The End

'It turned out we were listening at the time to two of the last concerts of Jorge Bolet, who was discovered in Turkey in the autumn of his life'

Cumhuriyet (the oldest daily Turkish newspaper), 31 October 1990

"No light, but rather darkness visible"

John Milton, Paradise Lost 1.63

'It was during his 1987 New York season that we noticed his weight loss and increasing instances of inconsistent and/or uninvolved playing. That gorgeous Bolet sound was still there, but the ecstasy, poetry, and seemingly inexhaustible reserves of strength and power often gave way to introspection and caution. Interrupting another hundred-plus concert season to have minor surgery performed by his lifelong friend, Dr. Richard Carlson, it fell to Dr. Carlson to tell Bolet on 7 December 1988, the results of the HIV test required by the State of California whenever an invasive surgery was performed. Jorge was silent for a long moment and then looked at his friend directly and asked one question: “What do I need to do to stay active for as long as possible?”

For several months there was no question of resuming his tour, but in the spring he did return to his full schedule, recitals in the U.S. and Europe, solo recordings of two Chopin sonatas, a group of nocturnes, and the two concertos with his old friend Charles Dutoit in Montreal, this last a particular source of stress. He had performed the Chopin E Minor Concerto many times over two decades, but had never gotten around to learning the F Minor. Now he had committed not only to record it, but to play it in a half a dozen concerts. Given those circumstances, it is astonishing the Chopin F Minor Concerto recording came off surprisingly well, but the Chopin sonatas and nocturnes, and two Liszt concertos (with Georg Solti and the London Philharmonic) were not released. Bolet’s New York recital had been postponed once and there were rumors from Europe of embarrassing recitals, including one in which he retired with a halting apology, unable to return after intermission.'
Francis Crociata in the booklet for Marston CDs Volume 2

Debussy, Préludes

A selection of Debussy's Préludes was recorded 21-23 September 1988, in Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco. Jorge played 16 of the 24 of the Preludes; when the disc was issued in November 1989, Gramophone summed it up: "To judge from this issue, at any rate, this fine artist is not heard at anything like his best in this repertory."

One has, of course, to remember that Bolet was by now seriously ill. 'The last solo recording, the Debussy Preludes, was produced at a point where he was critically ill and was withdrawn from the catalogue soon after his passing. The idea that he was trying to approach the music from a more studied and calculated position is outrageous. I knew him well, and passion was everything to him. The deliberate tempi were a symptom that all was not well with him. Please do not do this disservice to one of the last of the great "Romantic tradition" pianists by repeating the complaints of listeners who choose to assume the worst rather than to recognize that factors beyond his control were gnawing at his very fiber!'

(Morley Grossman, Edinburg, TX USA, in reply to a reviewer on Amazon)

Istanbul, Turkey: June 1988

Bolet gave two concerts in the great Turkish city, once Byzantium, famously Constantinople and since 1930, Istanbul. He gave recitals on 21 and 23 June in the Büyük Salonu (Large Hall) of the Atatürk Cultural Center, at 9.30pm.

The recital included Mendelssohn, Beethoven's Sonata "Appassionata" Op.57, F Minor No: 23, Franck's Prelüd, Koral ve Füg (as Turkish refers to the Prelude, Choral and Fugue) and Bellini/Liszt, Reminiscences de Norma.

'Although Bolet didn't play Liszt in the movie (Song Without End), he has the type of features that would make him convincing in any historical movie, just as if he played the Viceroy of India of the Great British Empire in a good film. We learned that Bolet will go on a 15-day photo safari in Kenya and Tanzania when his tour in Europe ends.'

Cumhuriyet (the oldest daily Turkish newspaper) carried an obituary 31 October 1990, muses wistfully that 'It turned out we were listening at the time to two of the last concerts of Jorge Bolet, who was discovered in Turkey in the autumn of his life by giving two piano recitals during the International Istanbul Festival in June 1988 in our country.'

Tokyo, November 1988

On Wednesday, 2 November, 1988: Suntory Hall, Tokyo, Japan, Jorge gave a recital.

Liszt: Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude, S.173 No.3 (from Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses), Piano Sonata in B minor, S.178, Six Consolations, S.172 and Réminiscences

de Norma (Bellini), S.394

A week later, Jorge performed Rachmaninoff's Third Concerto on 9 November with the NHK Symphony under David Atherton in Tokyo's NHK Hall. The concert also included Berlioz's overture Les Francs-juges Op. 3 and Messiaen's Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum. This was his third visit to the Land of the Rising Sun, the second being in May 1976, his first trip there since after the second world war.

Marcel Grilli in The Japan Times states that the Rachmaninoff was 'sensitively shaped and phrased', which might be a generous way of saying Jorge was not on best form. He doesn't look well in the video of the concert.

