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.

Delighted confirm Jorge Bolet DID play in Chile (I had thought he hadn’t) June, 1983 in Chile, with Juan Pablo Izquierdo (born Santiago de Chile, 1935) and the Orquesta Filarmónica de Santiago in the capital's Teatro Municipal.  Again in 1984 (date to be confirmed).  Full details added to the relevant page.

A gem of a review, but from Bern not Lucerne (as advertised)

Well this is a find indeed - how have I missed this! I heard this on the radio in March 1984 (I'd only discovered Jorge Bolet the year before). I taped the programme with very poor FM reception, but could still hear the magic of Bolet's playing at 11m30s. How marvellous to hear it again in excellent sound. 17 November 1983, Elmwood Hall, Queen's University, Belfast, as part of the 21st Arts Festival: Brahms, Intermezzi Op.117 & Sonata No 3 in F minor, Op 5 (the programme also included Rachmaninoff, Variations on a theme by Chopin, Op 22; Liszt Venezia e Napoli: Gondoliera; Tarantella  G 162).  The recital was recorded and broadcast on Wednesday 28th March 1984 on BBC Radio 3. Bolet had last appeared at the Festival in 1979 (Friday, 9 November).  'Rathcol' in the Belfast Telegraph praised 'the un-hackneyed nature of the programme' which was played to an enthusiastic capacity audience on a splendid Bechstein sent over from London. He produced 'formidable climaxes without loss of quality... [in the Rachmaninoff/Chopin] the keyboard command was simply breathtaking'.  The Bechstein gave the top notes a pearly roundness (against the more usual diamond-like brilliance of a Steinway).  'Even the tinsel decorations of Venezia e Napoli took on a new significance.'

Finally! After hearing about Jorge's home in Spain during 1960s-1980s, I get an address. I've been looking for this since 1983 when JB listed it in an Directory of International Musicians as simply Apartado 5. A chance find among YouTube comments led me to Carlos Johansson. Carlos Johansson has said that 'Jorge Bolet lived in our house in Fuenterrabia, Spain (the Basque country) for many years.  This was the Villa Egoki, which my mother rented to him and his partner during the years 1963-1967.  They paid 10,000 pesetas a month. Quite a lot at that time.  'Unfortunately I never had the privilege of meeting him - as I was too little.  They had two caretakers who also lived there. They served the food in the dining room wearing tuxedos and white gloves!  Jorge B. used to give a big Christmas party. He invited a lot of people. My mother would go there, sometimes with my older brother Erik and my sister Blanca. The harpist Nicanor Zabaleta was invited, and my sister chatted with him for a long time that afternoon. On one occasion - my brother Erik says - two imposters who had no business being there crashed the party. Jorge kicked them out in a terrible mood! 'He fixed up the villa very nicely and luxuriously. White carpeting everywhere and the staircase, very pretty and well varnished by my mother, was painted black! (Something that surprised my mother a lot.) Many rooms on the lower floor were small lounges instead of bedrooms and in the large lounge - with excellent views of the Bay of Biscay and the French coast - he installed his wonderful grand piano. 'Jorge and Tex left the villa in 1967 because there was a small fire in the house, and the smoke damaged the house somewhat. They subsequently moved to a recently built apartment in Fuenterrabía (Apartado 5) in the Sokoa neighbourhood. They wanted to be in Fuenterrabía because it was close to Biarritz airport.'  ​​ Mattheus Smits has added: 'Jorge and Tex had a Volkswagen station-car which was used for travelling. Staying there was extremely cheap in those days.  Jorge told me once: "In Spain are no criminals except one!" 'In those days, he played many concerts in Spain.  He even played Rachmaninoff 2 with a fantastic brass orchestra. Of course he also started, after almost twenty years of neglect, to make records in Spain for Ensayo. 'In a Dutch radio interview (1978) Jorge mentioned that he had a house in Spain where he had a Bechstein, but the weather could be as bad as in Holland!' There were two Villas Egoki, but Carlos Johansson has said that the one Jorge rented was in calle Marisantzenea nº7 (constructed in 1940).  *Thanks are due also to archivist Miguel at Artxibo Historikoa/Archivo Histórico, Hondarribia for help with this information.

Monday 11 April, 1988, Bern Casino Hall, Bern, Switzerland.  'When you heard him play, this guest from overseas, you got the impression that something of old European musical culture had been preserved in him even more strongly than we are used to in our often hectic, sensation-hungry and originality-obsessed concert business.  Jorge Bolet is not a man of facade, not a poseur; he does not put on airs, he is neither nonchalantly superior nor brilliantly eccentric, nor arrogant or flattering towards the audience. He sits at the piano, concentrates for a moment and then never takes his eyes off the keys while playing; his movements avoid anything spectacular, are rational, calm, often striking, carefully controlled and considered. This behaviour does not show the listener what the performer is feeling; Passion, rapture and cheerfulness cannot be read from the facial expressions but can be heard in the tones. [...] . Finally, Jorge Bolet takes Franz Liszt's "Reminiscences de Norma" seriously, not as an effective bravura piece but as a kind of concentration of the drama, and in doing so saves what can still be saved from this time-bound work. One almost felt removed from time that evening. Perhaps Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Franck Liszt would have played their work in the same way. It was like music from another world, but not from a new one.'  Der Bund  (13.4.88)

What better way to end 2024 - at least in the musical world of Jorge Bolet - than by being reminded (via the words of Donald Manildi in the International Piano Quarterly, November 2024) - of his artistry: