The Mikado
Japan, 1946
Japanese Prince Fushimi Sadanaru visited London in 1907 and guess what he wanted to see...
The British Government, however, had banned performances for 6 weeks.
The surrender of Imperial Japan was announced by Emperor Hirohito on 15 August and formally signed on 2 September 1945, thus bringing the hostilities of World War Two to a close. Led by the United States with the support of the British Commonwealth and the supervision of the Far Eastern Commission, occupation of the country lasted from 1945 until 1952. The occupation was overseen by American general Douglas MacArthur.
This foreign presence marked the only time in Japan's history that it has been occupied by a foreign power.
The End of World War Two
The Havana newspaper Diario de la Marina reported that Jorge performed four times in Japan as a soloist with the Nippon/Japan Philharmonic (which became the NHK in 1951) under the direction of Józef Rosenstock (concertos by Schumann, Beethoven 4, Rachmaninoff 2 and Liszt 2). The Rachmaninoff was played at a gala night on Wednesday 31 July 1946 [SHOWA 21 = reign of Emperor Hirohito] with Nippon PO in Hibiya Hall; Haydn's Symphony No. 104 "London", conducted by Joseph Rosenstock.
Rosentock was a Polish conductor (1895 Kraków – 1985 New York City). He left Berlin in 1936 and moved to Japan to conduct the Nippon Philharmonic Orchestra (which had been founded in 1926 and became the NHK Symphony Orchestra in 1951). He remained in Tokyo until 1946. Later, in America, he led the world premiere of Aaron Copland's The Tender Land, the New York premiere of William Walton's Troilus and Cressida, and the United States premieres of Gottfried von Einem's The Trial and Béla Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle.
The Japan Times announced on Friday 24 May 1946, a recital by Hungarian violinist Fery Lorant on 4th floor of auditorium of Ernie Pyle Theatre that Sunday at 7.30pm with Jorge Bolet. The highlight would be César Franck's A major Sonata; also Transylvanian Dances by Bartók, Chanson Louis XIII et Pacane by Couperin, and Up the Canyon from Rocky Mounatain Sketches by Cecil Burleigh (1885-1980).
NHK video bank: scenes of the occupation army, 1945. Actor Tyrone Power, who came to Japan as a lieutenant of the U.S. Marine Corps in the Occupation Army, appears in front of Nichigeki Theatre; Japanese policemen control traffic with an MP; U.S. soldiers make a line at a beer parlour and also walk around Ginza.
Photo (above): Nakamise, Asakusa district of Tokyo
The famous pianist (and JB's perhaps disengaged teacher for the briefest of periods in 1935/36) Moriz Rosenthal died (aged 83) on 3 September 1946 in the Hotel Great Northern in New York City.
He was an outstanding pupil of Franz Liszt and a friend and colleague of some of the greatest musicians of his age, including Johannes Brahms, Johann Strauss II, Anton Rubinstein, Hans von Bülow, Camille Saint-Saëns, Jules Massenet and Isaac Albéniz.
Claudio Arrau performed Beethoven's complete piano concerto cycle, as part of the Beethoven Festival held at the Teatro Gran Rex, Buenos Aires (Argentina) on Sundays 16, 23 and 30 June 1946 at 10:30 am, with the Buenos Aires Symphony Association Orchestra [Orquesta de la Asociación Sinfónica de Buenos Aires] conducted by Jascha Horenstein. Outdoor concert (in the evening?) in benefit of the European Relief, at the Buenos Aires Estadio Luna Park on Sunday 30 June, Claudio Arrau performing Beethoven's Emperor Concerto before a 25,000-strong audience (hitherto the largest in the history of the City), with the Teatro Colón Orchestra under Jascha Horenstein. [News report in The New York Times, 3 July 1946 + arrauhouse.org]
Hibiya Public Hall, Tokyo 1946
Titipu in Tokyo
After the war, The Mikado, a comic opera (1885) by W S Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan was staged in Japan in a number of private performances. The first public production, given at three performances, was in August, 1946, conducted by Lieutenant Bolet.
Setting the opera in Japan, an exotic locale far away from Britain, allowed Gilbert to satirise British politics and institutions more freely by disguising them as Japanese. The Japanese were ambivalent toward The Mikado for many years; some Japanese critics saw the depiction of the title character as a disrespectful representation of the revered Meiji Emperor, but Japanese Prince Komatsu Akihito, who saw an 1886 production in London, took no offence.
