14 November 1981 Kobacker Hall, Bowling Green State University, Ohio Mendelssohn, Schumann Fantasy, Schubert/Liszt Lieder, Mephisto waltz (as 11 Nov. 1981) ​​ Boris Nelson, in The Toledo Blade 16.11.81: 'Mr Bolet's brilliant playing has been honed to the very edge. His immense, virtuosity, experience, and sheer intelligence all concentrate on the music's lyricism. And being a romantic at heart, he envelops it with a luminous sound that whispers or propels into a sunburst of passion that still remains crystal clear. Yes, he personalises what he plays, and why not? [Of the Schubert Liszt songs:] 'These transcriptions can sound, well, cheap in the hands of a lesser musical mind than Mr Bolet, who gave them an iridescence that was astonishing. The sheer liquidity and power of the development – never mind, the staggering technical demands – were realised superbly, as was indeed the entire program. Mr Bolet is about as extraordinary a representative of romantic pianism, as can be found alive today. 'His playing was imbued with elegance, an effervescence, and an Innerlichkeit (clumsily translated: an inwardness) which made for bedazzling piano playing.'

Latest upload on YouTube, always to keep Jorge's name in view

After the commercial success of the Encores record (recorded in March and December 1985 in St Barnabas' Church, Finchley, UK and issued in 1987), Decca had in mind to make another one. 'Jorge liked the plan a lot and we talked often about the repertoire,' says Mattheus Smits. Strauss/Godowsky, Fledermaus Weber/Godowsky, Invitation to the dance Moszkowski, Caprice Espagnol Lecuona, Cuban dances selections The fourth movement)of Carl Maria von Weber's Piano Sonata No. 1 in C major, Op. 24 (1812): Rondo: Presto, frequently referred to as a mouvement perpétuel. This was included on Jorge's Graduation Recital, 16 April 1934 Strauss/Schulz Evler, Concert Arabesques on the Beautiful Blue Danube Waltz in A major Op.2 by Mischa Levitzki (first played by Jorge in August 1926) Delibes/Dohnányi Naila waltz Prokofiev, Toccata Op.11 Abram Chasins, Preludes (selection) Godowsky, pieces from Triakontameron and Java Suite Paul de Schloezer etude Op.1 no 1 in E flat. (piano roll with score) (Jeffrey Biegel) 'About the last piece, a difficult etude in double notes in two hands Jorge told me a nice story: Abbey Simon played it often in his student days to show off. To surprise his fellow students, he always finished the piece with some chords of his own in the wrong key. He got so much used to this that it once happened in concert also! NB There is a fantastic recording on piano-roll of this unknown piece by Josef Lhevinne. 'Once before a concert Jorge played this piece for me in an unbelievable way out of the blue, note perfect. I am sure he had not touched it for years. To further amaze me, he continued with Nola (1915) by Felix Arndt asking me whether this would do for the encores volume 2. 'Unfortunately all this never happened.'

Just occasionally I might mention another pianist, and this evening Monday 4 May 2026 at the Wigmore Hall in London I heard Swiss Italian Francesco Piemontesi (b.1983 Locarno). He played Schubert's Sonata in G Major D894 followed by Liszt's Années de pèlerinage, première année, Suisse S160. I think it is one of the best piano recitals I’ve heard in 40 years of attending concerts. He also treated us to two encores, one of which was beloved of Jorge Bolet: Chopin/Godowsky, Étude in A flat major: 3rd version from Étude in A flat major, Op 25 No 1. The other was Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV645, arranged by Wilhelm Kempff. I was delighted to hear the Godowsky, and was genuinely surprised because of its rarity value. It's certainly one of the most beautiful arrangements Godowsky made. Incidentally, two years ago (12 June 2024) I heard in the same venue during a lunchtime recital the whole of Godowsky's Java Suite. You can’t turn down an opportunity to hear that. The pianist in question Julian Chan played as an encore the same composer's arrangement of Saint-Saëns, The Swan, and one was suddenly aware of a composer who really had what Stravinsky might have called “The Fairy's Kiss” of melody! Piemontesi's voicing of the various strands of the music, his tone colours, his sensitivity to modulations, his pianissimos in the Schubert all reminded me of the incomparable Alfred Brendel and I was not surprised afterwards to find that Piemontesi had studied with him. Shamefully, I had bought a CD of FP playing two Mozart Concertos 19 and 27 during COVID-19 lockdown but never got round to listening to it. I will now. What a treat it was to hear this recital, not least because I had only checked what's on in London this week on Bachtrack this very morning when I woke up, and suddenly thought: I like the look of that. And I’m jolly glad I went! I will also be following this young man’s career now…

