I had occasion to look again at some reviews of one of my favourite Bolet discs. Volume 6 of the Decca Liszt series came out in August 1985. It had been recorded on 19-22 October 1983 in Kingsway Hall, London, when Jorge set down Liszt's Années de pèlerinage: Venezia e Napoli S162, Les Jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este S163/4, Ballade No.2 in B minor S171 and Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude S173/3.  Wolfgang Dömling in Die Welt (10 December) stated that in an expansive piece such as Bénédiction, Jorge's grand seigneurial gestures and lyrical cantabile captivated the listener in the music's wide-ranging melodic arches, and he was able to turn everything that was virtuosic into poetry (alles Virtuose in Poesie zu transzendieren). In the same month, Gramophone's David Fanning commented on Bolet's 'spaciousness in the tone itself' - a more crucial and rarer quality - and said that tempos were judged simply in order to allow each note to speak with maximum eloquence. 'To Bénédiction he brings an embracing warmth and natural grandeur perfectly matched to the sentiments of the poem. His pedalling and rubato are marvels of discretion. The rippling arpeggios of Les Jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este are brilliantly articulated, rather than impressionistically shaded - Bolet seems unconcerned with its supposed influence on Debussy and Ravel - but in its own terms the interpretation is flawless, and it is crowned in a rich, expensive climax. [But] where Bolet fulminates impressively in the opening of the Ballade, Ervin Nyiregyházi (1903-1987) is positively volcanic.  In short, Bolet sets no great store by the feverish, possessed quality of a certain tradition of Liszt playing.  What he offers instead is nobility, an unforced sense of scale, a warm and consoling lyricism usually suggestive of Schumann, and on LP scarcely less than CD, the most gorgeous piano sound.'

The Piano Files on Patreon has posted a little challenge. Jorge Bolet plays 'In Autumn' in recordings from 1952 and 1987. "To celebrate the change of seasons to Autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, two recordings by the great Cuban-born pianist Jorge Bolet playing Moszkowski's 'En Automne' Op.36 No.4." Which do you prefer? My view of the arguments regarding earlier and later recordings is well rehearsed throughout this website, so I will only comment on the following detail, that the earlier reading "has less reverberation in the overall acoustic - something far too common with more modern recordings". I, on the other hand, prefer a more generous, "giving" acoustic in a piano recording, such as Decca offered Bolet. It amuses me to see people at a piano recital who are perched right in front of the piano. The piano is a mechanical instrument, so needs "air" around it - which is why I will always sit further back in the hall. On-and-off in earlier years, I practised one of my favourite of the Chopin études, Op.10/5 in G flat major. Though I worked at it for years, it never sounded right until someone made a recording on a small cassette player in a hall. I then realised that with air around the notes, my playing sounded much more as I had hoped.

Online Polish newspapers have revealed a few more of their secrets about Bolet's tour in May/June 1961. New cities and dates have been added (Szczecin and r, for example) and there's a review of his Krakow concerts. Echo Krakowa (27/28 May) commented on the novelty of not one but two concertos in one evening.  Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale was also heard for the first time in Krakow. 'There was no exaggeration in the praise already heaped on Bolet in the Western hemisphere.  A distinct tendency towards lyricism; he played the two concertos in a somewhat Romantic way.  More lyricism than inner fervour and dynamics.  The insatiable and ruthless/demanding music lovers of Krakow required that the American played encores, though not all of yesterday's listeners had enough artistic and listening energy left to stay until the end of a very long evening.'