'Tokyo, Thursday 8 August 1946: The Mikado had been postponed several times because of delays in installing the air conditioning system in the Ernie Pyle Memorial Theatre. It should be ready by Thursday but the show will go on anyway, even if the cast has to swelter under the heavy, ornate costumes, some of them made of seven layers of silk. The production, staged by Edward S Stephenson of Glendale, Calif., and Miss Frances Holy of Pasadena, Calif., has a cast of 102 and will be conducted by Lt. Jorge Bolet. It will play in Tokyo for a week and then take the road for 13 performances in Nagoya, Kyoto and Osaka.' [The tours never actually happened]. The Gettysburg Times, 5 Aug. 1946
'The army made no attempt to dull the cut of Gilbert's pointed barbs. But to avoid making any offensive comparison with Emperor Hirohito, who is 5 feet 3 inches tall, the role of the Mikado was given to a 19 year old Illinois sergeant [Donald Mitchell] who stood a strangely un-Japanese 6 feet 5 inches in his socks.' LIFE Magazine, 9 September 1946
'The audience was entirely GI, and I suspect that the majority of those watching it would have preferred a recent movie, which was actually the standard fare at the Ernie Pyle on other nights. I saw a Russian general in a box one night, but did not recognize MacArthur or any other US brass at any performance.'
Jospeh Raben (1998), G&S Archive
The Ernie Pyle theatre was a Tokyo landmark at the time, but before the Americans requisitioned and renamed it in honour of a war correspondent who was killed in the Pacific, it was the Tokyo Takarazuka Theatre, built in 1932. When the Americans left, it became the Takarazuka Theatre once again, as it is to this day, though the original theatre was demolished and rebuilt in 2000.
The Sullivan orchestral score was arranged by Klaus Pringsheim (1883, Munich – 1972, Tokyo), a German-born composer and conductor, twin brother of Katharina "Katia" Pringsheim, who married the famous author Thomas Mann in 1905.
There is a letter in the archives from Miss Yoshiko Nakamura, 1344 Sashugaya [= Zoshigaya] 2, Setagaya Ku, Tokyo, dated 24 August 1946:
'Dear Lt. Bolet,
The Mikado, which is one of my biggest and proudest moments, is drawing to a successful close, and with it our short acquaintance. [She is sending him a dancing fan.] When my dream of going to your country is realised, I will buy a better xylophone than I have now.
Perhaps I shall be able to meet you again,
Yoshiko Nakamura
Images: Mattheus Smits & Francis Crociata
Bolet speak about his time in Tokyo 1945/6
Yusen - Nippon Yusen Kaisha - Building, Marunouchi (right), c. 1930. (Tokyo Station can be see in the background.). The NYK building, referred to in the interview below, was allocated to the Americans during the occupation of Japan after WW2. The Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha (日本郵船株式会社, Nippon Yūsen kabushiki kaisha, lit. 'Japan Mail Steamship Company'), also known as NYK Line, was a Japanese shipping company.
After World War II
After his discharge in September 1946, Bolet began to tour Mexico, Central America, the West Indies and South America. The tour began on 22 September 1946 and would keep him busy until mid-December. He had been flown back from Japan at the request of Columbia Concerts. He also gave frequent performances in Havana - solo recitals and concertos with the Havana Philharmonic. MusicalAmerica noted that Bolet was again on tour in Mexico and Cuba in February 1947.
For example, on 6 February 1947, as reported in Cuba papers, he gave recitals in Ciudad Trujillo (present day Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic). La Gaceta (11.2.47, Tampa, Fl.) reports that this was Jorge's Dominican Republic début, on 29 January.
On 1 March, he played Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto with Erich Kleiber in the Auditorio, Havana. Erich Kleiber, father of equally famous conductor son Carlos, was Austrian, but after the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933, he resigned in protest against its oppressive policies, and left the country, basing himself and his family in Buenos Aires.
Austrian pianist and musicologist Paul Badura-Skoda has left an amusing (well, at least to us) of the travelling pianist. 'South America, of course, had had a good supply of European pianos, but because of the war the supply had stopped, so we really had old war horses in ruins to play on. Many a concert has been spoiled by a piano. I can still remember a tuner in the city of Salvador, Brazil, so totally drunk that he was unable to tune my piano.'
