Abram Chasins

It's odd how I suddenly get "a bee in my bonnet" about issues I hadn't really considered before. One of them is Jorge's relationship with Abram Chasins (1903-1987), to which I have turned again after reading something by Jonathan Summers in his notes for the recent First Hand Records CD release of Bolet's Ambassador Auditorium recitals. (I also hadn't fully appreciated AC's Curtis connections before.)

'After Bolet gave a Carnegie Hall recital in 1951 [3 April] critic Howard Taubman felt the Bolet did not provide musical satisfaction, with deficiencies in imagination and sensitivity. "It may be that Mr Bolet, if he could turn to the proper sources for advice and inspiration, could put his brilliant technique to equally brilliant use". In those days of constructive criticism, Bolet took Taubman's advice, and asked for help from Abram Chasins, who himself had been a pupil of Josef Hofmann.'

Bolet himself told Elyse Mach in the later 1980s that 'I had previously done quite a bit of work with Abram Chasins. He sort of took me in a time when he thought something

had to be done about my playing. And indeed he really sort of turned my playing around, so to speak, but that’s another story.' So far, so teasing.

There is this interesting observation - something I hadn't considered - by in an Audite CD booklet for Jorge's RIAS recordings: "Strictly speaking, Bolet (born in Cuba in 1914) was already too old for an audience who, after the Second World War, were at the feet of a generation of “Outstanding Young American Pianists” (OYAP) including John Browning, Leon Fleisher, William Kapell, Julius Katchen and Van Cliburn, who were all born in the 1920s and 30s."

(Wolfgang Rathert. Translation: Viola Scheffel)

In 1971, Chasins wrote a letter to Jorge: "Apart from your today unrivalled virtuosity, there is the rarest of poetic elegance in the true Romantic style... [The playing of my teacher Hofmann] lives again in your unique combination of demonic daring, elfin delicacy and soaring lyricism."

Earlier, in his book Speaking about pianists (1958) he said: "Prokofiev's second cocnerto found an indeal interpreter in Jorge Bolet. He plays it with a relentless continuity that never becomes brutal, with loving care and wily understanding of its expressive content. He completely owns it."

I wonder if anyone knows how exactly Chasins helped Bolet - it was apparently over a period of four years, I had thought in the late 1940s, but it seems to have been early 1950s according to Jonathan Summers. Drop a comment below or use the CONTACTS page.

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I recall going backstage to shake hands with Jorge in London in 1987, and overhearing him telling a friend that Chasins had just died, and that was why he chose to play some of his compositions as encores in that afternoon recital.

(In earlier years Bolet had also had Chasins' raucous arrangement of Weinberger's lively polka form his opera "Schwanda the Bagpiper" in his repertoire.)

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Mattheus Smits has written to me with the following:

'The piano concerto which Chasins played on 1 January 1929 under Ossip Gabrilowitsch (see below) was I believe his own first concerto in F minor written in 1928. Chasins wrote a second piano concerto in F sharp minor. When talking to Jorge about Chasins' influence on his development, Jorge told me that he never had the idea that Chasins was teaching him in usual sense of the word. Working with him simply allowed musical thoughts to develop and grow. Chasins acted - so to speak - as a 'listening mirror' from which Jorge, whose playing was loved by Chasins, could mature. Jorge also mentioned that working with Chasins greatly contributed to his feeling that the style of his playing was correct and part of his (Jorge's) 

personality. Jorge always admitted that working with Chasins had an important influence on his development.

'That Jorge performed compositions by Chasins was not only because of gratitude;

Jorge simply thought Chasins' music was good enough to be heard!'

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Abram Chasins (1903-1987) wore many musical hats. His gifts as both pianist and composer met with critical acclaim in the late 1920s and early 1930s, while counting luminaries like Josef Hofmann, Sergei Rachmaninov, Leopold Godowsky, George Gershwin, Vladimir Horowitz, Arturo Toscanini, and Donald Francis Tovey among his mentors and associates. From the mid-’30s onward, Chasins gradually retreated from performing in favour of broadcasting [WQXR, New York radio station], teaching, and writing about music. (Jed Distler, writing in 2023)

Born in Manhattan, New York, he attended the Ethical Culture schools and undertook additional studies through the Columbia University Extension School. He studied piano with Ernest Hutcheson and composition with Rubin Goldmark at the Juilliard School of Music before proceeding to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. There, he undertook further piano studies with Józef Hofmann. He became a protegé of Hofmann, then dean of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, who made him a member of the Curtis faculty when Chasins was only 23. In 1931, he studied music analysis with Sir Donald Tovey in London.

Chasins' career as a pianist lasted from 1927 until 1947. He gave many solo recitals and performed with major orchestras in the United States, Canada, South America and Europe. On January 1, 1929, he made his debut playing his Piano Concerto No 1 [by whom?] with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Ossip Gabrilowitsch. From 1926 to 1935, Chasins taught piano as a member of the faculty of the Curtis Institute. He was associated with the radio station WQXR from 1941 to 1965, becoming the music director in 1946. (Steinway website)