I've taken advantage over the weekend of 15/16 March when The Times removed its paywall for its archive. Here are a few choice reviews which I've added to the web pages. Royal Festival Hall, London, 11 January 1959. 'Fresh and imaginative performance. Last night in the Festival Hall, Rachmaninoff 3 found a most original interpreter in the person of a pianist from Cuba. Mr Bolet has massive hands which can easily accomodate every note in the lushest and fullest of Rachmaninoff's textures, and a grand, if not very beguiling, tone which even enabled him to hold his own - more than that, make himself heard - against against the rapturous orchestral din which comprises the concerto's apotheosis. This is not to say that Mr Bolet bangs about. On the contrary, he has the most intense feeling for Rachmaninoff's languorous lyricism and penetrates to the very heart of it, though here and there his wrestling with a poetic phrase distorts its shape. It may be, indeed, that Mr Bolet too kften allows a display of the feelings he has for this music to hold up its natural impetus - this was certainly true of the finale -but the feelings are so fresh and imaginative and strongly held that Mr Bolet must be given a place in the thin ranks of concert pianists whose the performance of this much played concerto one can anticipate with pleasure.' The Times 12.1.59​​ ​ 10 May 1979 Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. Chopin, Chopin-Godowsky (6 études & 3 waltzes), Jorge Bolet being presented by de Koos, 'his only London recital this season'.​ BM [Bryce Morrison?] inThe Times (11.5.79) wrote that 'every bar of JB's wonderful Chopin recital bore the indelible imprint of his deeply serious yet romantic personality. Freewheeling, rhapsodic and low-keyed when not explosively impassioned, his reading of the 4 Ballades will have made us all think again, for this was in every sense Chopin reconsidered. After the interval it was fun and fancy free for both audience and pianist as Mr Bolet turned his attention to Chopin-Godowsky. Ingenious, spicy and teasingly decadent, such music needs a giant technique and, even more important, an artist capable of sophisticated elegance and wit. Jorge Bolet has all these qualities in abundance. One of the world's greatest virtuosi, he effortlessly juggled with an improbable number of glittering balls and clubs with aristocratic nonchalance and ease, and reminded us that recitals of this c​alibre are a rare event on the South Bank - or indeed anywhere else.' Tuesday 12 December 1978, QEH, London, with the Juilliard Quartet; Haydn, Bartok 2 and Schubert's Trout Quintet (with Donald Palma on double bass).  The next day,  The Times  reported: 'The glory of this performance was the complete confidence to be found in the execution of each part and in the subtle dovetailing and give and take between all five players, in which the minutest changes of tempo and dynamic level were mirrored in each player's performance. Add to that the linear clarity of the inner strings and Mr Bolet's effortless, easy, yet always thoughtful and yielding account of the piano's role, and it is easy to judge that this was an outstanding interpretation even in this year when Schubert has been given his due on all sides.  The performance rightly reached its profoundest revelations in the two slow movements. In the Andante the inwardness of the playing and the attention to shifts of harmony within phrases lent it an even greater originality than usual.  In the fourth movement, after a properly artless announcement of the theme, each variation seemed like a deeper commentary on what had preceded it. There have been, more joyous performances of this work but few as searching or as tautly controlled.' On 24 May 1982 there was a recital at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. It ‘should have made a fine contrasting postlude to Horowitz on Saturday – for to the Russian, the Cuban is both antithesis and sibling’. There was an ‘almost studied avoidance of the manic and mercurial’ but Bolet was ‘a brother from the same age of keyboard sensibility’. He was ‘not on best form’ and the Schumann Fantasy Op.17 was ‘laboured, pedantic, heavy in spirit, fragmented in impetus’. Financial Times 26.5.82. Max Harrison in The Times wrote: 'Part of the character of Mendelssohn's works arises from a tension between classical and romantic tendencies and the main point about Jorge Bolet's reading of the Fantasy Op. 28 was that he held these in perfect, if constantly shifting, balance. This was also reflected in the smooth alternation of elfin semi-quaver music and powerful outbursts in the finale. Even in the latter, the pianist's beautifully rounded tone persisted, and the work's gentle beginning was seemingly conjured out of the silence. Again, the increase of activity in those early pages was marvellously graduated. Schumann's Fantasy Op.17 is a more thoroughgoingly romantic piece despite its evocation of Beethoven. The composer asked for his first movement to be played "fantastically and passionately throughout" and al- though Mr Bolet did this, there always seemed to be plenty in reserve for the subsequent movements. Of course, this is highly subjective - even private - music, the public performance of which must always create certain difficulties. However, its rapidly changing moods were projected on this occasion with what can only be called a subtle vividness. Still more remarkable was the manner in which the timeless calm of the slow finale was made to