Curtis Institute of Music, 1927-34

As a seventeen year old, Jorge once travelled to Washington DC to hear the pianist Vladimir Horowitz. There was a terrible snowstorm, and Horowitz didn’t make it to Constitution Hall.

The manager asked if anyone could play for a little while. Jorge gave a two and a half hour recital. This anecdote is told by Eleanor Sokoloff, a former Curtis classmate, who described him as ‘shy, very sweet, private’.

Audition

Aged 12, Jorge sailed with his sister Maria Josefa (aged 23) on the SS Governor Cobb from Havana to Key West Florida, disembarking on 16 September 1927.

The first audition at Curtis was on 27 September, in which Jorge auditioned for the remarkable founder of the Institute, Mary Louise Curtis Bok, and for members of the Piano Faculty Isabelle Vengerova and David Saperton. There was a second audition on 6 October for the famous pianist and Director, Josef Hofmann and, again, Mrs. Bok. First day of class for the 1927-28 year was 3 October.

In a letter from Maria to Mrs Virginia Shaw, of Hastings-on-Hudson, New York at around this time, 1927/8, she states:

‘The Curtis Institute of Philadelphia will give 60 scholarships for people with talent and I hope Jorge will win one. Is it not that glorious, we have to be there the 26th of Sept… Jorge had his piano examination Tuesday and yesterday he had theory. He was accepted and won a scholarship, is not that grand, they will teach him everything so he doesn't have to go to school…

'Jorge…is taller each day. I am afraid it will be hard for me to make him do what I want when he grows a little more…he is just as a five years old child and he is 13! And with a body like an 18 years boy! I say he has in his head and heart only music so much that he can't do or think anything else…'

Immigration 16 September 1927

Lessons

From 1927-34, Jorge was taught at Curtis by David Saperton, son-in-law of the remarkable pianist-composer Leopold Godowsky (Saperton had married daughter Vanita, sister of silent movie star Dagmar Godowsky). He introduced Jorge to the fabulously complex compositions

of Godowsky, which Jorge would champion throughout his career.

Of David Saperton, Jorge has said:

'My teacher didn’t have to correct any purely mechanical aspects of my technique. He more or less took off from where I was. My sister must have taught me extremely well.'

The Teacher

David Saperton (1889-1970) was born David Sapirstein in Pittsburgh, PA. In 1924 he joined the Steinway roster as “David Saperton”, and in the same year he married Leopold Godowsky’s eldest daughter, Vanita. Through Godowsky, he met Josef Hofmann, and in May 1927 when Hofmann was appointed director of Curtis Institute, he chose Saperton as his teaching assistant.

Pianist Abbey Simon said that during his time at Curtis, Saperton lived in New York (diagonally across the street from the Ansonia Hotel - where his father-in-law Godowsky lived - on 71st street), and commuted to Philadelphia three days a week to teach; he stayed at a hotel in the city when working.

'He was a difficult person, and there was never a sign of affection. I never thought he taught us anything. You were coming to the lesson and you knew he was there because you saw this huge cloud of cigar smoke around his desk.'

Jorge's own view of Saperton was at times obfuscated by tact. He seems to have been more forthcoming (and critical) when speaking to friends outside the immediate environment. Bryce Morrison, who knew Bolet, has spoken of a 'punishing régime' of work, and of a teacher who approached lessons 'in the manner of a drill sergeant'.

Début at Carnegie Hall

On 29 January 1932, at Carnegie Hall in New York City, a seventeen-year-old Jorge performed with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra under the fearsome Hungarian conductor and martinet Fritz Reiner. Many eminent musicians were in the audience, including Sergei Rachmaninoff, Hofmann, Godowsky, violinist Nathan Milstein and pianist Vladimir Horowitz (b.1903). Jorge played the first movement of Tchaikovsky's B-flat minor concerto (the programme also included Weber's Oberon overture and Brahms's fourth symphony). A review in The New York Times declared: ‘He has a brilliant technique. From the thunderous succession of chords that open the pianist’s part...he was equal to the technical difficulties. More, he played with the fine abandon

of youth.’

Jorge himself remembers: 'At that performance, I also had the good fortune of meeting Rachmaninoff. During the second half, David Saperton took me up to Godowsky’s box to hear the remainder of the concert. When the concert was over, Godowsky grabbed me by the arm and said, ‘There’s somebody I want you to meet.’ Simultaneously Rachmaninoff was coming

out of an adjoining box putting on his big overcoat with the sable collar, Godowsky spoke to Rachmaninoff in Russian, so I don’t know what was said. But we shook hands and passed a few pleasantries before he hurried off.'

