Jorge Bolet
Private life
Despite the apparent glamour of much of what follows, Jorge Bolet has described some tough times in the late 1940s/50s, years when he was grateful for the many friends who supported him in these ‘ghastly lean years’. The promise of his golden years at Curtis was now being tested.
'These were ‘terrible years... great struggle...half-starvation’.
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Interview with The New York Times, 28 January 1973
Malecón
'His improbable handsomeness was sufficiently striking to attract the worst as well as the best attention. Like many other performers, he was sheltered from worldly or sophisticated considerations from an early age, and he had difficulty in differentiating between sycophants and genuine admirers. Hurt and confused on too many occasions, he acquired a formidable outer image or protective shell. Pursued and questioned about his failure to marry, Bolet quickly developed an evasive Jekyll and Hyde personality, elements increasingly hard to reconcile.' (Bryce Morrison 1997)​
Jorge grew up as a gay man, coming into society - both in Caribbean Cuba and in North America - where this identity had to an extent to be concealed. While it seems that homosexuality in the USA enjoyed greater recognition in the media after World War I, many were still arrested and convicted for their acts. Little change in the laws, however, or in the mores of society was seen until the mid-1960s, when the sexual revolution began.
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“Coming from a Latin country like Cuba, with its traditional element of machismo/hyper-masculinity masking a more complex attitude among men, being different from the average young man - unsure of himself and of the world, and not anxious to make waves, kept in check by the proprieties of polite Philadelphia society and the extreme cosseting of a prodigy, both by his family and by Curtis, it makes sense that Jorge would have encountered a complex world, of which his family and others might disapprove.” (Private letter to the Editor)​
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PHOTO:
La Rampa, Calle 23, from L until the Malecón (Noah Friedman-Rudovsky)
Tex Compton
Musical America, 1 December 1954 has an interview with Jorge in his Washington Square, NYC residence.
'Nowadays the ever-busier Mr. Bolet spends most of his waking hours with two beloved traveling companions. One of them is “Tex” Compton, an old friend of his Washington days (as a military attaché in the Cuban embassy) who now serves him as personal representative and sometimes chauffeur. The other, almost equally beloved, is “Baldwin”, a tiny Chinese pug thoroughbred whose eighteen pounds of sweet reasonableness endear him even to the most confirmed dog-haters.
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Jorge and his life partner Houston Larimore ‘Tex’ Compton had probably met in the early 1940s, though it might have been later. Tex, four years older than Jorge, had worked in the oil industry and had received a bequest in excess of 100,000 dollars which enabled him to live modestly off the invested sum. He invested in Jorge's career and travelled with him as his road manager/secretary. By 1951, Jorge and Tex were both residing at 71, Washington Square, New York City. It was at times apparently an 'open' relationship.
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By the mid-1960s the original money was gone and Jorge's concert and teaching income sustained them but with difficulty. By the late 1960s, they needed a stable income, and it was then that Bolet applied for the piano jobs at University of Cincinnati (losing to Earl Wild) and Indiana, which he got.
Bolet grew up very much in age when discretion about relationships was a requisite. In an interview, British pianist Stephen Hough has explained that Jorge ‘had a partner for decades who travelled with him always.
He was just always there but it was never really laid out clearly who this was. You could think he was a boyfriend, you could think he was a secretary, a manager or whatever you chose, but there he was.'
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1950s Lean Years
Jorge returned often to Cuba during these years. There were recitals for Pro-Arte Musical, or performances as soloist with the Havana Filarmonica under Erich Kleiber, Artur Rodzinski, his compatriot José Echaniz, the British conductor Eric Simon, and his own brother Alberto.
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In 1988, Jorge ruminated about Serge Koussevitzky and the element of luck in a pianist’s career. Koussevitzky was a legendary conductor, born in Vyshny Volochyok, Russia in 1874, and a powerful force in the world of American music until his death in Boston in 1951.
in 1950, Jorge had flown from New York to Havana (while en route to Caracas) to visit his mother and sisters.
The Havana Philharmonic performed on Sunday mornings and Koussevitzky was conducting one such morning concert. Jorge was a guest of the President of the orchestra Board, Dr. Armando Coro and his wife Margot, who were lifelong friends. Lunch was at a country house outside Havana, and Bolet played for the conductor. The piano was not in very good condition - ‘Pianos don’t last in the tropics'. After Haydn's F minor Variations, Koussevitzky exclaimed, ‘Such polish!’
He made a date at Tanglewood – the summer home of the Boston Symphony in Lennox, Massachusetts - for Bolet to perform Prokofiev’s second concerto, on 4 August. Koussevitzky had conducted the second concerto for the composer himself in 1926. But Bolet’s contract was cancelled because the orchestra had engaged Italian conductor Victor de Sabata on that day. And the next year Koussevitzky was dead.
Bad Day at Red Rocks
Hazards of the travelling life
Uncle Jorge
'He always kept in touch and visited my parents [David's mother being Bolet's sister Hortensia] every time he gave a concert in Miami or Fort Lauderdale, and that was almost every year in the 1970s. My older brother Joel stayed with him in New York City (Washington Square) many times in the 1950s. My brother Jorge and I stayed with him for a couple of days during my Christmas vacation, December 1962. That was a great experience; he lived in Palo Alto, up on the mountain side. I would lay on the floor next to the piano while he practised for hours (I was seventeen years old at the time).
