"Un Sospiro"

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I had occasionally wondered whether Jorge Bolet played the arpeggios of Un Sospiro completely in the left hand, thus being able use the right hand for the unbroken melody, i.e. not using alternate left and right hands for the individual notes.

Mattheus Smits, a friend of Jorge Bolet, has confirmed to me that he didn’t cross hands when playing this piece. “In general Jorge disliked crossing hands: too much movement for, in this case, no use at all.”

"In Un Sospiro Jorge never crossed hands where the melodic line has to be played in broken octaves (triplets) with alternating hands. This was an issue between Teresa [Escandon] and me, when she prepared her [Jorge Bolet Memorial] edition of this piece. She decided to print Liszt's original without mentioning Jorge's way of playing it.

"In general Jorge disliked crossing hands: to much movement for, in this case, no use at all. I remember having a long discussion with Jorge about this connection with the Choral in Franck's Prelude, Choral and Fugue. In the Choral, Jorge did cross hands to reach the top notes of the melody, which I believed was not necessary as it could be achieved by changing the fingering in the right hand. This was easy to do as the top notes are usually the octave above the previous note in the chord. Above that the left hand could stay on the bass note in order to keep the bass line. Jorge found the idea very interesting, but told me that he had worked so hard in keeping the bass line with the middle pedal and crossed his left hand over right with an unusual fingering (always his l.h. thumb on the black keys of the top notes. This was a trademark of Jorge's fingerings: when single notes had to be played with crossed hands, the black keys had to be played with the thumb as the surface with the key was greater (and as a result more secure). But having played this masterwork since he was a teenager, he did not want to change in order not to get mixed up. I have to admit both of us enjoyed very much talking about this and I remember very well Jorge's great interest in this topic."