example October 1974. There was a Queen Elizabeth Hall recital on 17 February 1977. And on Friday 25 February, Rachmaninoff's 2nd concerto with the New Philharmonia and Yoav Talmi in the Royal Albert Hall (organised by G. de Koos)
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Joan Chissell in The Times writes: ‘As a comparative stranger on these shores, Jorge Bolet was not greeted by a large audience last night. In Paris in the 1830s and 40s, this kind of pianism must have been common enough with Liszt himself. Nowadays the emphasis has shifted from fingers to mind, from the instrument to the music itself, so of course such a feast of greased lightning runs and octaves, cascading arpeggios, wide skips and leaps and every other dazzling feat was spellbinding – the more so since Mr Bolet was so totally unostentatious in the way he threw everything off. (‘He went a long way in disguising the fact that some of the Telemann/Reger is very dull.’)
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Jorge was generous with encores. Chopin: Nocturne in F minor, Op.55 No.1, Moszkowski: La Jongleuse, Op.52 No.4, Chopin/Godowsky: Etude in G-flat major, Op.10 No.5 (Study No.7 in G-flat major), Liszt: Valse-Impromptu, S.213 and Saint-Saëns/Godowsky: The Swan (from Carnival of the Animals). An audience recording exists.
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A week later, he played Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No.2 in C Minor, Op.18 in the grand, cavernous Royal Albert Hall, London on Friday, 25 February with Yoav Talmi and the New Philharmonia Orchestra. As part of a popular programme (with Smetana's great depiction of the river Vltava and Beethoven's Symphony No.5 in C Minor, Op.67), Jorge presumably had a larger audience than in the QEH. He would appear there again on 6 October with Talmi and the LPO in Beethoven's Emperor Concerto.
Though not well attended, this February 1977 recital in London proved very fortuitous for Bolet’s recording career. The young and talented producer Peter Wadland persuaded Ray Ware (of the L'Oiseau-Lyre/ DECCA label) to meet Jorge for lunch.
The result was the Chopin/Godowsky Etudes & Waltzes disc, which had originally been promised to the International Piano Library.
It was recorded in Kingsway Hall, London on the 3 & 4 October, 1977. Jorge had given a recital in the Queen Elizabeth Hall the day before the sessions, Sunday, 2 October, which included Beethoven's Sonata Op. 57, Schumann's Carnaval & Liszt's Dante Sonata.
‘I remember the hall being almost empty, with perhaps as few as 200 people there (after all there had been no publicity), but when it came to the end there was a standing ovation— not only from the audience but also from all the critics—something I have never witnessed before or since.
Peter Wadland
Leopold Godowsky
arrangements of Chopin's Études & Waltzes
'The Bechstein piano is beautifully recorded, but one would cherish playing like this on an ancient 78.'Â (Cyril Ehrlich)
Wadland picks up the story. ‘I remember the Queen Elizabeth Hall being almost empty, with perhaps as few as 200 people there (after all there had been no publicity) but when it came to the end there was a standing ovation— not only from the audience but also from all the critics—something I have never witnessed before or since. I persuaded Ray Ware, then Label Manager of L'Oiseau-Lyre to meet Jorge and myself for lunch. I was surprised that Jorge seemed slightly mistrustful of our intentions. He had, after all, not had wonderful experiences with record companies, and when I proposed a record of Godowsky transcriptions, he explained that he had already promised this project to the International Piano Library label. Finally (as much as I have enormous admiration for the recordings of the IPL), I was able to persuade him to make this record for L'Oiseau-Lyre, and the sessions took place on October 3rd and 4th, 1977, at Kingsway Hall.’ Gramophone January 1991.
Peter Wadland (1946-1992) is remembered also for producing recordings of Mozart and Haydn symphonies in ground-breaking period-practice' performances: a chance meeting with scholar and musician Christopher Hogwood had led to the foundation of the Academy of Ancient Music, and 'one of the most successful recording partnerships of the post-war years'. (James Jolly)​'
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Jorge was caught live on tape in volcanic form in the very first Chopin/Godowsky Étude in 1979.
This was been privately recorded in a Hamburg recital, and is very different from his studio recording.
(This was seemingly taken from his first appearance in Hamburg, for which see next page October 1979)
"The Decca/London record company put him under contract in 1978, giving the
64-year-old Bolet his first systematic exposure to life at a major international label."Â
The Chopin/Godowsky disc - the rarity value of which at the time was striking - was very well received.
Max Harrison, who was to champion Bolet’s recordings in reviews, said of it:
‘Besides the necessary virtuosity, Bolet throughout displays a quick imaginative response and a vein of fantasy akin to Godowsky's own fantastic ingenuity.’
Bolet may not deliver the fleet passage-work of some of today's Godowsky specialists (to say nothing of the volcanic intensity of one of his own performances of Op.10/1 which was privately recorded), but the disc still seems the most poetic of the various recordings.'​
Some aspects of piano technique are taken to heights undreamt of by even the greatest nineteenth-century players.
CHOPIN (arr. Godowsky). PIANO WORKS. Jorge Bolet. L'Oiseau-Lyre
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Godowsky makes an extraordinary web of contrapuntal filigree sprout from each of the original texts, the whole suffused by a constantly shifting range of kaleidoscope harmony and shaped by the ultimate refinements of workmanship.
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The results have to be heard, and seen on paper, to be believed, and yet Bolet shows they are not mere bravura stunts. Indeed, in the light of modern virtuosity such music no longer seems overburdened with detail. What Alfred Lockwood, in Notes on the Literature of the Piano (Michigan University Press, 1940), called its "heavy freight of counterpoint" can more fluently be carried, even if some aspects of piano technique are taken to heights undreamt of by even the greatest nineteenth-century players. Besides the necessary virtuosity, Bolet throughout displays a quick imaginative response and a vein of fantasy akin to Godowsky's own fantastic ingenuity.
Throughout, too, there is a scrupulous attention to the transcriber's (or transformer's) dynamic markings, as in Op. 25 No. 1, which echoes Godowsky's recommendation of a "sensitive and sympathetic touch, extreme delicacy and refinement, independence and even fingers, a perfect legato, a poetic soul".​
Max Harrison, Gramophone