David Sierra-Bolet
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On another occasion, in 1968 or 1969, I stayed with him in Bloomington, Indiana, where he was a piano teacher at the University of Indiana. At that visit he gave me the key to his car and hooked me up with a student who hooked me up with a very pretty, sexy, not too shy, Mid-Western girl. His sister Maria (known as Pepa) lived for many years in Spain and Tangier, where she was exiled by Franco. During that time tio (Uncle) Jorge saw her and I would guess help her. He had a vacation villa in San Sebastian (north coast of Spain).
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'I could share a torrent [of memories], even going back to my youth sitting in Havana's Auditorium flanked by grandma, my folks and others applauding the two uncles (Alberto conducting the Filarmónica, and Jorge at the piano).
One unforgettable program featured what few pianists would dare: 3 concertos, back to back! In the first half, a Mozart concerto (no. 22 or 23?), then the Schumann, and -- after the intermission -- Rachmaninoff's no. 3. The standing ovation at the end was short of apotheosic! Walking out of the theatre, my dad turned to his brother: "Ah, Jorge, why didn't you play an encore?" To which the soloist replied: "I just played 3 concertos. What else did they want? For me to cut my veins?" Later the same day my dad and I encountered the orchestra's concertmaster, who happened to live with his family in our same building.
His summary of the afternoon's concert? "Jorge is a monster!"'
Samuel Bolet
Airs of Spain, 1952
At some time during 1952 Bolet recorded some Spanish and Latin-American music for Boston Records, a new label in 1951, founded by the French horn player of the Boston Symphony, James Stagliano. The disc included music by de Falla, Albeniz and selections of Cuban composer Lecuona - ...Y la Negra Bailaba! and Danza de los Nañigos from his Danzas afro-cubanos. This release was announced in the Schwann Long Playing Record Catalog of December 1952. ​
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
In April 1953, after championing the work in concert, Bolet finally recorded Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor Op. 16 with the Cincinnati SO under Thor Johnson. The recording was released in December 1954.
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'The first-ever recording of Prokofiev’s malignant, ferociously demanding Second Concerto is of so much more than documentary interest.'
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Prokofiev composed his second piano concerto at the age of 21 while on winter break from his studies at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He had already established himself as something of a bad boy with his brilliant and original First Piano Concerto; with his second he sought to evoke darker, deeper emotions.
The result is one of the most technically difficult and fascinating piano concertos in the repertoire.
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The composition he called his Second Piano Concerto is first mentioned in his diaries in November of 1912. The revised version was performed on 5 May 1924 in Paris, with Sergei Prokofiev (piano), Sergei Koussevitsky (conductor).
West Germany
In the spring of 1954, Bolet became one of five American musicians invited for a four-week visit to West Germany as guests of the Federal Republic; this was the first time a foreign government had acted as host to American artists.  While in Germany, Bolet appeared as soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic.  ​
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Constance Keene (later to be the wife of Abram Chasins, who might be justly described as one of Bolet’s real musical mentors) wrote about the experience in The New York Times, 16 May 1954  The musicians embarked March 30 from Idlewild Airport (now JFK).  They were singers Carol Brice and Barbara Gibson, John Sebastian (harmonica), Constance Keene and JB (pianists).   ‘Although we had all trouped up and down the American continent, none had actually performed abroad.’ (Bolet had, of course, already done so)  There were visits to Munich, Bonn, Stuttgart, Köln/Cologne and Dusseldorf.  In Berlin they heard Wilhelm Furtwängler in Beethoven’s genial yet forward-looking Symphony No.2 in D major.  In Hamburg the actor Paul Linkman ‘thrilled us in Molière’s Georges Dandin’. Â
A report in the New York Times, 26 May, 1955 informs us that ‘Jorge Bolet, pianist, leaves today by air to play a series of eighteen concerts in Brazil and Argentina.’
Brazil and Argentina, 1955
A report in the New York Times, 26 May, 1955 informs us that ‘Jorge Bolet, pianist, leaves today by air to play a series of eighteen concerts in Brazil and Argentina.’
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On Monday 30 May 1955, Correio do Manhã announced a recital by Jorge Bolet that evening at 9pm at the Teatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro. This is Jorge's first visit to Brazil. ‘Jupiter Pluvius [the Roman king of the gods in his capacity as Rain-God - the reviewer for the Jornal do Brasil, Renzo Massarani obviously had a good Classical education] did his usual thing and from 8 o’clock there was torrential rain. 'That – or the fact that the name of Jorge Bolet was unknown to us – explains why in the Teatro Municipal we were not 10,000 or 5,000 but a shamefully small little group wishing him well.’
