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A newspaper review dated 26 May 1980 mentions a concerto with Armando Krieger and the Orquesta Sinfónica del Sodre (in Montevideo, Uruguay). It featured Uruguayan composer. León Biriotti's Symphony No. 3, "in memoriam Lauro Ayestarán" and Jorge playing Rachmaninoff 3 This score, which is important, dates back some 12 years (1968) and is only now being considered. The symphony, over 20 minutes long, masterfully utilizes rhythms and sound textures (it features a very rich percussion section: tom-tom, wood block, marimba, cymbals, triangle, vibraphone, bass drum, gong, celesta, plano, timpani, and bells, employing a total of seven instrumentalists for this section alone, in addition to the full orchestra) and culminates in a non-literal, but distinctly pronounced, evocation of Montevideo's candombe—reminiscent of some of Lauro Ayestarán's works—which closes the piece with verve and splendor. It was very well received, which is encouraging, although Biriotti's aesthetic is currently taking a different path than that of the more or less traditional symphony. 'At that same concert, one had the opportunity to witness a true master of the piano: the Cuban-American Jorge Bolet. A legendary and towering performer, over 60 years old, with supernatural drive and touch, at the highest possible level. Bolet's generous sound and digital precision shone in a work like Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto, Op. 30, which seems written specifically to exhaust pianists and dazzle the audience. Yielding to the audience's fervor, Bolet granted two sentimental pieces as encores (Rachmaninoff and Moskowski) that sounded like music simply because they were played by this pianist. 'The case of Jorge Bolet is instructive, for, on the surface, we are faced with a formidable performer who knows—or doesn't want to know—nothing about musical progress or the evolution of the art of performance. He is a genius of the piano, but perhaps, paradoxically, not a great artist. The choice of his programmes (last year he gave an incredible Liszt Festival performance, which thrilled everyone present, including this writer), and the two encores show a remarkable performer who lacks a historical sense in his selection of works. Thus, Bolet belongs to a species on the verge of extinction. He is multifaceted (?), despite his quality as a soloist.' As can be seen from this bird's-eye view, in a short time, we were presented with instances of complex interpretation, each with its own merits. A little-known composer (Bruckner), a visiting ballet that disappointed, the confirmation of a great artist (Lukas Graf), and the highs and lows of another celebrated name (Jorge Bolet) alongside a premiere by Biriotti. The Symphony No. 3, which is interesting for many reasons, beginning with being a national work, offered something for everyone. Carlos Gasset, La Semana de El Día N° 72, 31-may-1980 Spanish: En ese mismo concierto se tuvo ocasión de contemplar un monstruo sagrado del piano. El cubano-estadounidense Jorge Bolet. ejecutante legendario y gigante, de más de 60 años, con un impulso y "tocco" sobrenaturales, al mejor nivel possible. El generoso sonido y la pulcritud digital de Bolet pudieron lucir en una obra como el Tercer Concierto op 30, de Rachmaninoff, que parece escrito a propósito para matar pianistas y deslumbrar al público. Cediendo al fervor del auditorio, Bolet concedió dos ñoñerías como bis. (Rachmaninoff. Moskowski) que parecieron música por ser hechas por este pianista. El caso de Jorge Bolet es aleccionante. pues, en apariencia, estamos ante un intérprete formidable que no sabe—o no quiere saber— nada referente al progreso musical o sobre la evolución del arte interpretativo. Es un genio del piano, pero tal vez. paradójicamente, no un gran artista. La elección de sus programas (el año pasado hizo un Festival Llszt Increíble, que entusiasmó a todos los presentes. incluido quien escribe), y los dos bis muestran a un notable ejecutante que carece de sentido histórico en la elección de las obras. Así que Bolet se inscribe dentro de una especie en vias de extinción. a varias puntas, a despecho de su calidad como solista. Como podra apreciarse en esta vista a vuelo de pájaro, se estuvo, en corto tiempo, ante instancias de interpretación compleja, todas con su qué ver. Un autor poco difundido (Bruckner). un ballet visi tante que defraudó, la confirmación de un gran artista (Lukas Graf) y las luces y sombras de otro nombre célebre (Jorge Bolet) al lado de un estreno de Biriotti. La Sinfonía N° 3. que interesa por muchos motivos, comenzando por ser una obra nacional Hubo para todos los gustos.