emerge from the ringingly triumphant end of the central March. The poetic insight of Mr Bolet's playing in the last movement yielded a profound musical experience. A rare pleasure of a somewhat different sort came with five of Liszt's versions of Schubert's songs, where the perception of the interpreter matched that of the transcriber.' Nicholas Kenyon in The Times 2 September 1982 reported: 'In a pianistic age dominated by coldly efficient competition winners and their relentless pursuit of sanitized playing, Jorge Bolet is a welcome figure. He provides a link with a quite different tradition - he is a Godowsky pupil (sic), and always uses the warm, singing timbre of a Bechstein piano. Playing Liszt's first Piano Concerto in yesterday's Prom, he proved that virtuosity can have a human face, with profoundly musical features: he gave each cadenza-like flourish a wealth of meaning: under his hands, the pounding octaves and gauche tunes acquired shape and direction. Bolet changed his advertised solo postlude to the Concerto, La campanella, and gave us instead Liszt's Funerailles in memory of Clifford Curzon - a generous gesture, but a startlingly inappropriate choice, for its purple-edged, gothick flamboyance somehow slighted the memory of Curzon's immaculately chaste playing. But it fitted Bolet well, and the chubby thud of the Bechstein's bass staccato and its effortlessly rich, singing treble enabled the rambling, exotic sounds to project themselves forcefully and then to evaporate into a tribute of silence, broken only by a ripple of applause. The evening's two symphonies, Haydn's 92nd and Sibelius' First, presented symphonic form at its most taut and its most expansive.' ​ On Sunday, 18 September 1983 Bolet gave a recital in Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, at 7.15pm (Brahms, Rachmaninov, Liszt).  It was reviewed in the Financial Times [20.9.83] by Dominic Gill.   He refers to the BBC Scotland Rachmaninoff masterclasses broadcast in August, and says that ‘Four television appearances can do for an artist what music critics fail to achieve in twice as many years'. ​ Such a statement is a great tribute to the BBC whose role in Bolet’s career was considerable.     The QEH was sold out.   ‘A Gondoliera of silken sensuousness and a Tarantella of irresistible (though too constrained and benign to be truly diabolical) urgency.’    Nicholas Kenyon in The Times wrote: 'Television works its magic for the worthy and unworthy alike: having attracted audiences for countless lesser artists, it performed the service on Sunday night of gathering a well-filled house for Jorge Bolet, star of recent TV masterclasses but before that a connoisseurs' pianist, not widely known. His programme made no concessions to popular taste: the evening's most fascinating revelation was of a work all too little played (though Howard Shelley will include it in his Wigmore series this autumn): Rachmaninov's Variations on a Theme of Chopin . Cast into the shade by his more famous Corelli Variations, these whimsical, fantastical, resourceful ruminations around the C minor Prelude from Chopin's Op 28 prove that once Rachmaninov got hold of someone else's good idea he could not let go of it. By any standards, particularly musical ones, the 22 variations are over-extended, yet they are full of the most glorious inventions: bustling toccatas, Chopin's chords punctuated by top-of-the-keyboard filigree, a chaste little fugue echoing late Beethoven, and climactic group like that in Bach's Goldbergs  rewritten in the language of Rachmaninov's contemporaneous Second Piano Concerto. With a deep, rich attack and deftly unobtrusive phrasing, Bolet persuaded us that there was substance and significance in this music. His solid tone and noble bearing suits Rachmaninov particularly well: in the brilliant pair of movements from Liszt's Venezia e Napoli with which he roused the cheers at the end, there was not quite enough sheer excitement. And the first half of the recital was distinctly less successful: it was surely a mistake to begin with Brahms's sublimely simple Intermezzi, Op 117, where Bolet sounded ill-at-ease, and a double mistake to follow their perfect concision with the interminable ramblings of Brahms's youthful Op. 5 sonata, which Bolet's sober insistence made into a rather grumpy sermon.' 8 March, 1984 at Barbican Hall, London: LSO with Ivan Fischer.  Symphony no.8 (Schubert); Hungarian Fantasy; Totentanz (Liszt); Symphony no.8 (Dvorak).  Hilary Finch in  The Times  wrote: 'The age of the great performer- composer is not perhaps quite vanished. Jorge Bolet, through his own teaching and transcription, to say nothing of his recording project of the complete Liszt piano works seems, in his own way, a continuation, recreation event, of the tradition. And last night, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ivan Fischer, he brought characteristic swagger and seriousness to two of Liszt's works for piano and orchestra. There are times when Bolet can be something of an enigmatic diavolo in musica himself, and so he appeared in the dark Dies lrae paraphrase, Totentanz .  