Bolet wrote an article entitled ‘Music: a diplomatic weapon’ in 1948 about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: it had for the past two to three years directed musical programmes at Latin America in furthering a good neighbour policy. ‘I was amazed when I was invited to Montreal to appear on some 15 of these programs. Because of my Latin birth, I realized how much they would be appreciated in South and Central America.’ The radio used to send the Latin world ‘program after program of Americanized versions of rumbas, tangos, sambas and Mexican songs....[but] in the cafés and nightclubs of South America, they could hear authentic South American music performed much better than over our networks.’
Bolet gave the premiere of a sonata by Norman dello Joio on 13 October, 1947 in Carnegie Hall (his 5th appearance here). This was Bolet’s first recital in that famous venue since return to civilian life. ‘Any Naumburg judges in the house must have been proud of their choice’, proclaimed The New York Times.
Musical America added that 'during his absence in the army, he has developed into one of the finest pianists before the public' and that this concert 'was an event not easily forgotten.
A Cuban eulogy
'Although little remembered today on the Island, Miguel De Marcos (1884-1954) was one of the greatest journalists of the Republican period (1902-1958), someone who analysed with acuity and irony the most dissimilar issues of life and national character.'
(Eric Caraballoso, February 2020)
Photo: Paseo del Prado, 1930s
In Havana, Saturday's edition of Diario de la Marina (11 January 1947) carried a very florid encomium, luxuriant in language, of Jorge Bolet by Miguel de Marcos. 'The public, dazzled, conquered [by his musicianship], believes in a happy and supernatural ease. Those who are a little inclined to turn to mystical explanations believe that this ease that is confined in the prodigy, is a heavenly grace (una gracia celeste). Those who enjoy venturing into mythological causes, believe that next to the artist's cradle, in the first hour, a fairy (un hada) came to visit to give him all the gifts. I, more down to earth, stick to an old saying that is loaded with certainties: genius is a long apprenticeship (el genio es un largo aprendizaje).'
'He received his training at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, under the pedagogical patronage of Godowsky (sic). The great musician imbued him with his sobriety, the contained ardour, a dull fire that not lead to noisy and light crackling (el fuego sordo que no va hacia las ruidosas y ligeras crepitaciones) [?]; and, in this way, Jorge Bolet's pianistic learning is not a matter of pastime or garland, but of cavity, of depth, of root (cavidad, profundidad, raiz). He goes to the piano as an interpreter, but above all he is imbued with seriousness, reflection, musical meditation. I have often thought about Jorge Bolet - the artist and the man - that Godowsky's severity left an indelible mark (una huella indemne) on his spirit, but that in his "spiritual' make-up one must also place the spell of the old Quaker city that deepens its tradition and its gravity next to the waters of the Delaware (el hechizo de la vieja ciudad cuaquera que adensa su tradición y su gravidad junto a las aguas del Delaware).
'When Jorge Bolet, already loaded with all the laurels that do not blind him, comes to Havana from time to time and sits at the table of friends, he replaces the splendid planistic virtuosity with a radiant gastronomic virtuosity. He demands for his solid fang (colmillo solido), that two-coloured magic, the judicious symbiosis of rice and beans. In the pudding/dessert (postre) line, it also practices the bi-coloured "feerie" and coagulates and links another symbiosis of high clinical value: white cheese and guava jelly, that jalca de guayaba that, due to its ungilt, its perfume, its sweetness, drew from Columbus the kind and fortunate phrase that has contributed so much to the tourist industry of Cuba: this is the most beautiful land that eyes have seen.' His training as a soldier ready to serve in the War and his time in Japan are then praised to the hilt. [I'll continue to polish this sometimes rough translation! - see text below]
Finally, the article announces that on Friday 17 January 1947, Jorge will give a recital in the Auditorio.
