Alejo Carpentier reviews Bolet 1953

Early in the new year, Bolet had been on tour in Central America/Caribbean.  A passenger manifest shows that he arrived in San Juan, Puerto Rico on 7 February 1953 on Pan Am World Airways flight 204 from Caracas, Venezuela (Maiquetia, the airport south-east of the city); his ultimate destination was San Francisco.  

Hemerografía musical venezolana del siglo XX (February,1953) states that Jorge had performed two concerts in the Teatro Municipal [Tuesday 3 and Friday 6] in honour of José Martí (b.1853), who is considered a Cuban national hero because of his role in the liberation of his country from Spain. Tuesday was a recital of Beethoven [Andante Favori ?], Brahms [Intermezzo Op.119 No. 3 in C , Rhapsody Op.118 No. 4 in E flat] , Liszt's Sonata & Mephisto Waltz, Chopin [7 Preludes & Ballade No. 3 in. A flat] and Rachmaninoff; on Friday 6th, with conductor Ángel Sauce (1911-1995) and the Orquesta Sinfónica Venezuela he performed the Schumann concerto and the Paganini Variations of Rachmaninoff; Beethoven's Prometheus overture and Debussy's Suite Iberia made up the rest [Revista Nacional de Cultura, March-April 1953: Vol 14 Issue 97].   

In El Nacional, 5.2.1953, José Ratto-Ciarlo, who refers to the recital as being on Wednesday 4th, says Bolet was in his element in the Liszt.  As an encore, he played Aleksandr Scriabin's Nocturne for the Left Hand, Op.9 (I don't think I've come across this in Jorge's repertoire - but the reviewer might have mistaken the Godowsky elegy for this)  The reviewer makes much of the fact that Jorge does not possess an exotic surname, simply the Catalan "Bolet". Jorge himself once said that he might have had more success if he been called Boletowski or Boletinszky!

Ratto-Ciarlo had come from Peru to Venezuela in 1931, aged 20.. He was studying at the University of San Marcos in Lima when the coup d'état of Sánchez Cerro (1930) took place. He was a teacher, editor, author, a left-wing politician, a unionist, founder of institutions and creator of the Art and Culture section of El Nacional in 1946, which he directed with admirable skill until 1967.

The Cuban author Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980) wrote a review in El Nacional 10 February 1953. "La 'Rapsodia' es la obra que prefiero en la producción de un músico que pese, a la solidez de su oficio, nos ha dado muchas partituras aquejadas de una cierta vaguedad de propósitos, cuando no de concepción."

(Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody is the work that I prefer of this composer who, despite the solidity of his craft, has given us many scores that suffer from a certain vagueness of purpose, if not of conception. The Rhapsody, on the other hand, whose title could have encouraged a free exposition of whimsically written elements, in a somewhat Brahmsian manner, [does not], nor does the contrapuntal intervention of the “Dies Irae” theme make us lose sight, for a moment, of the basic Paganini theme.)

Esa Rapsodia trozo de ejecución trascendental, es partitura hecha para poner en valor la autoridad interpretativa, el vigor, la fuerza de un pianista extraordinariamente dueño de su técnica y que, frente a una orquesta, sabe dar el más cabal sentido a la función del instrumento concertante.

(This Rhapsody, a piece of transcendental execution, is a score made to highlight the interpretative authority, the vigour, the strength of a pianist who is an extraordinary master of technique and who, in front of an orchestra, knows how to give the most complete meaning to the function of his instrument.   Every time Jorge Bolet returns to Venezuela, every time we find him, on tour, in some city in America, we can appreciate the further progress made by someone who has been, for many years now, a pianist of egregious stature.  

En una época pudo reprochársele, tal vez, que el ímpetu juvenil, el dominio del oficio, le hicieran preferir, el brío, el vigor, la brillantez, a la expresión propiamente dicha. Ese reparo no puede hacerse ya, desde hace mucho tiempo, ante las interpretaciones de Jorge Bolet, cada vez más trabajadas dentro de la sonoridades, el matiz, la sensibilidad.

(At one time he could perhaps be reproached for the fact that his youthful impetus and his mastery of his craft made him prefer verve, vigour, and brilliance to expression itself.  That objection can no longer be raised, for a long time, in the face of Jorge Bolet's interpretations, which are increasingly worked on in terms of sound, nuance, and sensitivity.)

Estamos en presencia de un pianista singularmente completo y maduro, tanto en la fuerza, en la elocuencia, como en el poder expresivo.   Quienes escucharon el Intermezzo de Brahms -  negación del virtuosismo por el virtuosismo -  de su reciente recital, pudieron juzgarlo en función de plenitud.

(We are in the presence of a singularly complete and mature pianist, in strength, eloquence, and in expressive power.   Those who heard Brahms's Intermezzo - a negation of virtuosity for virtuosity's sake - from Bolet's recent recital were able to judge him at the height of his powers [?])

(As well as being a novelist, Carpentier was also a musicologist, an essayist, and a playwright. Among the first practitioners of the style known as “magic realism,” he exerted a decisive influence on the works of younger Latin American writers such as Gabriel García Márquez.  Living in Caracas from 1945, he returned to Havana in 1959 to join the victorious Cuban revolution. He would remain faithful to Fidel Castro’s régime, serving as a Cuban diplomat in Paris from the middle 1960s until his death.)