El Comercio (Lima, Perú), 23 July 1983 Jorge Bolet's second visit (after 1982) to Peru and the The City of Kings, Ciudad de los Reyes. Monday 25 July 1983 in the Auditorio Santa Ursula, Lima. He had arrived in Lima on Monday 18th at 5:20am. There were orchestral rehearsals on 20 and 22. This was a dangerous time to be in Peru. ​Sendero Luminoso, a notorious terrorist organisation, was orchestrating a brutal campaign for against the country. 23 July 1983 (Saturday) in Arequipa, Peru, the second most populated city of the country, and birthplace of Peruvian author and Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-2025) Schumann, Fantasiestücke Brahms, Handel variations Liszt, Petrarch Sonnets & Hungarian Rhapsody No.12 Jorge then flew back to the capital on the 24th. 25 July 1983 Auditorio Santa Úrsula, Lima, Peru C. Franck, Symphonic Variations Rachmaninoff, Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op.18 Orquesta Sinfónica de la Escuela de Música/ Peruvian conductor Armando Sánchez Málaga The auditorium was on Av. Santo Toribio 150, in the upmarket suburb of San Isidro. Jorge then travelled to Brazil, but he was back in Lima for a recital on Wednesday, 3 August 1983: Schumann, Brahms, Liszt (same as Arequipa, 23rd)

Manuel Reguera Saumell recalls Jorge Bolet in Camagüey Born in the old Francisco sugar mill in Cuba, when Gerardo Machado began his first term in office (1928), Manuel Reguera Saumell studied Architecture at the University of Havana, worked on the Master Plan for Havana as an urban planner, wrote very successful plays and left Cuba more than half a century ago for Barcelona, ​​the land of his paternal ancestors, where he had already lived as a child. His novel La noche era tan joven y nosotros tan hermosos ("The Night Was So Young and We Were So Beautiful") is probably one of the most revealing books of the years preceding the triumph of the 1959 Revolution, with an intrigue in which the homoerotic ingredient (the change of sexual orientation of one of the characters in the plot) makes him a sharp narrator in this field. ―When I was 14, I was sent to Camagüey to study at the Escolapios in this city. I was locked up for five years, during which the only contact with the outside world was the masses in the beautiful neo-Gothic church of the boarding school. I don't remember anything special about that school of priests. Everything was stupidly normal. The only one who was a little different was Father Ullastres, who taught music and had noticed that I was a little different from my classmates, almost all of them country bumpkins (casi todos guajiros catetos), sent by their wealthy families to study at that institute. The only student who knew that Beethoven was not a player on the Almendares team was me. That's why Father Ullastres took me to the Teatro Principal and there he introduced me to the great Jorge Bolet after he had played Chopin during an unforgettable concert (mid-1940s?). The Escolapios were known for having a very good basketball team, but I wasn't interested in sports. Francisco was the name of the founder of the sugar factory, the Asturian Francisco Rionda Polledo, who built it in 1899 a few kilometers from the port of Guayabal, southeast of Camagüey, and which is now called Amancio Rodríguez. From an interview in January 2022, the year the author died

