Amelia Solberg de Hoskinson had “a very beautiful old townhouse in the older part of Havana, and once a month she held a real typical nineteenth-century salon... I think I must have been ten years old the first time I was invited.

“At one of these salons, a Mrs Campbell from Erie, Pennsylvania, took special notice of my work. When she returned to Erie, she sent Amelia a newspaper clipping touting the Curtis... founded two years before in 1925 [actually 1924] by Mary Louise Curtis Bok and endowed with twelve and one-half million dollars.

“Amelia wrote the Curtis Institute and received a catalogue and an audition blank and called my mother and told her that ‘Jorge is going to Philadelphia for an audition'.”

Birth

Cuba is the largest island in the Antilles archipelago.

Jorge Leopoldo Bolet Tremoleda was born in Havana, on 15 November 1914, the son of Antonio Bolet Valdés and Adelina Tremoleda de la Paz.

Jorge had two sisters, Maria Josefa (1904-1991) and Hortensia Adelina (1911-1981) and three brothers, Joaquin Antonio/Nico (1902-1982), Alberto (1905-1999) and Guillermo (1919-2013).

Jorge's mother said that as a baby of 2 or 3 months he was unruly but when he heard Maria, his sister, play the piano, he became quiet.'

Education

‘My childhood was like that of any other boy. There were no picturesque or striking episodes.’

Jorge began piano lessons with sister Maria. (He said in an interview in 1943 that he was seven years old at the time.) He then had some lessons, briefly, with María Jones de Castro and Hubert de Blanck. Hubertus Christiaan de Blanck (1856-1932) was a Dutch pianist who lived most of his life in Cuba. He founded a conservatory of music in Havana in 1885.

The first pianist Jorge heard

It was around 1919, that - as a five year old boy - Jorge heard his first professional pianist, the Swiss-American Rudolf Ganz at the National Theatre in Havana. 'Well, that was my moment of decision. I vowed I'd be that man up there on that stage.'

Ganz (1877-1972), a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni, intriguingly claimed direct descent from Charlemagne, king of the Franks and Christian emperor of the West who died in AD 814 after having done much to define the shape and character of medieval Europe.

The Havana newspaper Diario de la Marina, 5 April 1921 reported that the eminent Swiss pianist had returned to Havana for a second visit after great success in Paris. (André Gresse said that his performance of Saint-Saëns' fifth piano concerto was the best he'd ever heard in the French capital.) 'Ganz will offer six recitals this winter (November-April) in Havana, after arriving on Sunday 10 April.'

'Jorge once told me that from his first hearing of Ganz, Ganz also taught him that a pianist should have a moustache!' (Mattheus Smits). The young budding pianist 'was attentive to concert artists performing in Cuba. The first major figure to have made a lasting impression was Wilhelm Backhaus (German, 1884-1969)'.

Francis Crociata

Discovery

Aged about nine or ten, Jorge played in the

old-fashioned salon in Havana of Mrs Amelia Solberg de Hoskinson, a Cuban married to an American who worked for the Tropical Engineering and Construction Company.

A house guest, Mrs Maud H Campbell (sister-in-law to Amelia) from Erie, Pennsylvania contacted the Curtis Institute of Music which had just opened in Philadelphia in 1924, and Mrs Hoskinson organised finance for Jorge's trip to an audition.

A photo of Jorge in Diario de la Marina, 14 August 1927

Farewell

There were two benefit concerts to help finance Jorge’s trip. The first was on Friday 13 August 1926 in the Teatro Principal de la Comedia, Havana. The organiser was Maria Jones de Castro, and the event involved performances by her pupils. (Bohemia magazine, 8 August 1926)

Jorge also performed; this included him tackling Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor K.466 with Mercedita Soler on second piano. It is interesting that all the names of the young participants, apart for Jorge, are female. He once say in interview that in Cuba the piano was an instrument for girls, the violin for boys.

At some stage, Jorge performed that same Mozart concerto in the Teatro Nacional with the Havana Sinfónica under Gonzalo Roig, co-founder of the orchestra in 1922 and a pioneer of the symphonic movement in Cuba. He was described in the newspapers as 'a talented 12 year old boy'. In the Mozart, ‘his playing was so clear - his marvellous ability coupled with his boyish grace touched the heart of the audience'.

A year after that first benefit concert, on Sunday 4 September 1927 at 10am in the Gran Teatro Nacional, there was an even larger affair, 'a concert for the benefit of the young Jorge Bolet, so that with the receipts he can go to complete his piano studies in the United States'.

Various artists performed in the first half, including the famous pianist-composer Ernesto Lecuona, many of whose works have become standards of the Latin, jazz and classical repertoires - these include popular tunes such as Malagueña and Siboney.

In the second half Jorge played various items: a Prelude (J.S.Bach/ de Blanck), a study by Henselt, Impromptus by Chopin, a Waltz by Levitzki, “Nocturno” (which is probably Liszt's Liebestraum 3),

the Allegro Appassionato by Saint-Saens, and then the Konzertstück by Weber with the Havana Symphony, again under Gonzalo Roig.

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