London and Holland, 1989

And we have to end with London's Royal Festival Hall where - along with Barbican - I heard Jorge Bolet play many times in the second half of the 1980s. On Sunday 5 February 1989, Jorge gave what turned out to be his last solo London recital. I was in the audience.

On 23 March, 1989, Jorge gave a recital in the Vredenburg, Utrecht (Holland). This was the last performance he gave in Holland, the country where his European career under the direction of the great impresario Dr de Koos had begun all those years ago, in May 1935.

'For Jorge's last concert in Holland, Marco Riaskoff, the successor of concert agents Geza de Koos and Silvio Samama, organised a car to bring us from Amsterdam to Utrecht and then back. Our driver was the Dutch journalist Tonko Dop. His car was so small that Jorge could hardly fit into the front seat, and I was stuck in the back. The weather was extremely bad. Raining cats and dogs. After the concert, we went back to Amsterdam and on arriving at Jorge's hotel, he asked me to thank Tonko Dop for the drive. Jorge left the car and I had a few minutes’ chat with Tonko Dop. When I sought to catch up with Jorge, he was nowhere to be seen. Not in his room, nor in the hotel, nor in the streets! Even with the support of the people from the hotel, Jorge was nowhere to be found. He had simply vanished, afraid to say goodbye, knowing that there would be a chance we would never see each other again.'

(Mattheus Smits)

A New York Farewell

On Sunday, 16 April, 1989, Jorge gave - again as it turned out - his final recital in Carnegie Hall. He began with Liszt's Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude (1848-1853), following this with Schubert's Piano Sonata in A Major, D. 959 (1828). Then some Schubert/Liszt songs and ending with Wagner's Overture to Tannhäuser, S. 442 (1848 arr. Franz Liszt).

Reviews of the New York performance were very positive. Bolet's long-time Decca producer Peter Wadland said that while the London performance was patchy (and he apologised to Peter afterwards), the New York recital was one of his best.

On 25-26 May 1989, the two Chopin concertos were recorded in St. Eustache, Montreal with Charles Dutoit. Francis Crociata has explained that Bolet had had to learn the second concerto (F minor) for this recording as he did not have it in his active repertoire. He would, probably, have been much happier adding the Rachmaninoff's Paganini Rhapsody to the 'second side' of this disc

Carnegie Hall, 16 April 1989

1986 The Liszt Anniversary Year

This year marked the 175th anniversary of the birth and the 100th anniversary of the death of Franz Liszt (1811-1886).

The great Austrian pianist Alfred Brendel defended Liszt's music in several centennial tributes. The most important of these, The Noble Liszt, maintains that Liszt and Haydn are two of the most frequently misunderstood major composers.

'In old age, Haydn reigned over the musical world as its undisputed leading light. For this, the nineteenth century punished him - as it punished Liszt for his undisputed supremacy as a performer.'

Among awards to prominent Lisztians, those presented on behalf of the Hungarian People's Republic

(Magyar Népköztársaság) during 1986 deserve special mention. At a reception in Washington, D. C., Franz Liszt Commemorative Medals were awarded to fifteen performers, scholars, and editors - among them Jorge Bolet, André Watts, Fernando Laires, Frank Cooper, Maurice Hinson, and the British scholar Alan Walker, who had recently written a definitive biography in 3 volumes.

Death

On 8 June 1989 in Berlin, Jorge gave his last public recital. Obviously many subsequent concerts had to be cancelled. Publicity material for the 1989/90 season had included a 75th birthday Australasian Tour in October 1989.

A year later the pianist passed away at his home in Mountain View (25 Toro Court, Portola Valley), California on Tuesday afternoon, 16 October 1990, at the age of 75. The cause of death was heart failure, said his personal manager, Mac T. Finley. 'But Mr. Bolet had been in declining health since late 1988 and had a brain operation in the summer of 1989 from which he never fully recovered.'

'A copy of Mr. Bolet's death certificate is in the Jorge Bolet Collection at the International Piano Archives-University of Maryland. Cause of death is given, simply, as AIDS. The pianist learned he was HIV positive in December 1988-- a little under 2 years before his passing.' [Francis Crociata]

In Jorge's last months, pianist and devoted friend Teresa Escandon was once by his bedside as he listened to his Carnegie Hall recital of 1974. (He used to spend holidays in Mantanzas, Cuba, with relatives who were friends of her mother, as the Nuevo Herald, Miami 23 January 2008 informs us.)

Teresa cried, but Jorge said, 'No llores. No te acuerdas del Salmo?' ("Don't cry. Don't you remember the Psalm?") And she remembered:

"Ponme como sello sobre tu corazon,

porque el amor es fuerte como la muerte."

"Set me as a seal upon thine heart, <as a seal upon thine arm>

for love is strong as death... "

[Song of Solomon 8, v.6 in the King James Bible of 1611]