He realised Liszt's prancing charade variations, at one moment as a child tinkering with a sinister nursery rhyme; at another with the eager yet secret delight of the accompanist. Bolet's skills in drawing two-hand dialogue out of a pedestal resonance, in finding strange luminosity in drumming, repeated notes, and in making octaves leap with joy as much as power and menace, all spilled over into the Fantasia on Hungarian Folktunes which followed. Here the piano's reflective, whimsical interludes between the bold orchestral Magyar refrain grew in imaginative vigour right up to the central appearance of the theme in the soloist's hands, like a bronze sculpture unveiled' Of the Barbican recital 11 March 1984, Max Harrison wrote in  The Times : 'Subtle colours that were more a question of the balance between Jorge Bolet's hands than of separate accents last night reminded one that serious performances of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata are rare. This was true not only of the overly famous first movement but also of the finale. However one expected speed and weight but not a resolute clarity which, in the event, suggested the pianos of the composer's own day without any sacrifice of present realities. This performance, romantic in both its individuality and independence from settled conventions of Beethoven interpretation, was an apt prelude to an evening of Chopin and Liszt. Chopin's Barcarolle was at first understated. Then, in a fascinating display of gradualism, the watercolours turned into oils. After this ultimate expression of the nocturnal side of Chopin's world, a selection of his études was particularly bracing. Even here, though, our pianist showed himself a master of the unexpected, beginning with Opus 25 number one, which is essentially a play of colours. With Opus 10 no 3 it was back to the nocturnal world, although not before Opus 25 No.2 had interposed its gossamer web. Then Mr Bolet again cheated our assumptions by playing not the expected C sharp minor Etude Op.10 No4 but the following G flat piece. All these, and others, were done with a long-matured mastery which at some points seemed to offer sophisticated commentaries on the works rather than the works themselves. After an account of Chopin's Ballade No I that was as remarkable for its coolly judged proportions as for its poetic fire, came Liszt's Ballade No 2. Even less easy to forget, however, will be the spiritual insight of the Benediction de Dieu dans Ia Solitude , which took us beyond piano playing, almost beyond music.' SUNDAY, 7 OCTOBER, Festival Hall, London at 3.15pm.  LPO - Klaus Tennstedt.   Oberon Overture (Weber); Piano Concerto (Schumann);  Symphony no.9 (Schubert).  The Schumann was issued on a BBC Legends disc. The same programme had been performed the previous evening Saturday, 6 October, up north in Leeds.   'Though Bolet is an authentic virtuoso, nobody who has followed his recitals in recent years would have expected him to impose fireworks upon the Concerto. (I still wince to recall that when a colleague at the Edinburgh Festival had passed up a Bolet appearance and I expressed surprise, he retorted: 'Bolet? but he's just fingers, isn't he?') In fact the first two movements of the Schumann were richly reflective, unhurried, and as affetuoso and grazioso as one could wish; powerfully incisive when that was needed, but otherwise pure Schumann chamber-music, lit up with personal touches - notably two tantalising decrescendi where ordinary pianists always aim to screw up the excitement - and unfailingly beautiful sound.   'In all this Bolet was ready to slip as required into the role of mere orchestral contributor, and Tennstedt repaid the compliment by matching his soloist's reading with the utmost sympathy. That resulted in the most ripely balanced and searching account of the first movement that I have heard in years, and an Intermezzo of teasing delicacy. The Finale was more problematic: Bolet's present taste for leisurely tempi in music he loves gave us something considerably less than Schumann's 'Allegro vivace' - maybe a 'Maestoso ma leggiero' - and though Tennstedt ensured that his strings answered faithfully to Bolet's deliberate articulation of the main theme, the effect was less buoyant than the composer surely intended.' David Murray, Financial Times ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ ​ For  The Times, Noël Goodwin wrote: 'What can sometimes be a somnolent Sunday afternoon audience was roused to understandable enthusiasm by the time Klaus Tennstedt bought the London Philharmonic Orchestra to a powerful resolution of Schubert's Ninth Symphony at the end of their concert. It had also shown enjoyment of Jorge Bolet's thoughtful solo playing in Schumann's Piano Concerto earlier. His performance was the antithesis of what might have been expected from a virtuoso hitherto perhaps best known here for his commanding brilliance in Liszt. Schumann always said he could never write "a concerto for the virtuosi", and it would be interesting to know if Mr Bolet ever met and talked to Clara Schumann's pupil. Adelina de Lara, who died in 1961. What the latter had to say about her teacher's advice to play the concerto "very calmly, pensively and peacefully, yet without denying its more impassioned moments, characterized much of this performance in its moderation and restrained sentiment. The pianist was quoted on this page last Saturday as favouring a wider range of keyboard colour than is often heard today but the difficulty is that the acoustic properties of the Festival Hall do not encourage it in such music as Schumann's. Nevertheless he was able to sensitize the piano's tone to some degree in a magical expressive account of the first movement cadenza after a subdued opening, in the conversational exchanges with the orchestra in the intermezzo movement, and in almost waltzing through the rhythmically ambiguous.'

