Jorge Bolet, Buenos Aires (1975)

Jorge Bolet, September 1975, Teatro Coliseo, Buenos Aires. (Newly added to website)

After Brazil, Jorge played in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Diario Crónica 26 September 1975 announces that at 9:30pm that evening, Friday, Sociedad de Conciertos de Buenos Aires 'presents the sensational pianist in a “marathon programme” of Bach/Busoni, Chopin, Strauss and Wagner-Liszt.  The venue is the Teatro Coliseo (on Marcelo T. de Alvear 1125) in the Retiro neighbourhood.  (The Coliseo was opened in 1905 by the British clown Frank Brown, and was of great importance in the origins of the Creole circus and theatre in Argentina. In 1961 the current theatre was inaugurated with the performance of The Saint of Bleecker Street of Giancarlo Menotti.)  There was a second recital on Monday 29th in the same venue, when Jorge played among other things Chopin's Sonata No. 3 in B minor Op.58 and the Mozart/Liszt Don Juan Fantasy (advert, right,  from La Nación).​​

La Nación  (2 October 1975) reviewed the Friday recital.  'On the Coliseo stage, before a large crowd, the well-known pianist reappeared. Bolet is decidedly a keyboard virtuoso, undoubtedly more brilliant and spectacular than profoundly expressive, and whose agile and varied resources are at the service of a vehement and fiery temperament; his performance was not always very correct (accurate?) or exact in style but was vital and lively.'  It was felt that of the Chopin Preludes 'some of them were exquisitely played and made up the most accomplished and interesting moment of the evening' (algunos de los quales fueron primorosamente traducidos, constituyendo el moment más logrado e interesante de la velada).  His stamina and vigorous technique in the transcriptions were noted.  The evening lasted more than two and a half hours, justifying the "marathon" qualification in the advertising posters.

Jorge d'Urbano reviewed the Monday evening for Clarín, also on 2 October (he had reviewed JB in June 1955 and would do so again in July 1979)  'Jorge Bolet is a very contradictory pianist.  He has been defined in the publicity as a "Marathon runner", using a sports term with deplorable bad taste. And he has been compared to some of the most notable pianists of our time, with the result that the Bolet comes off very badly in such a comparison. But these publicity devices with the manifest exaggeration, should not cloud the objective view of his art, although one is very tempted to resort to prejudice against a performer who tolerates such excess in describing his alleged virtues.  Bolet is a contradictory pianist in that he uses both good and bad interpretive criteria almost simultaneously. From a strictly musical point of view, he has an obvious defect: he cannot finish a phrase or a period without a rallentando.  This procedure, applied with monotonous, persistence, ends up, converting the music he plays into something ordinary, artificial and lacking in interest. His virtuosic brilliance, which is not always very polished, is not enough to rescue that permanent and overwhelming insistence that the articulation of a musical idea must necessarily end with a change in tempo. Throughout his recital, there was only the occasional moment in which he did not apply this resource, the uselessness, of which was clearly expressed in the way he rendered the Largo of Chopin's third sonata -  one of the least pleasant listening experiences produced by an internationally renowned pianist that I can remember. Additionally, his physical violence at the piano often makes its sound unpleasant. Every instrument has an optimal volume limit. Beyond that limit, the results are unattractive. Of course, Jorge Bolet also has virtues as a pianist and performer. His mechanism is not impeccable, but it is impressive. Like almost all pianists, he often plays wrong notes and sometimes even adds some of his own. But when tackles works of pure virtuoso effect, he commands the listener's attention.'