In conversation in 1973, prior to a rehearsal of Rachmaninoff's notoriously difficult third piano concerto, Jorge said, 'I am rather familiar with the work. I learned it in 1929 when I was 14 years old and first played

it publicly in 1937 with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. And, of course,

I heard Rachmaninoff play it under Ormandy two or three times, and with other conductors several times in New York prior to his death in 1943.'

Graduation

In 1934 Jorge graduated from Curtis. The Institute conducted its first formal graduation ceremony in Casimir Hall (now Field Concert Hall) on 22 May, 1934. It was a large class—over 70 graduates—and included not only those who completed their studies in 1934, but 1933 as well. There was an address by Władysław Sokołowski, counsellor of the Polish embassy. Graduates included students who would go on to be very famous including Samuel Barber (Composition) and Gian Carlo Menotti (Composition).

In his graduation recital (16 April, Casimir Hall, Curtis), Jorge performed a colossal programme, including Brahms/ Handel variations, Chopin’s third sonata in B minor and Godowsky’s complex paraphrase of waltzes from Johann Strauss’ Fledermaus, all pieces which he would continue to play for the rest of his career. (On Saturday, 3 April of the same year, he had played a ‘warm-up’ concert with the same programme at the Teatro Principal de la Comedia, Havana.)

Leopold Godowsky

Leopold [Leonid] Godowsky, (b. Soshly, nr Vilnius, 13 Feb 1870; d. New York, 21 Nov 1938), was an American pianist and composer of Polish birth.

He was the possessor of one of the most remark-able keyboard mechanisms in the history of the piano.

It is during these early years of the 1930s that Jorge had some sessions with Godowsky.

He would go up to New York when he had mastered a few of the composer's compositions. Jorge's teacher at Curtis, David Saperton had arranged the connection. He would practise

some of Godowsky’s fiendishly difficult works (few others of his contemporaries were up to the task) and then play them to the composer.

Leopold Godowsky with David Saperton (his son-in-law and Jorge's teacher at Curtis)

on the corner of 57th Street & 7th Avenue in Manhattan, early 1930s. The soundtrack is from Godowsky's Java Suite composed 1924/1925 after a trip to Indonesia.

‘Jorge’s scores of these pieces bore Godowsky’s markings in red crayon—the daunting “Passacaglia,” based on themes from Schubert’s “Unfinished” symphony; the “Fledermaus” and “Künstlerleben” symphonic metamorphoses (on famous waltzes by Johann Strauss II);

the “Java Suite” (based upon Godowsky's trip to [modern] Indonesia.' (Albert McGrigor)

Jorge listed these lessons for 1932-3 in a submission to Grove's Dictionary of Music; but they

do not seem to have been systematic lessons. Godowsky's biographer, Jeremy Nicholas, states: ‘Occasionally, Saperton and Bolet would go to New York and visit Godowsky, and Bolet would play Godowsky to Godowsky, as it were, and get advice from him. He said that in that sense, yes, he had studied with Godowsky. Of course he also, in the same way, had advice from

(and played for) Hofmann as he was head of piano at Curtis. But his main teacher was Saperton.'

Pro-Arte Musical

Pro-Arte Musical was instrumental in helping young Jorge’s career. Established on 2 December, 1918 by María Teresa García Montes de Giberga and a group of enthusiastic collaborators,

it prolonged its existence until the seventh decade of that century and not only did it sponsor opera, ballet and concert seasons but also made considerable contributions to artistic teaching on the island.

Señora García Montes’ initiative was not due to the fact that until then Havana lacked decent artistic presentations - on the contrary, she and her friends had been able to applaud in the National Theatre Adolfo Bracale’s opera seasons as well as the concerts given by Polish virtuoso pianist Ignaz Paderewski and the legendary Anna Pavlova’s ballet seasons. But such events had depended upon the whims of impresarios, and upon the whims also of a very limited public who could afford the expensive seats and who sometimes did not know how to behave correctly in the theatre. (In fact, a paper aeroplane thrown from one of the Colisseo's top floors landed on top of the piano of the famous Paderewski during one of his concerts.)

The Society's first activity on its foundation was a recital in the Espadero Hall of the Hubert de Blanck Conservatory, located at No. 47 Galiano Street, of the Society of Classic Quartets of Havana.

By 1924 there were so many members that the board of directors had to say that it was necessary to limit the admission of members “because none of the theatres of Havana, not even the Payret, which had the largest capacity, have sufficient seats to accommodate them.”

An extraordinary general meeting of the board of directors agreed in May 1925 to build their own theatre. Through a competition, they got the most attractive blueprint, conceived by architects Moenck and Quintana, and on 6 August, 1927 they were able to place the first stone of the building. The theatre was inaugurated on 2 December 1928, with a concert by the Havana Symphony Orchestra directed by Gonzalo Roig.