On 19 October 1984, in the Filharmonia Narodowa, Warsaw, Jorge Bolet played Liszt. That very evening, Catholic priest and chaplain of Solidarity/Solidarność Jerzy Popiełuszko was murdered by officers of the Security Service. The archives of the Warsaw Philharmonic have this concert down for 19/20 October 1985, but this may an error as Stolica: warszawski tygodnik ilustrowan y, R. 39, 1984 nr 42 [14 X] advertised it on that week of 1984. Although the communists lifted martial law in 1983, the repressions against the opposition continued. Public opinion was in uproar at the death of the Catholic priest and chaplain of “Solidarity,” Jerzy Popiełuszko. His murderers were officers of the Security Service, the instrument of conspiracy in the Polish People's Republic [Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa]. Jorge Bolet may well have been unnerved by his visit at this time (see note under 1961): Popiełuszko was assassinated on 19th October, the very day of Jorge's concert. The priest had arrived in Bydgoszcz on 19 October 1984. At 6pm, he celebrated Holy Mass at the Church of the Holy Polish Brothers Martyrs. Later that evening, the priest was beaten to death by three Security Police officers: Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski, Leszek Pękala, and Waldemar Chmielewski. They pretended to have problems with their car and flagged down Popiełuszko's car for help. Popiełuszko was severely beaten, tied up and put in the trunk of the car. The officers bound a stone to his feet and dropped him into the Vistula Water Reservoir near Włocławek from where his body was recovered on 30 October 1984. News of the political murder caused an uproar throughout Poland, and the murderers and one of their superiors, Colonel Adam Pietruszka, were convicted of the crime. A huge crowd estimated to be between 600,000 to 1 million, including Lech Wałęsa, attended his funeral on 3 November 1984. Popiełuszko has been recognised as a martyr by the Catholic Church and was beatified on 6 June 2010 by Cardinal Angelo Amato on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI. ​

What about the notes the composer wrote on the page? "I have been criticised for saying something like this; butI still. believe it: look, the composer writes, he sends it to the publisher, and his moment of creation is over. A composer's involvement with his piece in terms of time is very limited. We take that creation and we study it and learn it and play it and study some more and play it again ... How long are we involved? A lifetime! I am playing pieces I learnt first when I was 14 years old. It seems to me that after spending 50 years or more with a work of art I maybe know a little more about it than the composer. "Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't change Mozart. Not a note. With Beethoven I don't think I would. Well, the Hammerklavier is unplayable. It should be done in the Weingartner orchestration, then it would really, become the monumental work Beethoven intended. Chopin? Yes, I change some things; there is a note in the A flat Ballade where I think the clef change is in the wrong place. Rachmaninov changed things all the time. When he performed his compositions he didn't play what he wrote because he realized it didn't work." Nicholas Kenyon, The Times  6 October 1984 So would András Schiff go as far as Jorge Bolet in his recent interview here, and claim the right to change the notes in Rachmaninov and Chopin? "I don't mind if he changes Rachmaninov; I couldn't care less, to be honest. (And I hate Liszt as well, though probably because I used to hear it massacred daily in the practice-room at the Budapest Academy.) But Chopin knew exactly what to do. I heard [Ivo] Pogorelich the other day saying that Chopin didn't know how to express himself. What utter nonsense. Liszt was a big change but not Chopin. And Chopin admired, Liszt as a virtuoso but I think he despised him as a musician. . ." Nicholas Kenyon, The Times 27 October 1984

I'm not just a fan of Jorge Bolet. Another great interest is Alfred Brendel, who today on 5 January 2025 is celebrating his 94th birthday. He is my benchmark for Beethoven and Schubert. I've just come across this anecdote: "In the early 1960s, Brendel was on a recital tour of South America when Pope John XXIII died. In Buenos Aires, Brendel was politely asked if he could change his programme to rid it of the Schubert Sonata in A major D959. The reason: ‘It could arouse frivolous associations because of Lilac Time .’ Brendel explained that the sonata was ‘a profoundly tragic piece’, and played it as planned." Australian Book Review,  7 February 2024 ​ Pope John XXIII died on 3 June, 1963.  I think the reference is to Das Dreimäderlhaus ('House of the Three Girls'), adapted into English-language versions as Blossom Time and Lilac Time , is a Viennese pastiche operetta with music by Franz Schubert, rearranged by Heinrich Berté (1857–1924), and a libretto by Alfred Maria Willner and Heinz Reichert. The work gives a fictionalised account of Schubert's romantic life, and the story was adapted from the 1912 novel Schwammerl by Rudolf Hans Bartsch (1873–1952). Originally the score was mostly Berté, with just one piece of Schubert's ("Ungeduld" from Die schöne Müllerin ), but the producers required Berté to discard his score and create a pasticcio of Schubert music. This video (in German) is from an interview in 1965 at the time of his Vox/Turnabout recordings. His big break came in the early 1970s. "When I was young my overall career wasn't sensational at all, it rather progressed step by step. But then, one day I was performing a Beethoven programme in the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. It was quite an unpopular programme, I didn't even like it much myself and the next day I got three offers from big record companies. It seemed really rather grotesque, like a slow, hardly noticeable rise on a thermometer or a kettle warming water suddenly beginning to boil and to bubble and the steam comes out."