Due 3 July 2026 Some previously unreleased recordings by Jorge Bolet, made at the Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, California (USA), in 1981 and 1986, are due to be released soon. Here is a preview on YouTube from First Hand Records, which will release a 3-CD box set; the recordings will also be available on all digital platforms from 3 July 2026. These performances are released with the permission of the estate of Jorge Bolet.

"He knew he had to take the stage, to stride up to that huge instrument and take command. 'Remember,' he'd say, 'it's likely to kick back." Andrei Svetlichny, Boston Globe, September 1982 As ever, I am grateful to Mattheus Smits for providing information to this website. He has alerted my attention to this tribute (edited) to Jorge Bolet's tuner in the USA. A Memorial Died April 12, 1998 • Born February 19, 1957 Andrei Svetlichny, 41 Tuner of Concert Pianos for the Stars By HOLCOMB B. NOBLE Andrei Svetlichny, whose ability to coax gorgeous tones from concert grands made him indispensable as a personal tuner for distinguished pianists, died on April 12 at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan. He was 41 and the chief concert technician and manager of technical services for the Baldwin Piano and Organ Company. The cause was leukemia, his family said. During summers the Russian-born Mr. Svetlichny also oversaw the tuning and maintenance of some 150 pianos at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Mass. He also worked with the Montreal Symphony, the Boston Symphony and a number of recording artists, including Earl Wild, Abbey Simon, Michael Feinstein and Bruce Hornsby. He was the personal tuner for Jorge Bolet in the 1980s after the pianist's previous tuner failed him grievously. The tuner had forgotten to anchor the piano legs to the stage prior to a concert and when Mr. Bolet sat down to play, the piano began to roll away from him. It rolled right off the stage and fell into the orchestra pit, breaking in half. [Mexico City, November 1978] Mr. Wild found that he had to take Mr. Svetlichny with him when he gave recitals all over the world. ''He somehow knew exactly what you needed,'' Mr. Wild recalled. What was needed, he said, was knowing when to clean the keys and when not; when to keep fiddling with the strings until each one sounded a note of precisely the right pitch when struck by its hammer; when to ''voice'' the instrument, by removing the action and filing the hammers, so that each key produces the same volume of sound in response to the same touch, and, of course, always remembering to anchor the legs. What was needed, too, was the ability to be a friend: ''I always took Andrei to our parties everywhere,'' Mr. Wild said. Baldwin had recently asked Mr. Svetlichny to assist in the first significant redesign of its SD-10 concert grand since 1966, when it was produced under the guidance of Leonard Bernstein and Max Rudolf. After crawling in, around and under the nine-foot piano and making or proposing various adjustments, he persuaded the company to make some fine changes in its basic design. Andrei Svetlichny was born in what was then called Leningrad on Feb. 19, 1957, the only child of Nikolai and Lyudmila Baikova, who were opera singers. He studied at Herzen Pedagogical Institute in Leningrad from 1976 to 1978, then left for England and, in 1980, for the United States. He studied at the New England School of Stringed Instrument Technology, now the North Bennett Street School, and became chief piano technician at Boston University, before joining Baldwin. He is survived by his wife, Margaret Poppino Svetlichny of Bloomfield, N.J.; a daughter, Katherine; two sons, Nicholas and Peter, and by his parents. ''You could tell right off, here was a master,'' said Joe Vitti, one of his early tuning coaches. ''He knew he had to take the stage, to stride up to that huge instrument and take command. 'Remember,' he'd say, 'it's likely to kick back.' ''

