A few Times reviews from London

I've taken advantage over the weekend of 15/16 March when The Times removed its paywall for its archive. Here are a few choice reviews which I've added to the web pages.

Royal Festival Hall, London, 11 January 1959. 'Fresh and imaginative performance. Last night in the Festival Hall, Rachmaninoff 3 found a most original interpreter in the person of a pianist from Cuba. Mr Bolet has massive hands which can easily accomodate every note in the lushest and fullest of Rachmaninoff's textures, and a grand, if not very beguiling, tone which even enabled him to hold his own - more than that, make himself heard - against against the rapturous orchestral din which comprises the concerto's apotheosis. This is not to say that Mr Bolet bangs about. On the contrary, he has the most intense feeling for Rachmaninoff's languorous lyricism and penetrates to the very heart of it, though here and there his wrestling with a poetic phrase distorts its shape. It may be, indeed, that Mr Bolet too kften allows a display of the feelings he has for this music to hold up its natural impetus - this was certainly true of the finale -but the feelings are so fresh and imaginative and strongly held that Mr Bolet must be given a place in the thin ranks of concert pianists whose the performance of this much played concerto one can anticipate with pleasure.' The Times 12.1.59​​

10 May 1979 Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. Chopin, Chopin-Godowsky (6 études & 3 waltzes), Jorge Bolet being presented by de Koos, 'his only London recital this season'.​ BM [Bryce Morrison?] inThe Times (11.5.79) wrote that 'every bar of JB's wonderful Chopin recital bore the indelible imprint of his deeply serious yet romantic personality. Freewheeling, rhapsodic and low-keyed when not explosively impassioned, his reading of the 4 Ballades will have made us all think again, for this was in every sense Chopin reconsidered. After the interval it was fun and fancy free for both audience and pianist as Mr Bolet turned his attention to Chopin-Godowsky. Ingenious, spicy and teasingly decadent, such music needs a giant technique and, even more important, an artist capable of sophisticated elegance and wit. Jorge Bolet has all these qualities in abundance. One of the world's greatest virtuosi, he effortlessly juggled with an improbable number of glittering balls and clubs with aristocratic nonchalance and ease, and reminded us that recitals of this c​alibre are a rare event on the South Bank - or indeed anywhere else.'

Tuesday 12 December 1978, QEH, London, with the Juilliard Quartet; Haydn, Bartok 2 and Schubert's Trout Quintet (with Donald Palma on double bass).  The next day, The Times reported: 'The glory of this performance was the complete confidence to be found in the execution of each part and in the subtle dovetailing and give and take between all five players, in which the minutest changes of tempo and dynamic level were mirrored in each player's performance. Add to that the linear clarity of the inner strings and Mr Bolet's effortless, easy, yet always thoughtful and yielding account of the piano's role, and it is easy to judge that this was an outstanding interpretation even in this year when Schubert has been given his due on all sides.  The performance rightly reached its profoundest revelations in the two slow movements. In the Andante the inwardness of the playing and the attention to shifts of harmony within phrases lent it an even greater originality than usual.  In the fourth movement, after a properly artless announcement of the theme, each variation seemed like a deeper commentary on what had preceded it. There have been, more joyous performances of this work but few as searching or as tautly controlled.'

On 24 May 1982 there was a recital at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. It ‘should have made a fine contrasting postlude to Horowitz on Saturday – for to the Russian, the Cuban is both antithesis and sibling’. There was an ‘almost studied avoidance of the manic and mercurial’ but Bolet was ‘a brother from the same age of keyboard sensibility’. He was ‘not on best form’ and the Schumann Fantasy Op.17 was ‘laboured, pedantic, heavy in spirit, fragmented in impetus’. Financial Times 26.5.82.

Max Harrison in The Times wrote: 'Part of the character of Mendelssohn's works arises from a tension between classical and romantic tendencies and the main point about Jorge Bolet's reading of the Fantasy Op. 28 was that he held these in perfect, if constantly shifting, balance. This was also reflected in the smooth alternation of elfin semi-quaver music and powerful outbursts in the finale. Even in the latter, the pianist's beautifully rounded tone persisted, and the work's gentle beginning was seemingly conjured out of the silence. Again, the increase of activity in those early pages was marvellously graduated. Schumann's Fantasy Op.17 is a more thoroughgoingly romantic piece despite its evocation of Beethoven. The composer asked for his first movement to be played "fantastically and passionately throughout" and al- though Mr Bolet did this, there always seemed to be plenty in reserve for the subsequent movements. Of course, this is highly subjective - even private - music, the public performance of which must always create certain difficulties. However, its rapidly changing moods were projected on this occasion with what can only be called a subtle vividness. Still more remarkable was the manner in which the timeless calm of the slow finale was made to emerge from the ringingly triumphant end of the central March. The poetic insight of Mr Bolet's playing in the last movement yielded a profound musical experience. A rare pleasure of a somewhat different sort came with five of Liszt's versions of Schubert's songs, where the perception of the interpreter matched that of the transcriber.'