Mattheus Smits recalls: 'After finishing my professional music education in Holland, I decided to continue my piano studies with a private teacher. Thanks to his son Erik Ligtelijn, I came in touch with Johan Ligtelijn who taught privately in Amsterdam in his house next to the Concertgebouw.  After finishing his pianos tudies in Amsterdam, Johan Ligtelijn had studied with Walter Gieseking in Hanover and later in Wiesbaden. Johan Ligtelijn also studied privately with the Liszt student Frederic Lamond who lived in Holland during the time that he was a teacher in the conservatory in The Hague. ​ In the spring of 1974 I traveled to Arnhem to hear a pianist whom I had never heard of:Jorge Bolet. After the concert I was completely flabbergasted. At my first lesson with Johan Ligtelijn after this concert I told him that I had gone to hear Jorge Bolet and that he had blown me away. To my big surprise, Johan Ligtelijn told me that he knew him well.  He had been in the audience when Jorge made his debut in Amsterdam and was most impressed. ​ Johan Ligtelijn told me that his brother Henri Ligtelijn emigrated to the USA in 1950 and became Jorge's neighbour in Palo Alto.  As Henri Ligtelijn had a travel agency he organised all the tours for Jorge. As Jorge played in Holland frequently in the 1960s, these concerts were always Ligtelijn family reunions. Johan Ligtelijn told me I should meet Jorge with his introduction in the autumn of 1974 when he was having his recital in the main hall of the Concertgebouw, his first after an absence of 15 years. ​ So the day before that concert I went to the Park Hotel in Amsterdam and saw Jorge sitting in the lounge with a man who turned out to be Tex [Compton], and another gentleman who turned out to be [the impresario with the de Koos agency] Sylvio Samama.  When I told Jorge that I happened to be a student of Johan Ligtelijn, he jumped out of his chair and gave me a big hug. He immediately asked me to sit down, ordered coffee and anything else for me and started talking. We had a nice conversation and Jorge was completely surprised that a 20 year old owned an original score of the Sgambati concerto (Jorge was having to use xerox copies) and that this 20 year old could tell him exactly were he had made cuts and changes in Arnhem some month before. This meeting, without doubt, sealed our friendship till the moment he left all of us behind.

After leaving music conservatory [in Utrecht], I continued my piano studies in 1972 with the Dutch pianist Mr. Johan Ligtelijn, who had studied with the Liszt student, Frederic Lamond (who taught for some years in Holland) and with Walter Gieseking.  Mr. Ligtelijn told me the Marx concerto was the best new concerto Gieseking had laid his hands upon.  Gieseking played many new concerti: Pfitzner, Petrassi, Trapp and of course the two works by Marx.  (I regret he never played the Busoni!). ​ The result was that I started looking for music by Joseph Marx. Mr.Ligtelijn gave me an old leaflet from [the Viennese publisher] Universal with a picture of Marx on the front and a list of his published compositions.  On a trip to Vienna, I visited Universal. I remember that the people working at Universal had to go to a lot of trouble to find what I was looking for. It was easy to find some Marx songs in "Einzel Ausgabe" but for the Concerto, Castelli Romani , a volume of piano solo works, the Frühlings sonata and the Trio, we had to go into the storage, where it looked like nobody had been there for a long time.  Nevertheless, the people at Universal were very helpful to me; they informed me that there was also a book on Marx by Erik Werba, which they did not have but they informed me where I could find it in Vienna. In 1974, just a few month after his legendary Carnegie Hall recital, I met Jorge. This was easy because Mr. Ligtelijn and Jorge knew each other so I had a good introduction.  From the first moment of our meeting, Jorge and I became close friends.  I travelled a lot with him when he was on tour in Europe, and I went to stay with him in the USA.  Knowing that Jorge loved the music of the late Romantics such as Wagner and Richard Strauss  (Jorge recorded one of the Strauss pieces for piano left-hand and orchestra for the Bavarian Radio with the Dutch conductor Koetsier), I mentioned the Marx concerto to Jorge, a work he did not know. The fact that Gieseking played it and that I judged it a fine work triggered Jorge at once. Back in the States, Jorge somehow managed to find an orchestral score which he looked at carefully and which made him decide to learn the work. I provided him with the 2 piano score, the score of Castelli Romani  and Werba book about Marx.  