Beethoven must have blessed him that morning from on high

7 May, 1950

Teatro Nacional, Havana

Recital incl. Beethoven's Sonata in D minor ("Tempest"?), Franck, Prelude, Chorale et Fugue & some Mendelssohn, ending with Strauss/Godowsky "El Murciélago"(Fledermaus Waltzes)

Diario de la Marina, 11 May 1950

Jorge Bolet Reveals Himself as a Virtuoso in His Full Maturity

The brilliant pianist played Chopin as few have managed to do in his recent concert

*A spirited review by Nena Benítez

Last Sunday, May 7th, in the morning, we attended an extraordinary concert; we witnessed the birth of a new Jorge Bolet. The Chopin that Bolet had offered us at Pro Arte a few months earlier had already prepared us for this discovery. Sunday's concert fully confirmed it. Cuban art and culture have gained extraordinarily with this change, with this aesthetic maturity of our young instrumentalist. The "gallery," the public of cheap, spectacular emotions, has lost. The overall result, in the end, is positive.

(La "galería", el público de las emociones espectaculares baratas, ha perdido. El resultado del balance, a fin de cuentas, es positivo.)

Bolet had accustomed us to an external art, of "fireworks": to an art without intimacy, without communion His was a showy, brilliant, mechanically perfect way of playing, that style already classified in history as "virtuosic." A Bolet concert was a concert by a technical wizard: a concert where a Mozart came out battered and a Liszt resplendent. But, fortunately, a miracle occurs. With the years, maturity arrives and the child prodigy suddenly becomes a musician. Bolet played magnificently on Sunday. But that adjective could, in a way, be applied to his previous style. By describing his work as "magnificent" we go beyond perfect technique, limpid mechanics, and muscular agility. We arrive at the truly musical, at total dedication, at the exquisite, fin-de-siècle interpretation of Mozart's Rondò, the profound expression of Beethoven's Rondò, the mystical and passionate nature of César Franck.

We would never have believed Bolet capable of playing a Mozart lin the way we heard on Sunday. A Mozart where total surrender, disdain for pugilistic and external technique, the gentle and intimate encounter with the soul of the work, made us forget time, people, the physicality of the Teatro Nacional and made us forgive, wholeheartedly, the "little artistic crimes" that the Bolet of yesteryear might have committed.

The greatest revelation came with Beethoven's Sonata. Bolet once again gave himself body and soul to that marvellous music, perhaps one of the most magnificent of Beethoven's middle period. The Adagio sounded with that measured poetry that only the greatest interpreters can give to Beethoven's slow movements. But it was in the finale where Bolet's interpretation reached such heights that his version of this Sonata became a classic in its genre. Pianists of Gieseking's calibre have accustomed us to a frenetic Allegretto, where virtuosic speed is completely out of place in that precious final movement; a movement where the voices sang their message in full, without haste. The performer can feel content: Beethoven must have blessed him that morning from on high.

Franck's "Prelude, Chorale and Fugue" sounded intensely dramatic and at the same time serenely religious. This is a work of great stature by Franck, full of obstacles for anyone who confronts it. Bolet emerged triumphant from the difficult test, although the Beethoven we had just heard still hovered too insistently in our spirits to fully do justice to the old Franck.

The second part of the recital was nowhere near as good as the first. Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words" added nothing to the glories Bolet had won in the first part of his programme. They sounded as they always do: good and nothing more

The name Strauss-Godowsky at the end of the program saddened us greatly from the moment we looked at it. After hearing the Mozart, the Beethoven, the Franck that Bolet offered us, it seemed unbearable. It's a shame that a concert of that calibre had to end so poorly performed. Mozart at the beginning; Godowsky at the end. No, Jorge Bolet, you no longer need to end a concert like that. You can end it with that Prokofiev Sonata that you play so well. You are a true musician now.