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.'

This is very much work-in-progress, but I thought I'd try to gather together all that I know so far about Jorge's performances in South and Central America (excluding Cuba). Mostly brief entries, for which you must consult the relevant web page. This list is probably only of interest to me. )As ever, I'd be delighted to hear from anyone who can add to this list.) To be updated...

Jorge Bolet's recital in Windhoek, South West Africa was actually on 2 February, not 6th, so there is some mixup in his datebook.  The Windhoek Advertiser (16.1.76) reported that there was a strong possibility theatre-goes would boycott the recital of the 'Cuban pianist' as they felt strongly about Cuban involvement in Angola 'and seem to resent the fact that a Cuban pianist is going to appear in the Windhoek Theatre.  In an interview this morning Dr E Grobbelaar, Director of SWAPAC, stressed the fact that Mr Bolet left Cuba before the regime of Fidel Castro and is now an American citizen. 'A New York journalist reports as follows: "[When asked, Mr Bolet replied:] I am a hero to the Cubans in exile and I am a hero to my former good friends who are still living in Cuba.  Now the name of Bolet is very, very much on the black list in Cuba.  I always felt that if I ever got on a plane that was highjacked,  I would be separated at once and would probably be grilled and put through the third degree."'  The edition of 28 January, however, predicts a full house. The Windhoek programme was all-Chopin (as in Salisbury).  This was the rainy season and there was soaking rain for 20 hours.  A Boeing of South African Airways had some difficulty getting in at Strijdom [now Hosea Kutako International] Airport on the morning of 3 February.  Jorge's recital was more favourably - though briefly - reviewed, in contrast to Salisbury.  'No music is more fitting to be played these days than Chopin's, for he possessed civil courage, chivalry, modesty, dignity and grace, and all these attributes are expressed in his music.'  Etudes 3,4, 7 and 11 Op. 25 and Ballade No. 2 were declared 'a revelation' and his pianissimi and 'delicacy of touch' were generally noted.  (Travel permitting, Jorge may have enjoyed dining at the first Wienerwald restaurant to open in Africa - at the Hotel Continental on the 3rd.)

Jorge Bolet's only appearance in the fabled opera house in Buenos Aires was on Saturday, 21 July 1979. The programme consisted of Bach/Busoni  Ciaccona, Liszt's Sonata in B minor and his Transcendental Études 7, 6, 12, 9 and 8. The Colón was performing an early opera by Verdi,  I due Foscari (premièred on Tuesday 17th - it had first been performed there in 1850).  The Argentinian paper of record La Nación seems not to have carried a review of JB's recital (so far as I can see, but I'm working on it...) The Thirty Nine Steps,  a British 1978 thriller based on the novel   by John Buchan, was playing in cinemas.  On 19 July, British Minister of Affairs at the Foreign Office Nicholas Ridley arrived at Ezeiza airport, Buenos Aires, to be met by Carlos Cavándoli and Hugh Carless (chargé d'affaires at the British Embassy, where he monitored the disputed sovereignty of islands in the Beagle Channel, and the Falklands), before flying on the next day to the Falkland Islands (*1977-79 page for more details).

I've been looking at The Rhodesia Herald in the British Library. Quite a hard-hitting, critical review. Having now to get used to reading microfilm, which I've only used a few times before.   The Rhodesia Herald (13 February) had a short article expressing surprise that TWO visiting pianists should be giving recitals within 7 days of each other.   'Most promoters would try to avoid such near-clashes if possible.'  (Israeli pianist Joseph Kalichstein was the other.)  This is actually advertised as Jorge’s second visit to Rhodesia, the first presumably being in 1964. There was ‘no violent rush for tickets’ for Jorge’s concert (which had been arranged by the Salisbury Arts Council) and the author wondered: ‘Surely Salisbury is not being so churlish as to hold Mr Bolet’s birth against him?’   This is in reference to Cuban intervention in Angola, which began on 5 November 1975, when Cuba sent combat troops (apparently one-tenth of its army) in support of the communist-aligned People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). Jorge's recital was on Saturday 14 February, Valentine’s Day, in the Harry Margolis Hall; it was an all-Chopin programme (Etudes Op.25 and the four Ballades).  The newspaper wondered whether Kalichstein’s programme, being more varied (Brahms, Schubert, Chopin and Bartok), was the more tempting ​ Monday's  Herald  (16th) carried a trenchant review by Rhys Lewis, one of the more hard-hitting Jorge has received. ‘It was, I think, Cortot who observed that Chopin’s Studies are as inaccessible to the musician without virtuosity as they are to the virtuoso without musicianship.  The key lies in a fine balance between that exultation in the new-found resources of the piano that Chopin so clearly felt, and their depth of poetic expression. 'To these decibel-assaulted ears, Jorge Bolet did not find that balance. There was plenty of evidence of a big technique, but where soft, light and even playing was called for, we were treated to lumpy phrasing, rhythmic squareness, tonal monotony and a bravera splashiness that, to those of us whose delight in the music's wonders is still undulled, were a travesty. The four Ballades fared rather better.  But in responding too generously to every passing change of mood and every minute inner textural detail which he held up for our inspection, Mr Bolet lost the work’s larger design. It was an instructive evening if only that it proved that the accretions of tradition in performing Chopin are far from dead.  But in the event, one couldn't help regretting that those who sit in power over whom and what we are to hear…had not chosen the programme Bolet had given in Carnegie Hall two years ago. Far from suffering as I fear Chopin did, Liszt, Busoni and Tausig transcriptions gloriously find their raison d’etre in this particular type of playing.’

12 & 17 October 1971 Philharmonic Hall, Lincoln Center, New York City. Jorge mentions a brief lapse of memory on the conductor's part, which frightened him. Full details added to the relevant page. Oliver Daniel in his biography of Stokowski has this as taking place in Carnegie Hall (p.866).  Bolet mentions that the conductor has a lapse during the first of the two concerts.  'The last movement of the concerto has a middle section which is briefly introduced by the orchestra and then the piano takes it alone; it's a rather extended section - rather lyric, poet, and it must be forty-five or fifty bars of music where the piano plays completely alone, and the without interruption or break the orchestra comes in with a bassoon solo using the same theme as the piano had announced before.  Well, I got to that spot and there was no bassoon.  What does one do in a case like that?... So I played about two or three bars and went back to make the connection again to see if the bassoon would come in.  Stokowski was completely on the moon. I don't know whether he was so entranced by the beauty of the music or what.  I presume he forgot where he was or that he was conducting. It was a terrible moment. I never exactly found out how he reacted, whether it was some member of the orchestra that made some motion to him but he finally came to.  Everything else went like clockwork.' (Conversation with JB, 14 December 1976)

Various reports of JB’s South African tours on 1973, 1976 and 1980 from the Afrikaner newspaper  Die Transvaler  have been added.