In the same newspaper (Diario), the day before (Friday 10 January), Francisco Ichaso had written: 'I met Jorge Bolet in Mexico, in the sumptuous Metropolitan [a hotel or the Cathedral in the zócalo?] the night of the concert with which the Orquesta Sinfónica de México made its contribution to the the change of power [this no doubt refers to the election of 7 July 1946, but as stated above, Jorge began his tour of Central America on 22 September of that year]. We spoke in low voices (after all, we were not in Cuba!) about the conductor Carlos Chávez, about his Sinfonia India, and about a lovely work of Silvestre Revueltas [1899-1940] which we had heard.' We are told that it was Rosita Rivacoba de Marcos who had arranged for Jorge to give the recital on the 17 January: Mozart's Fantasy & Fugue in C major, Beethoven's Les Adieux, Franck's Prelude Choral and Fugue, a suite by Norman dello Joio and Liszt's Mephisto Waltz.
General elections had been held in Mexico on 7 July 1946. The presidential elections were won by Miguel Alemán Valdés. In early 1946, still as a candidate, Alemán placed composer and conductor Carlos Chávez as the head of the Cultural Committee of Alemán’s National Campaign to elaborate a “Plan for the Fine Arts,” which would be later converted into the official project for the National Institute of Fine Arts (Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes [INBA]).
'The authoritarian Mexican regime, represented perfectly by President Alemán, granted Chávez, as the Director of INBA, official power over the arts. This power surpassed the kinds that Chávez had amassed in the past. The critical reactions by artists against Chávez were numerous and bitter, especially because of his use of power for his own benefit, but also because of his dictatorial methods in implementing those powers. The monopoly Chávez exerted in the dissemination of his work, as opposed to other Mexican composers or composers living in Mexico, is evident in the programs of the OSM in the seasons between 1945 and 1948.' Luis Velasco Pufleau (2012). The orchestra had premiered the famous Huapango of José Pablo Moncayo on 15 August 1941.
On Tuesday 11 February 1947, in the Lyceum Lawn Tennis Club, JB played the A major sonata of Schubert and Franck's Quintet in F minor with Carlos Agostini, Francisco Cao, Luisa Rueda and Roger Dugad (Noticias 15.2.47). Hilario Gonzalez writes that one could object to "la agreste sonoridad de ciertos acordes en fortissimo del primero y ultimo tiempos, debida a falta de flexibilidad en el ataque" (the harsh sonority of certain fortissimo chords of the first and last [movements?], due to lack of flexibility in the attack).
Monday 3 March 1947, Auditorio, Havana. Erich Kleiber and Jorge in Rachmaninoff's second concerto. The concert began with the overture to Verdi's Les vêpres siciliennes, and ended with Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4. When Kleiber had performed this last work two years previously, 'the audience went wild with delirium'. This was a benefit concert for orchestra's pension fund. Les vêpres followed immediately after Verdi's three great mid-career masterpieces, Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata of 1850 to 1853 and was first performed at the Paris Opéra on 13 June 1855.
The late 1940s
It was in 1947 that Jorge’s sister, Maria’s missionary work in Spain began in earnest. Religious freedom at the time was an off-and-on proposition under Franco. She was repeatedly expelled from Spain and worked in France, Tangier and also back in Cuba. Maria endured famine during Spain’s Civil War and W.W.II, arrests, and even stoning. In 1968, when religious freedom was declared, she returned to Spain for good.
Dr Bernardo Mendel, a Bogotá concert manager, had engaged 9 artists (among whom was Jorge) to give concerts in Colombia during an Inter-American conference in April 1948 but these had to be cancelled. On 9 April, 1948, populist Colombian presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán had been shot down in the street outside of his office in Bogotá. Rioting left 3,000 dead; much of the city had been burned to the ground. Tragically, the worst was yet to come: the Bogotazo kicked off the period in Colombia known as “La Violencia,” or “the time of violence,” in which hundreds of thousands of ordinary Colombians would die.
31 March 1948 Claudio Arrau recital in the Auditorio, Havana. Then Friday 2nd April in the Teatro Bolívar of Medellín, Colombia, presented by the Sociedad Amigos del Arte.
6 April 1948: Jorge gives a recital in the Auditorio, Havana. Jorge had been touring in Cuba - Cienfuegos and Santa Clara are mentioned by Diario de la Marina (21.4.48). If he was in also Camagüey on this tour, then a young Cuban schoolboy heard him, an occasion he recalled in 2022. Jorge was now about to depart for New York, and we are told that will be in Mexico in July 1948.