Nicholas Kenyon in The Times 2 September 1982 reported: 'In a pianistic age dominated by coldly efficient competition winners and their relentless pursuit of sanitized playing, Jorge Bolet is a welcome figure. He provides a link with a quite different tradition - he is a Godowsky pupil (sic), and always uses the warm, singing timbre of a Bechstein piano. Playing Liszt's first Piano Concerto in yesterday's Prom, he proved that virtuosity can have a human face, with profoundly musical features: he gave each cadenza-like flourish a wealth of meaning: under his hands, the pounding octaves and gauche tunes acquired shape and direction. Bolet changed his advertised solo postlude to the Concerto, La campanella, and gave us instead Liszt's Funerailles in memory of Clifford Curzon - a generous gesture, but a startlingly inappropriate choice, for its purple-edged, gothick flamboyance somehow slighted the memory of Curzon's immaculately chaste playing. But it fitted Bolet well, and the chubby thud of the Bechstein's bass staccato and its effortlessly rich, singing treble enabled the rambling, exotic sounds to project themselves forcefully and then to evaporate into a tribute of silence, broken only by a ripple of applause. The evening's two symphonies, Haydn's 92nd and Sibelius' First, presented symphonic form at its most taut and its most expansive.'

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On Sunday, 18 September 1983 Bolet gave a recital in Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, at 7.15pm (Brahms, Rachmaninov, Liszt).  It was reviewed in the Financial Times [20.9.83] by Dominic Gill.   He refers to the BBC Scotland Rachmaninoff masterclasses broadcast in August, and says that ‘Four television appearances can do for an artist what music critics fail to achieve in twice as many years'.

Such a statement is a great tribute to the BBC whose role in Bolet’s career was considerable.  

The QEH was sold out.   ‘A Gondoliera of silken sensuousness and a Tarantella of irresistible (though too constrained and benign to be truly diabolical) urgency.’ 

Nicholas Kenyon in The Times wrote: 'Television works its magic for the worthy and unworthy alike: having attracted audiences for countless lesser artists, it performed the service on Sunday night of gathering a well-filled house for Jorge Bolet, star of recent TV masterclasses but before that a connoisseurs' pianist, not widely known. His programme made no concessions to popular taste: the evening's most fascinating revelation was of a work all too little played (though Howard Shelley will include it in his Wigmore series this autumn): Rachmaninov's Variations on a Theme of Chopin. Cast into the shade by his more famous Corelli Variations, these whimsical, fantastical, resourceful ruminations around the C minor Prelude from Chopin's Op 28 prove that once Rachmaninov got hold of someone else's good idea he could not let go of it. By any standards, particularly musical ones, the 22 variations are over-extended, yet they are full of the most glorious inventions: bustling toccatas, Chopin's chords punctuated by top-of-the-keyboard filigree, a chaste little fugue echoing late Beethoven, and climactic group like that in Bach's Goldbergs rewritten in the language of Rachmaninov's contemporaneous Second Piano Concerto. With a deep, rich attack and deftly unobtrusive phrasing, Bolet persuaded us that there was substance and significance in this music. His solid tone and noble bearing suits Rachmaninov particularly well: in the brilliant pair of movements from Liszt's Venezia e Napoli with which he roused the cheers at the end, there was not quite enough sheer excitement. And the first half of the recital was distinctly less successful: it was surely a mistake to begin with Brahms's sublimely simple Intermezzi, Op 117, where Bolet sounded ill-at-ease, and a double mistake to follow their perfect concision with the interminable ramblings of Brahms's youthful Op. 5 sonata, which Bolet's sober insistence made into a rather grumpy sermon.'

8 March, 1984 at Barbican Hall, London: LSO with Ivan Fischer.  Symphony no.8 (Schubert); Hungarian Fantasy; Totentanz (Liszt); Symphony no.8 (Dvorak).  Hilary Finch in The Times wrote: 'The age of the great performer- composer is not perhaps quite vanished. Jorge Bolet, through his own teaching and transcription, to say nothing of his recording project of the complete Liszt piano works seems, in his own way, a continuation, recreation event, of the tradition. And last night, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ivan Fischer, he brought characteristic swagger and seriousness to two of Liszt's works for piano and orchestra. There are times when Bolet can be something of an enigmatic diavolo in musica himself, and so he appeared in the dark Dies lrae paraphrase, Totentanz.  He realised Liszt's prancing charade variations, at one moment as a child tinkering with a sinister nursery rhyme; at another with the eager yet secret delight of the accompanist. Bolet's skills in drawing two-hand dialogue out of a pedestal resonance, in finding strange luminosity in drumming, repeated notes, and in making octaves leap with joy as much as power and menace, all spilled over into the Fantasia on Hungarian Folktunes which followed. Here the piano's reflective, whimsical interludes between the bold orchestral Magyar refrain grew in imaginative vigour right up to the central appearance of the theme in the soloist's hands, like a bronze sculpture unveiled'

Of the Barbican recital 11 March 1984, Max Harrison wrote in The Times: 'Subtle colours that were more a question of the balance between Jorge Bolet's hands than of separate accents last night reminded one that serious performances of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata are rare. This was true not only of the overly famous first movement but also of the finale. However one expected speed and weight but not a resolute clarity which, in the event, suggested the pianos of the composer's own day without any sacrifice of present realities.

