Jorge Bolet: not Hungarian enough!

Jorge Bolet: not Hungarian enough! Okay, the title might be what is known as clickbait, but I've been amused by this diary entry by a Hungarian who heard Jorge play some Liszt in 1981. She found the lassú (slow) part of the csárdás too slow.

31 March 1981, Bishopsgate Hall, London: lunchtime recital.  Since opening on New Year's Day 1895, the Bishopsgate Institute has been a centre for culture and learning. The Great Hall, in particular, was erected for the benefit of the public to promote lectures, exhibitions and otherwise the advancement literature, science and the fine arts.  The Institute was built using funds from charitable endowments made to the parish of St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate. 

In her diary Éva Haraszti, wife of A.J.P. Taylor wrote: 'A Cuban pianist played Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody [No. 12 in C sharp minor] very well, though a bit slowly at the beginning. After the concert, we went to see Spitalfields Market and the little houses around it. These houses used to belong to the silk workers of Spitalfields at the end of the 18th century. I was sorry I did not take my camera with me.'  Eva Haraszti-Taylor (Miskolc in eastern Hungary,1923- Budapest, 2005) was a distinguished Hungarian historian and a specialist on 19th and 20th century British history. She had another life as the third wife of AJP Taylor, the British historian who in 1961 had published his most controversial book, The Origins of the Second World War.