A fellow student in the same year as Jorge Bolet (1927) was Sidney Foster (born in Florence, South Carolina, in 1917) who was aged 10, the youngest student Curtis ever took. (In 1968 Foster, a Professor at Indiana School of Music 1952-77, was to coax Bolet there from Spain as a teaching colleague.) Imelda Delgado in a book on Foster relates a shocking event in which in 1929 the young Sidney was dismissed from Curtis for being a "bad boy", though it later turned out that individuals in the school's administration had been embezzling funds from his Miami sponsors and somehow shifted the blame in an incident of "contrived mendacity". When Foster returned to Curtis, in 1934, he studied with Saperton until his graduation in 1938. Among the other students were Nadia Reisenberg, Shura Cherkassky and the now-forgotten Lucie Stern. Born in 1913, a year earlier than Bolet, Stern died in 1938. In 1925, one year after Curtis's founding, Josef Hofmann had accepted 11-year-old Lucie Stern into his highly competitive piano studio. She was born in Riga, Latvia. Hofmann served as her examiner during the audition, and immediately accepted Stern as his pupil. In addition to piano, Stern’s other main area of study was composition under Rosario Scalero. Stern’s classmates at Curtis, including Shura Cherkassky (Piano '35) and Jorge Bolet (Piano '34), remember her as a free spirit who found it difficult to cope with the rigid structure espoused by Curtis at the time. Her inability to thrive became so evident that Hofmann, in December 1927, took the unprecedented step of granting her permission to live in New York and commute to Philadelphia on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for her lessons at Curtis. Unfortunately, despite an increasingly successful solo career outside Curtis (The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote in 1926 that Stern 'possess[ed] a talent which is met with only once or twice in a musical generation') this accommodation of Hofmann's proved insufficient, and Stern was dismissed from the institute after the 1929 spring semester. From Curtis archives website The Houston Chronicle (2 October 1927) mention s that "Little Jack Gregory Abram [from Texas] has won the scholarship at the Curtis Institute which will ensure his musical education. Isn't that grand! David Saperton, Mrs Spofford, and several others examined him. Jack said that Mr Saperton walked all around and viewed him from all angles, but it did not disconcert him." Jacques Abram (August 6, 1915 – October 5, 1998), born Jack Gregory Abram an American classical pianist, was born in Lufkin, Texas. Abram began improvising at age 3 and performing in public at age 6. As a youth he studied with Ima Hogg and Ruth Burr of Houston. At the urging of Ignace Jan Paderewski and Josef Hofmann, who had heard Abram in concert, his parents enrolled him in the Curtis Institute, where he studied with David Saperton. At age 13, Abram transferred to the Juilliard School, where he continued his studies with Ernest Hutcheson. Abram debuted with the Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie Hall performing the MacDowell D minor concerto. In 1948, Abram gave the American premiere of Benjamin Britten's piano concerto in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 1949 he gave the work its New York premiere under the baton of Leopold Stokowski, and on January 25, 1956 he was soloist in the work's first recording, with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Herbert Menges.

During a tour of South America in 1983, Jorge had two dates in Peru. He admited that some countries he visited were politically unstable and sometimes dangerous. However he also mentioned to his friend Mattheus Smits that these countries were known for having attentive audiences of some highly cultured people. I am aware of the general situation in Peru at this time, but I recently looked at the specific political situation in July 1983. and it was grim I need to confirm that Jorge actually went! Lima 23 July 1983 (Saturday) Arequipa, Peru Schumann, Fantasiestücke Brahms, Handel variations Liszt, Petrarch Sonnets & Hungarian Rhapsody No.12 *Birthplace of Peruvian author and Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-2025) 25 July 1983 Lima, Perú with Peruvian conductor Armando Sánchez Málaga & Orquesta Sinfónica de la Escuela de Música. ​ In July 1983, Peru was in a severe political and security crisis, defined by the rapid escalation of the Maoist/terrorist Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) insurgency and a nationwide state of emergency. President Fernando Belaúnde Terry was under intense pressure, facing both armed conflict and economic damage from the El Niño phenomenon. The Shining Path terrorised the high Andes, causing severe violence, including the April 1983 Lucanamarca massacre. By July 1983, the group was active, with the government responding with a 60-day nationwide state of emergency declared in early June 1983. While the primary Shining Path conflict was concentrated in Ayacucho, the insurgency began to spread throughout the southern sierra, creating tension and increased security monitoring in regional hubs like Arequipa. In early July 1983, a wave of bombings rocked Lima, creating a fear of attacks during the July 29th military parade. on 21 July there was a blackout; the terrorists successfully blacked out the capital, a common tactic used to create chaos before launching ground assaults. Following the blackout, attacks were carried out against several high-profile targets, including police stations. Jorge Chávez International Airport was targeted as part of the broader offensive. Sendero Luminoso was founded in the late 1960s by Abimael Guzmán, a philosophy professor. They launched their "people's war" on May 17, 1980, by burning ballot boxes in the town of Chuschi, Ayacucho, on the eve of Peru's first democratic elections in over a decade.

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