This performance, romantic in both its individuality and independence from settled conventions of Beethoven interpretation, was an apt prelude to an evening of Chopin and Liszt. Chopin's Barcarolle was at first understated. Then, in a fascinating display of gradualism, the watercolours turned into oils. After this ultimate expression of the nocturnal side of Chopin's world, a selection of his études was particularly bracing. Even here, though, our pianist showed himself a master of the unexpected, beginning with Opus 25 number one, which is essentially a play of colours. With Opus 10 no 3 it was back to the nocturnal world, although not before Opus 25 No.2 had interposed its gossamer web. Then Mr Bolet again cheated our assumptions by playing not the expected C sharp minor Etude Op.10 No4 but the following G flat piece. All these, and others, were done with a long-matured mastery which at some points seemed to offer sophisticated commentaries on the works rather than the works themselves. After an account of Chopin's Ballade No I that was as remarkable for its coolly judged proportions as for its poetic fire, came Liszt's Ballade No 2. Even less easy to forget, however, will be the spiritual insight of the Benediction de Dieu dans Ia Solitude, which took us beyond piano playing, almost beyond music.'

SUNDAY, 7 OCTOBER, Festival Hall, London at 3.15pm.  LPO - Klaus Tennstedt.  Oberon Overture (Weber); Piano Concerto (Schumann);  Symphony no.9 (Schubert).  The Schumann was issued on a BBC Legends disc.

The same programme had been performed the previous evening Saturday, 6 October, up north in Leeds.

'Though Bolet is an authentic virtuoso, nobody who has followed his recitals in recent years would have expected him to impose fireworks upon the Concerto. (I still wince to recall that when a colleague at the Edinburgh Festival had passed up a Bolet appearance and I expressed surprise, he retorted: 'Bolet? but he's just fingers, isn't he?') In fact the first two movements of the Schumann were richly reflective, unhurried, and as affetuoso and grazioso as one could wish; powerfully incisive when that was needed, but otherwise pure Schumann chamber-music, lit up with personal touches - notably two tantalising decrescendi where ordinary pianists always aim to screw up the excitement - and unfailingly beautiful sound.

'In all this Bolet was ready to slip as required into the role of mere orchestral contributor, and Tennstedt repaid the compliment by matching his soloist's reading with the utmost sympathy. That resulted in the most ripely balanced and searching account of the first movement that I have heard in years, and an Intermezzo of teasing delicacy. The Finale was more problematic: Bolet's present taste for leisurely tempi in music he loves gave us something considerably less than Schumann's 'Allegro vivace' - maybe a 'Maestoso ma leggiero' - and though Tennstedt ensured that his strings answered faithfully to Bolet's deliberate articulation of the main theme, the effect was less buoyant than the composer surely intended.'

David Murray, Financial Times​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

For The Times, Noël Goodwin wrote: 'What can sometimes be a somnolent Sunday afternoon audience was roused to understandable enthusiasm by the time Klaus Tennstedt bought the London Philharmonic Orchestra to a powerful resolution of Schubert's Ninth Symphony at the end of their concert. It had also shown enjoyment of Jorge Bolet's thoughtful solo playing in Schumann's Piano Concerto earlier. His performance was the antithesis of what might have been expected from a virtuoso hitherto perhaps best known here for his commanding brilliance in Liszt. Schumann always said he could never write "a concerto for the virtuosi", and it would be interesting to know if Mr Bolet ever met and talked to Clara Schumann's pupil. Adelina de Lara, who died in 1961. What the latter had to say about her teacher's advice to play the concerto "very calmly, pensively and peacefully, yet without denying its more impassioned moments, characterized much of this performance in its moderation and restrained sentiment. The pianist was quoted on this page last Saturday as favouring a wider range of keyboard colour than is often heard today but the difficulty is that the acoustic properties of the Festival Hall do not encourage it in such music as Schumann's. Nevertheless he was able to sensitize the piano's tone to some degree in a magical expressive account of the first movement cadenza after a subdued opening, in the conversational exchanges with the orchestra in the intermezzo movement, and in almost waltzing through the rhythmically ambiguous.'