Bolet replaces Arrau in Bonn

Jorge replaced an indisposed Claudio Arrau sometime in April 1983 but I cannot fit it into the chronology yet.

Bonn, West Germany: Beethoven Spring Festival, April 1983

Claudio Arrau was born on 6 February, 1903, in Chillán, Chile celebrated his 80th birthday in 1983.  Dieter Schüren wrote in Die Welt (28 April 1983): 'Because the 80-year-old Claudio Arrau suddenly withdrew from the Bonn Beethoven Festival, the spring cycle began a day late and with Jorge Bolet at the piano as a replacement.'

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Failed at the Appassionata

Sometimes you have to say B instead of A. Because the 80-year-old Claudio Arrau suddenly withdrew from the Bonn Beethoven Festival, the spring cycle began a day late and with Jorge Bolet at the piano as a replacement. The American of Cuban descent, also already 70 years old, shouldn't consider himself a substitute, however: he will open the second round of the Beethoven celebrations in September as usual, even if this first evening might have reinforced existing doubts as to whether Bolet is really the right man for Beethoven

So it began in the Beethoven Hall [Beethovenhalle] with B for Bolet, not for Beethoven. Beethoven was hidden away with a shy/timid Appassionata [mit einer schüchternen Appassionata] in a programme featuring Brahms and, above all, Liszt. Of course, such a confrontation of the genius with his and our contemporaries, and much in between, is programmed in the chamber music series, and also in the September programme, yet the organisers probably did not envisage the opening night being quite so revealing: presumably for the first time, such a jubilant celebration for Bonn’s great son was heralded by the jingle of Liszt’s rhapsodies. [Vermutlich zum ersten Mal ist solche Jubelfeier für Bonns großen Sohn mit Lisztschem Rhapsodie-Geklingel eingeläutet worden]

The Appassionata was really not Our Man from Havana's forte. Rarely is it played so far removed from its title, and only in the final Presto does Bolet seem to have come to his senses again, but then suddenly with a furious fervour that one had been missing until then. Up to that point, he had played the F minor Sonata rather too monumentally, too statically, indeed too impassively, and the variation structures in the Andante had also been rather indistinct.

His artistic biography now also shows Bolet to be a virtuoso of comparatively pure blood/lineage [Seine künstlerische Vita weist Bolet nun auch als Virtuosen vergleichsweise reinen Geblüts aus]. Recordings of Brahms' Handel Variations or Prokofiev exist, but above all also of Liszt's operatic Paraphrases: there's nothing dishonourable about them; Arrau also performed them, but he would certainly have played the Appassionata more grandly, more vehemently, more thrillingly in Bonn. The way one has often heard him play it.

Brahms' Handel Variations formed the beginning, Liszt's B minor Sonata and 12th Hungarian Rhapsody came at the end, and then Chopin encores, including the great A minor Etude Op. 25, No. 11: Bolet demonstrated virtuosic stamina throughout, here quite competently leafing through Brahms's piano compendium and there mobilising Liszt's cimbalom effects.

But something else also stood out: the Sonata in B minor naturally demands the utmost in virtuosity with its frenzied octave runs, yet it is not a virtuoso piece. If the genius of the hands cannot be translated into intellectual fire, then something is missing that Bolet's somewhat dry virtuosity  fails to deliver.

Aber etwas anderes fiel auch auf: Die h-Moll-Sonate verlangt natürlich das Außerste an Virtuosität in ihren rasenden Oktavgängen, aber ist doch kein Virtuosenstück. Wenn sich da nicht die Genialität der Hände in geistiges Feuer um-setzen läßt, dann fehlt etwas, was Bolets etwas trockene Virtuosität nicht liefert.

Dieter Schüren