Hercules Late November 1966 Herkulessaal, Munich Chopin, Ballades; Liszt Sonata, Mephisto Waltz (& encores) Although already 53 years old, Jorge Bolet has only been heard here once before, stepping in for a colleague in an orchestral concert. Now he appeared in the Herkulessaal in his own piano recital, tall, powerful, with a graying mustache. First impression: A gentleman, a caballero. Second: Also a nobleman of pianism. He plays the four Chopin Ballades. Every note that now emerges from the Bechstein, every touch, every pedal stroke, all degrees of an infinitely variable dynamic scale, every slightest tempo change, the crystal-clear, meticulously human and deeply felt technique that rivals the infallibility of a pianola – all this is the result of an extraordinary high culture of pianism. When one thinks of Bolet's Chopin, one doesn't picture the shivering, coughing composer, threatened by hemorrhages. Jorge Bolet's portrayal of the Ballades is a single, grand, masculine, serious, and mature act of passion. His playing pulsates with emotion and often arouses (and excites) to the point of rapture, yet it is always a genuine, measured, and masterfully controlled Chopin rendition, possessing the most sensitive understanding and delicacy even for the sometimes effeminate melodies of the great Polish composer. Bolet understands how to let the basses growl softly like dangerous beasts after the sumptuous lyricism. Then, at the respective shifts from the legendary tone to the harshly ballad-like, he pounces like a puma with lightning-fast swipes at the presto agitato, resulting in the most gripping outbursts of unyielding force and grandly pathetic intensity. This consistently convincing Chopin playing, despite its highly personal character, is virtually unparalleled. The second part was dedicated to Franz Liszt. I thought the great rhapsodist Liszt would have a hard time competing with the elegant Chopin. But I was wrong. With Liszt's rarely heard only sonata, which surpasses all of this titan's other piano works, Bolet conveyed a sense of the immense heights of Liszt's piano artistry. When he literally conjured the thunderous bundles of octaves from his sleeve and, with the incomprehensible skill of a magician, made all the bewildering and enchanting piano subtleties first conceived by Liszt sound, one might have thought that a god Shiva with a multitude of arms and hands must be at work. But it was always only this one, perfectly courteous and modestly smiling, unassuming gentleman in a tailcoat, who accomplished all this and more. For now, following Liszt's monstrous work, came the ultimate in pianistic bravura: the "Mephisto Waltz." This satanic keyboard dance unleashed such a storm of applause that Bolet had to play a whole third part of Liszt's eccentricities. He played songs! Songs whose purely pianistic rendering Liszt had once helped the song masters achieve great popularity: Schubert's "Wohin?" and "Ständchen," Schumann's "Widmung," and Chopin's "Mädchens Wunsch." This dolcissimo of song lyricism, adapted to the cantabile possibilities of the pianoforte, performed by Bolet with a wonderfully singing touch, has put many a disastrous song performance far in the shade. Anyone who still speaks of the misappropriation of song literature hasn't heard Bolet. And believe it or not: he also added the enormous Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12 with friendly serenity/ composure. Edmund Nick, Süddeutsches Zeitung, 1 December 1966

Another contender for Jorge Bolet's best review... 16-18 November 1980 (Sat/Sun) Orpheum, Vancouver, Canada Brahms Piano Concerto No.2 Vancouver Symphony Orchestra under Kazuyoshi Akiyama. ​ He was replacing Lazar Berman, whose cancellation - due to diplomatic difficulties between the US and USSR due to the invasion of Afghanistan - was announced early on the season. [Of Bolet:] "It was like the substitution of one diamond for another of equal or even greater brilliance." Doug Hughes of The Province: 'Once in a very great while, an experience in the theatre or concert hall can be so transporting that it sends you out into the streets, confused and dizzy, and it takes some time to readjust to reality. There is every reason to suspect that the most, if not all of those who left the Orpheum on Sunday afternoon after Jorge Bolet's performance, felt that way. In my years of concert going, I have heard Brahms 2 played by some highly distinguished artists, among them Dame, Myra, Hess, Solomon, Sir Clifford Curzon, Wilhelm Backhaus, and Rudolf Serkin. I have heard more recordings of it than I can possibly remember. But with Bolet's incredible performance of this towering work on Sunday afternoon, I believe I have now heard it in all its glory, perhaps as close as it is possible to come to the way the composer intended it to be played. There were many things about this performance that were less than technically ideal. Nevertheless, it added up to one of those all to rare instances in which musicianship (bolet, orchestra, conductor) took the lead over mere technique.' ​ (*Bolet had played in Vancouver on Sunday, 1 November 1953, and was advertised for the 1954-55 season. On 12/13 January 1964 he played Beethoven's fourth piano concerto.)