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Haydn, Andante con variazione
Beethoven, Sonata Les Adieux op. 81
Liszt, Sonata in B minor
Debussy, Préludes (La puerta del vino;
La terasse; Ondine; General Lavine)
Rachmaninov, Prelude Op.23 No.6 in E flat major
Prokofiev, Toccata
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​In Argentina, Jorge appeared first in Buenos Aires. The Asociación Wagneriana had organised his recital at 9:45pm on Monday 6 June at the Teatro Broadway, a few steps away from the Obelisco, on Avenida Corrientes (a street famed for its bookshops and often mentioned by the famous writer Jorge Luis Borges); it was repeated the next evening at 6 o'clock. The newspaper La Nación, 7 June 1955 reported that: 'Bolet impressed us with precision of technique and dextrous expressiveness, plus a range of sonorities, colour and artistic individuality rarely heard' (haciendo gala de un mecanismo técnica de precisión y agilidad poco frecuentes, fraséo claro y expresivo...).
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Jorge added "Gato" (1940), a lively, syncopated dance by an Argentinian composer Carlos Guastavino (1912-2000) to his programme, for a bit of local colour.
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​​'South Americans had assumed that the interests of North Americans were centred on automobiles, skyscrapers and modern science; the revelation of the United States as the centre of world music came
as something of a surprise'.
These were troubled times. In Buenos Aires in May 1955 there were massive riots. Roman Catholicism was being disestablished. The rioting was a climax to seven months of church-state hostilities which led to a government ban of the holiday procession of Corpus Christi (9 June).
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A massacre took place on 16 June 1955. Thirty aircraft from the Argentine Navy and Air Force strafed Plaza de Mayo in the largest aerial bombing ever on the Argentine mainland. The attack targeted the adjacent Casa Rosada ("The Pink House"), the official seat of government, while a large crowd of protestors gathered to demonstrate support for President Juan Perón. The action was to be the first step in an eventually aborted coup d'état.
Touring
Latin America
This video has sound
John LaMontaine, Piano Concerto 1958
Chicago-born composer John LaMontaine (who died in April, 2013 at his home in Hollywood, California aged 93) enjoyed the premiere performance of his first piano concerto - played by Bolet - which took place in Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C., on 25 November, 1958 He won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for the work the next year.
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‘I've had very, very great performers of my pieces including Leontyne Price, Jessye Norman, Jorge Bolet. You know, those are such great players that you don't need to talk about correct notes; you don't need to talk about correct rhythms. They're in the field of calculus, not of addition and subtraction. [...] I didn't hear all of Jorge's performances, but the one that I heard him do with (Charles) Munch and the Boston Symphony, I cannot imagine anything closer than that.' (In conversation with Bruce Duffie)
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In an interview with the Somerset Daily American, 27 November 1958 (Somerset, Pennsylvania), on the LaMontaine concerto, Jorge, who 'had on the loudest pair of socks ever spotted on a concert pianist' said: 'When I first heard it, I said, all those octaves are going to take a lot of carrots.'
Towards the Cuban Revolution
Graham Greene began his famous novel Our Man in Havana in October 1956. He arrived in Havana with Carol Reed to film, one week after publication, 6 October 1958. The dictator Batista was still hanging on by a shoestring. Captain Segura in the novel is based on Batista’s notorious chief of police, Ventura. In the old days, according to Greene in Ways of Escape, for $1.25 ‘one could see a nude cabaret of extreme obscenity with the bluest of blue films in the intervals’ at the Shanghai.
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On 2 December, 1956, Fidel Castro and the 26th of July Movement rebels had landed on Cuban soil with the intention of starting a revolution. Met by heavy Batista defences, nearly everyone in the Movement was killed, with merely a handful escaping, including Castro, his brother Raúl, and Che Guevara. For the next two years, Castro continued guerrilla attacks and succeeded in gaining large numbers of volunteers.
Using guerrilla warfare tactics, Castro and his supporters attacked Batista's forces, overtaking town after town. Batista quickly lost popular support and suffered numerous defeats. Finally, on 1 January, 1959, Fulgencio Batista would flee Cuba.
1959: Bolet leaves Cuba, never to return
After the Revolution, Bolet never returned to Cuba. He was an opponent of the régime and in an interview, perhaps over-dramatically, he claimed his life would not be safe if he returned.
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His brother Alberto also left. ‘In 1959 with Castro now in power, Alberto Bolet found out that he was to be arrested, his daughter Adela Maria Bolet recalled, adding that he 'wasn’t really a political figure, but he was a cultural icon'.
He fled to Britain, followed by his family, his daughter said, and later became the musical director of the Bilbao Symphony in Spain from 1963-1968 and musical director of the Long Beach Symphony from 1968 to 1978.
César Franck, Symphonic Variations
On 9 (a Friday afternoon) and 10 October 1959, Bolet played the Variations Symphoniques by César Franck with the Boston Symphony under Charles Munch in Symphony Hall. (In the first half he had played John LaMontaine's concerto, and Munch had conducted Haydn's Symphony No. 100 in G major, "The Military", ending the concert with Franck's Le Chasseur maudit.)
Jorge told friends that this 1959 performance of the Franck with Munch had been the finest concerto collaboration of his career - 'a meeting of minds'.
Michael Oliver reviews the late 1980s Decca recording