As always with Jorge, he learnt and memorised the Marx very quickly.  Whenever we met when Jorge was on tour, we discussed the great difficulties of the concerto: how to make the constant harmonic changes flow as a liquid all the way through the concerto; the tempi that keep everything clear for the listener; the pedalling (Jorge's way of pedalling is very different from that of other pianists); the great many build-ups of crescendi;  the enormous difficulties in and with the orchestra; and above all  - will it be possible for the orchestra also to play very, very softly?  Nevertheless Jorge managed all that, and being almost constantly on tour, the Marx matured in his head, heart and soul. ​ Jorge's decision not to play  Castelli Romani  was a wise one.  He loved Respighi ( Feste Romani  in a recording by Toscanini was one of his Desert Island Discs in 1984) but he had a keen instinct as to which work he could best serve.  In the book Reflections from the keyboard  by David Dubal, there is a picture of Jorge at the piano and the Marx score can be seen on his music stand. ​ Mattheus Smits (Heerlen, 1953) is a Dutch piano pedagogue and chairman of The International Ervin Nyiregyházi foundation.

Early in the new year, Bolet had been on tour in Central America/Caribbean.  A passenger manifest shows that he arrived in San Juan, Puerto Rico on 7 February 1953 on Pan Am World Airways flight 204 from Caracas, Venezuela (Maiquetia, the airport south-east of the city); his ultimate destination was San Francisco.   Hemerografía musical venezolana del siglo XX  (February,1953) states that Jorge had performed two concerts in the Teatro Municipal [Tuesday 3 and Friday 6] in honour of José Martí (b.1853), who is considered a Cuban national hero because of his role in the liberation of his country from Spain. Tuesday was a recital of Beethoven [ Andante Favori  ?], Brahms [Intermezzo Op.119 No. 3 in C , Rhapsody Op.118 No. 4 in E flat] , Liszt's Sonata & Mephisto Waltz, Chopin [7 Preludes & Ballade No. 3 in. A flat] and Rachmaninoff; on Friday 6th, with conductor Ángel Sauce (1911-1995) and the Orquesta Sinfónica Venezuela he performed the Schumann concerto and the Paganini Variations of Rachmaninoff; Beethoven's Prometheus  overture and Debussy's Suite Iberia  made up the rest [ Revista Nacional de Cultura,  March-April 1953: Vol 14 Issue 97].    ​ In El Nacional , 5.2.1953, José Ratto-Ciarlo, who refers to the recital as being on Wednesday 4th, says Bolet was in his element in the Liszt.  As an encore, he played Aleksandr Scriabin's Nocturne for the Left Hand, Op.9 (I don't think I've come across this in Jorge's repertoire - but the reviewer might have mistaken the Godowsky elegy for this)  The reviewer makes much of the fact that Jorge does not possess an exotic surname, simply the Catalan "Bolet". Jorge himself once said that he might have had more success if he been called Boletowski or Boletinszky! ​ Ratto-Ciarlo had come from Peru to Venezuela in 1931, aged 20.. He was studying at the University of San Marcos in Lima when the coup d'état of Sánchez Cerro (1930) took place. He was a teacher, editor, author, a left-wing politician, a unionist, founder of institutions and creator of the Art and Culture section of El Nacional  in 1946, which he directed with admirable skill until 1967. The Cuban author Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980) wrote a review in El Nacional  10 February 1953. "La 'Rapsodia' es la obra que prefiero en la producción de un músico que pese, a la solidez de su oficio, nos ha dado muchas partituras aquejadas de una cierta vaguedad de propósitos, cuando no de concepción." ( Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody is the work that I prefer of this composer who, despite the solidity of his craft, has given us many scores that suffer from a certain vagueness of purpose, if not of conception.   The Rhapsody, on the other hand, whose title could have encouraged a free exposition of whimsically written elements, in a somewhat Brahmsian manner, [does not], nor does the contrapuntal intervention of the “Dies Irae” theme make us lose sight, for a moment, of the basic Paganini theme. ) ​ Esa Rapsodia trozo de ejecución trascendental, es partitura hecha para poner en valor la autoridad interpretativa, el vigor, la fuerza de un pianista extraordinariamente dueño de su técnica y que, frente a una orquesta, sabe dar el más cabal sentido a la función del instrumento concertante. ( This Rhapsody, a piece of transcendental execution, is a score made to highlight the interpretative authority, the vigour, the strength of a pianist who is an extraordinary master of technique and who, in front of an orchestra, knows how to give the most complete meaning to the function of his instrument.   