Soon back in Cuba again, Jorge was part of a big concert on Thursday, 27 May 1948 in the Teatro Riviera, Havana. Claudio Arrau, violinist Ginette Noveau and and the Hungarian Miklos Gafni ('a sensational tenor, discovered in a Czechoslovakian [Polish?] concentration camp') - among others - took part. Gafni's parents and four sisters died at Auschwitz. The Australian press compared Gafni to Caruso and Gigli. He later gave up a professional singing career in the mid-1960s to form Michel's Magnifique, a Bronx-based packaged gourmet food concern.
2 June 1948, sister Maria sails on the SS Drottningholm from Lisbon to New York
Wednesday 10 November 1948, Fresno, California (and the following evening in Livermore, the easternmost city in the San Francisco Bay area, according to the Orinda Sun). The Washington Township News Register reports: 'Those who purchased memberships to the Washington Township Concert Series are looking forward with considerable anticipation to the night of November 10, for at that time they will hear the first concert to be given in the series. The artist is Jorge Bolet, brilliant Cuban pianist, who will perform in the auditorium of the Washington Union High School. Those who miss his performance here, may, if they wish, hear him the; following night at the Livermore High School. Bolet, who served in his own country’s army and then in the army of the United States, has appeared at Carnegie Hall where he was received with the greatest acclaim. Some of the press reviews on Bolet are as follows: “The audience knew he was a master the moment he touched the keys.” —Edwin H. Schloss, Philadelphia Record, “Tall, dark and handsome (judging from his pictures), he will undoubtedly meet with the approval of his audience in Washington Township—especially the feminine contingent.” —Vivian Batman, Township Register, Niles.
And the recital?
'Away from the cultural centers, we nevertheless had one of the world’s great artists right in our own back yard, and the audience was grateful and appreciative of this opportunity of hearing the best. Though not showing the brilliance and' fire of some of his contemporaries, Mr. Bolet nevertheless gave a most satisfactory performance. What he lacked in warmth he made up in delicacy of execution. As is customary in an audience of non-professionals, the familiar numbers were the favorite ones. The popular Chopin “Ballade in G Minor” was roundly applauded as was the Mendelssohn “Rondo capriccioso.” Perhaps some in the audience were disappointed that the pianist failed to play some of the more spectacular favorites, but it must be remembered that a Lizst rhapsody is not needed to prove a pianist’s mastery of his instrument. Bolet showed this In his rendition of the Debussy preludes—delicate as gossamer and leaving an atmosphere of elusiveness and mystery. The consensus of those who attended was: “He was wonderful!”, “Imagine being able to hear such a performance right here in our own high school auditorium,” and “Oh, I wish my husband (or my friend, or my sister) had heard this.” Those who served as ushers for the performance were Joan Halliwell, Barbara James, Manuel Silva and George Silva, students at the high school. Miss Dorothy Czerny, art Instructor at the high school, supervised the decorations of the stage, and Salvadore Guerrero, a student, had charge of the lighting.'
You get a real sense of a community concert in this review. I recall that in his biography of Horowitz, Glenn Plaskin recalls that the pianist in his early American years was actually warned OFF the Chopin G minor Ballade in Denver, because it would be too highbrow!
What are we to make of the tittle-tattle by Dorothy Kilgallen in the Mansfield New Journal 1 November 1948? 'Ever since her divorce, Lucille Manners has been getting orchids and long-distance phone calls from Jorge Bolet.'
Carnegie Hall, December 1948
On Friday, 3 December 1948, JORGE BOLET GIVES COLORFUL RECITAL in Carnegie Hall.
Cuban Pianist Shows Marked Ability as an Interpreter of Variety of Music, as reported in The New York Times the next day.
The famous Chilean tenor Ramón Vinay was singing the role of Verdi's Otello at The Metropolitan Opera this month.
JB plays Liszt's first concerto in E flat in Sydney Opera House on 25 August 1981.
The programme of his 6th appearance here included: Beethoven's Rondo Op. 51/1 in C, Schubert's A minor Sonata D.748, Prokofiev's Sonata No. 8 in B flat major Op. 84, Chopin's Berceuse, and a Saint-Saëns Waltz. The Beethoven was ‘beautifully detailed – deliberate tempo, enough to lend the grace of outline ‘needed in the chief theme and establish its introspective mood’ Schubert: lightness and dispatch of tricky flying scale measures in the finale, the fiery pronouncement of the section leading to the 2nd theme and the tended suave treatment of that theme...could hardly have been improved upon. But reviewer N.S. also alerts readers to the ‘metallic quality of tone’. The Prokofiev had vivid juxtapositions of mood without resorting to percussive sounds, except where absolutely necessary.