John Crouch, a former Indiana student of JB for 3 years, was interviewed in 1979 (what follows is a mixture of his own words and those of the journalist): 'Bolet is a natural pianist, like a natural athlete. At the peak of what could be called his first career, his manager was scheduling him for 100-120 performances a year, which is one almost every three days. Then, in his mid-50s, Bolet decided to start winding down his performing career and in 1968, accepted a teaching position at Bloomington. Next came a revival in Romantic music. Well, he was soon back on the road with a hectic schedule - careers don't necessarily go like this. He would bop back into town after a string of concerts and give us marathon lessons... he was in and out all the time but he expected us to know our stuff because he knew his. [In referring to Liszt's Totentanz with Boulez (1971) - Andre Watts was ill, and Jorge agreed to substitute at the last minute but he did not know the music] 24 hours later, he had the thing memorised. He played it for his students. It was something it would've taken us six months to learn. It just shows how well the man works under pressure. He has an instant recall of the music he plays, he seems to be able to bring a piece back into his fingers once he's learned it.' The Morning Press, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania (22 September 1979)

Página web: Clicc Bolet ofreció dos conciertos en la gran ciudad turca —antaño Bizancio, más tarde la legendaria Constantinopla y, desde 1930, oficialmente Estambul—. Los recitales tuvieron lugar los días 21 y 23 de junio, a las 21:30, en el Büyük Salonu (Salón Grande) del Centro Cultural Atatürk. El programa incluyó obras de Mendelssohn; la Sonata n.º 23 en fa menor, Op. 57 de Beethoven, conocida como Appassionata; el Prélude, Choral et Fugue de Franck —citado en turco como Prelüd, Koral ve Füg—; y Réminiscences de Norma de Bellini/Liszt. Aunque Bolet no interpretó a Liszt en la película Song Without End (1960), poseía una presencia escénica que habría resultado plenamente convincente en cualquier filme histórico; uno podía imaginarlo, por ejemplo, en el papel de un virrey de la India durante el Imperio británico. Tras concluir su gira europea, supimos que planeaba realizar un safari fotográfico de quince días por Kenia y Tanzania. El diario Cumhuriyet, el más antiguo de Turquía, publicó un obituario el 31 de octubre de 1990 en el que recordaba con melancolía: «Resultó que, sin saberlo, fuimos testigos de dos de los últimos conciertos de Jorge Bolet, descubierto en Turquía en el otoño de su vida, cuando ofreció dos recitales de piano durante el Festival Internacional de Estambul, en junio de 1988.»

Review of 10 May 1979 recital in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

¡No lo olvides! Hay una versión más corta de esta página web disponible en español. ¡Haga clic en el enlace! (El orador en el video no es real pero AI) Clases magistrales para BBC Scotland El 27 de febrero de 1983, Jorge interpretó el Concierto para piano n.° 3 de Rachmaninoff en el Usher Hall de Edimburgo, con la BBC Scottish SO y Bryden "Jack" Thomson, un brillante director escocés con una frase ingeniosa. Esto sería transmitido por la televisión de la BBC en el verano de 1983, como culminación de tres programas de clases magistrales sobre el concierto (que presumiblemente fueron grabados aproximadamente al mismo tiempo). En el programa introductorio, JB fue entrevistado por Robin Ray (1934-1998), locutor, actor y músico inglés, famoso entre otras cosas por su conocimiento enciclopédico de los números de Köchel de las obras de Mozart, que expuso en una popular tarde de domingo. panel musical show Face The Music. El tema musical del programa fue la Canción Popular de la suite Façade de Sir William Walton (quien fue invitado al programa en el año de su 70 cumpleaños). El propio Jorge también fue invitado al programa que se emitió el domingo 2 de diciembre de 1984 por la tarde. El papel de la BBC para acercar a Jorge Bolet a un público internacional más amplio fue considerable.