Every time Jorge Bolet returns to Venezuela, every time we find him, on tour, in some city in America, we can appreciate the further progress made by someone who has been, for many years now, a pianist of egregious stature.   En una época pudo reprochársele, tal vez, que el ímpetu juvenil, el dominio del oficio, le hicieran preferir, el brío, el vigor, la brillantez, a la expresión propiamente dicha. Ese reparo no puede hacerse ya, desde hace mucho tiempo, ante las interpretaciones de Jorge Bolet, cada vez más trabajadas dentro de la sonoridades, el matiz, la sensibilidad. (At one time he could perhaps be reproached for the fact that his youthful impetus and his mastery of his craft made him prefer verve, vigour, and brilliance to expression itself.  That objection can no longer be raised, for a long time, in the face of Jorge Bolet's interpretations, which are increasingly worked on in terms of sound, nuance, and sensitivity.) ​ Estamos en presencia de un pianista singularmente completo y maduro, tanto en la fuerza, en la elocuencia, como en el poder expresivo.   Quienes escucharon el Intermezzo de Brahms -  negación del virtuosismo por el virtuosismo -  de su reciente recital, pudieron juzgarlo en función de plenitud. ( We are in the presence of a singularly complete and mature pianist, in strength, eloquence, and in expressive power.   Those who heard Brahms's Intermezzo - a negation of virtuosity for virtuosity's sake - from Bolet's recent recital were able to judge him at the height of his powers [?] )   (As well as being a novelist, Carpentier was also a musicologist, an essayist, and a playwright. Among the first practitioners of the style known as “magic realism,” he exerted a decisive influence on the works of younger Latin American writers such as Gabriel García Márquez.  Living in Caracas from 1945, he returned to Havana in 1959 to join the victorious Cuban revolution. He would remain faithful to Fidel Castro’s régime, serving as a Cuban diplomat in Paris from the middle 1960s until his death.)

A.I. technology is moving on at a rapid pace - I'm amazed at what I'm seeing - and I've produced a series of three new videos with what I think are more realistic characters telling the story of Jorge Bolet. They cover the years 1914 -1974. Check out the VIDEO page - or use this YouTube link *Please remember that the people you see in these videos are not real!

In Clarín , 25 July, 1979, Jorge D'Urbano - who had reviewed Jorge's first appearance in Argentina in June 1955 - wrote: 'Jorge Bolet is a virtuoso pianist.  This does not mean, in any way, that he lacks musicality.  But his specific definition is that of a virtuoso, that is, capable of mastering the piano so completely that everything else fades into the background.   He is capable of true pianistic feats, and has to his credit that these seem not to be a process  at all, as if they were nothing more than the work of a good mechanism. ​ 'The compositions he performed do not seem to be too profound, but at no time do they border on vulgarity or triteness ( lo trillado ).   He approaches them seriously and extracts from them everything he is capable of obtaining.'   The writer is unimpressed by Busoni's work: 'Everything that means Bach has been discarded...We have already protested every time a pianist resorts to this transcription.   But the result [ in Jorge's hands ] was impressive.   The B minor Sonata was approached by Bolet with a curious lack of exhibitionism and with a certain intimacy, if this can be said of that Sonata.   In general, the line was maintained (and everyone knows how desperately difficult it is to maintain the line of this Sonata) and Bolet moved through it with good stylistic judgement, because if there is anything this pianist knows, it is the music of Liszt.   Each of the Études had character, with a strong dose of temperament and vitality. ​ 'It seems that Harold Schonberg, the critic for The New York Times,  said that "Jorge Bolet's recitals were the highlight of the 1977-78 season". We do not doubt that the quote is correct. We are a little perplexed, however, that Schonberg, who sees the world's greatest piano players perform in New York, has clearly exaggerated his rating this time.  Because Bolet is a good player, but we do not believe that he is by far the best.'