'Seldom is the G minor Ballade (Chopin) performed with such a thorough comprehension of its architecture. It was superbly and most knowingly built up to a great climax before the return of the main theme in its original form and then again to a still more imposing peak in the splendidly played coda. Not often is this familiar favorite of the repertoire made so absolutely satisfying in every regard. Surely from now on, Mr Bolet will be a pianist to reckon with.'
Horowitz is "ill"... (March 1949)
It was in March of 1949 that Bolet replaced Vladimir Horowitz, ostensibly for two performances of Rachmaninoff's third concerto at Syria Mosque, Pittsburgh.
But as it turned out, he only played the first performance, because Horowitz made a miraculous recovery from indisposition, to play the second, Sunday afternoon performance.
Bolet returned in November 1985, to play the same concerto, for his second appearance at the hall. 'Bolet, a peppery, fiery Cuban native,' says the Pittsburgh Press, 'leaves no doubt that he thinks Horowitz's recovery was strongly related to the success of his Friday night performance.' In all fairness, the same newspaper on 25 March 1949, in announcing JB's substitution for that evening, states that Horowitz hoped to be well enough to take over on the Sunday afternoon.
24 January 1949, Majestic Theatre, Corner Brook, Newfoundland (Canada): recital including Albeniz and Lecuona. 'Mr Bolet unravelled staggering technical problems with deceptive ease.' (Western Star). He will leave on 26th for Grand Falls and other Newfoundland towns. Rather touchingly, the Western Star featured the recital in a "Twenty Years Ago" column on 24 January 1969.
El Informador (4 March 1949) announces that on Friday 11 in the Teatro Degollado JB will play Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with Leslie Hodge and the Guadalajara SO. (The article also notes that he has performed in Mexico with José Sabre Marroquín.) Ballet music from Gretry's "Cephalus and Procris" and Schubert's Marche Militaire will also be be performed in this popular concert. The Australian-born (1914?) American concert pianist and conductor Leslie Hodge was the founding conductor of the Guadalajara (later Jalisco) SO - he spent seven years in the city - and first resident conductor of the San Diego Philharmonic. He later lived in La Jolla; he was killed in December 1988 in an automobile accident on Interstate 5 near Sorrento Valley.
Monday 25 April 1949: concert in the Auditorio, with the Filarmónica in Havana and conductor Eugen Szenkar: Schumann concerto (and R.Strauss' suite from Der Rosenkavalier). Eugen Szenkar (Szenkár Jenő; 1891-1977) was a Hungarian-born German-Brazilian conductor. The Miraculous Mandarin (A csodálatos mandarin) Op. 19, Sz. 73 (BB 82), a one act pantomime ballet composed by Béla Bartók, was premiered on 27 November 1926 conducted by Szenkar at the Cologne Opera, Germany; it caused a scandal and was subsequently banned on moral grounds. During 1939-49 he was based in Rio de Janeiro. Jorge's mother Adelina was in the audience along with her daughter-in-law Kitty de Castor de Bolet.
Wednesday, 27 April 1949: recital in Havana, to include Piano Sonata in A minor, D 784 (Schubert) and Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 8 in B♭ major, Op. 84 (a rare item in Jorge's repertoire?). Diario reports two encores, Adiós a Cuba (Ignacio Cervantes) and a dance by Lecuona, and a reception which was 'delirantemente'. We are told that Jorge will make his first appearance in the Teatro de Bellas Artes, Mexico City. Kathleen Ferrier is due to arrive for a recital on 5 May. (In 1946 she had made her stage debut in the Glyndebourne Festival première of Benjamin Britten's opera The Rape of Lucretia.)
Tuesday 17 May 1949: Matanzas, Cuba. Manolo Jarquínin Diario (17.5.49) reports that Señora de Neto exclaimed that Jorge had played in the Teatro Sauto like no-one before! (Same programme as 27/4)
In 1949, Artur Rodzinski (1892- 1958, a Polish music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic in the 1930s and 1940s) heard Bolet in Havana (possibly at recitals on 18 and 20 October, 1949). He introduced him to the Greek conductor, resident in America, Dimitri Mitropoulos (1896-1960) and the New York Philharmonic.
