A Scottish stramash!

Two very different reviews of the same recital.

6 September 1982

A morning recital (11am) in the Freemasons' Hall, Edinburgh

Beethoven, Sonata No.26 Op.81a Les Adieux, Rachmaninoff, Variations on a theme by Chopin, Liszt, Sposalizio, Campanella

​The Dundee Courier: 'It has been suggested that Bolet is at his best as a solo recitalist, rather than in concertos. It does seem that his rapport with the audience is more quickly, warmly and firmly established as a solo recital​. (During the interval a hanging E flat on the Bechstein piano - it sounded like a sticky damper - was put right in time for the Liszt). Not even the uncomfortable and noisy bentwood chairs in the Freemasons' Hall (they creak loudly even when one draws a breath!) could make this 2 hour recital, seem a moment too long, and it reinforced Jorge Bolet's position as one of the truly great pianists of our time.'

The Scotsman's Raymond Monelle wrote quite an acerbic review.

Raymond Monelle (1937- 2010) was a music theorist, teacher, music critic, composer and jazz pianist. Monelle wrote three books, dozens of articles on music, and many music criticism reviews in newspapers, mainly for Opera and The Independent.

He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Edinburgh with a doctoral thesis on "Opera seria as drama: the musical dramas of Hasse and Metastasio", which he wrote under the supervision of David Kimbell.

Monelle joined the Faculty of Music at the University of Edinburgh in 1969, teaching History, Counterpoint, Harmony, Analysis, and the Semiotics of Music. Most famous classes were his "Wagner Project Weeks" in which he took students for a week away from Edinburgh to Holy Island, off the coast of Northumberland, for a week of listening and study of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. He also nurtured the careers of two of Scotland's most notable living musicians, Donald Runnicles and James MacMillan.