6 October 1949, Tex Compton (aged 39) sailed from New York to Buenos Aires, and listed his stay there as lasting 54 day.
Camp Pocono
There are photos from Camp Pocono [dated 1947 in the International Piano Archive Maryland] where Bolet went on summer camp. ‘He retained a lifelong devotion to the community at Pocono in Pennsylvania, a boys' camp where he had been sent to improve his English and enjoy the benefit of a healthy and congenial setting, one fascinatingly remote from his Cuban background and also from many repressive and dominating influences.’ Bryce Morrison (1991)
The camp was located on Lake Wallenpaupack, 1928-1969. It was a very 'woodsy' camp, the scent of pine everywhere. Jorge Bolet was godfather to the camp's founder, Chauncey 'Chum' Paxson's twin boys Ted and Chip .
Digression: Leo Sirota
Junichiro Tanizaki, the Japanese author, in his famous novel The Makioka Sisters mentions the pianist Leo Sirota giving a recital. I finally got round to reading it during the dreadful days of the Coronavirus COVID-19 lockdown period in autumn 2020.
The novel follows the lives of the wealthy Makioka family of Osaka from the autumn of 1936 to April 1941.
Leo Sirota - a Jewish Ukrainian (1885-1965) - and his family had settled in Japan in 1929, staying there for 16 years, teaching and giving recitals. Following a trip to Japan in 1928, Sirota had been offered the directorship of the Ueno Imperial Academy in Tokyo. During this period Sirota made recordings for Japanese Columbia, including the first complete recording of Stravinsky's Three Scenes from Petrushka.
During World War II, he and his wife were interned in Karuizawa, Nagano, while his daughter was safe in the United States. After the Second World War he moved to America and taught in St. Louis; his rendition of Moriz Rosenthal's arrangement of Chopin's Minute Waltz with the right hand playing in thirds was said to have astounded Arthur Rubinstein.
In her memoir, The Only Woman In The Room (Kodansha, 1997), the pianist's daughter Beate Sirota Gordon (distinguished in her own right, having worked under Douglas MacArthur to write the Constitution of Japan after World War II) writes:
'We had originally expected to stay in Japan for six months, but those months passed quickly . . . [and] we had taken root. Kosaku Yamada [prominent Japanese composer], our family’s sponsor. had lent us his support from the beginning, but we had also been befriended by Hidemaro Konoe, the co-founder with Yamada of the New Symphony Orchestra. It was not long before members of other aristocratic families – the Tokugawas, Mitsuis and Azabukis – started visiting us. Many of them had become fans of my father after hearing him perform.'
'He was the first to play a Yamaha piano in public. The Japanese, being very brand conscious even then, only played a Bechstein or a Steinway in concert. It took my father, a Westerner, to make a Japanese piano popular. The Yamaha Company was so grateful that they sent a piano wherever my father needed one. One summer, we had two in our house in Tokyo, one in our summer house in Hayama, and one in the mountains where my parents had gone for a three-week vacation!
'Besides concertizing in Japan, China, Korea, and Manchuria during the sixteen years of my father’s sojourn in Japan, he taught at the Imperial Academy in Tokyo and gave private lessons at home. Students from Korea and Manchuria came to Tokyo to study with him. In addition to Japanese private students, there were many foreigners in Tokyo who also took lessons- Americans, Russians, Czechs and British. This attracted the attention of the secret police (kempeitai) who kept an eye on foreign residents. A secret police agent would come almost every day to check with our servants about the visitors to our house, suspicious about so many nationalities being represented by the license plates of the cars outside. Since our servants didn’t speak English, they were not of much use to the police, but our cook came up with a clever idea. Every time my mother gave a dinner party, she collected the guests’ place-cards and gave them to the police! She did not see anything wrong with that – she was just being cooperative.'
The title of Tanizaki's novel in English is different from the original: xi (細雪) means "lightly falling snow" and is also used in classical Japanese poetry.
The image suggests falling cherry blossoms in early spring—a number of poets confess to confusing falling cherry blossoms with snow. Falling cherry blossoms are a common symbol of impermanence, a prevalent theme of the novel.
A biography of Sirota is available: Leo Sirota: The Pianist Who Loved Japan by Takashi Yamamoto, 2004/ 2019 (in English)