Jorge Bolet
Australia, Spring 1965
In March 1965 - autumn there - , Bolet arrived by Qantas at Sydney’s Kingsford Smith airport to begin a 14 week ABC concert tour of all the states of Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 March, 1965, reports that ‘he now lives in seclusion in a fishing village on the coast of Spain.’ This is his first visit Down Under. What follows is just a sample of his concerts.
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On Tuesday 4 May in Sydney Town Hall, Jorge played Brahms Concerto No.2 in B flat major Op.83 with Sydney Symphony under Finnish maestro Paavo Berglund (with whom Bolet will have a long association). The programme began with Sibelius' Pohjola's Daughter and his Symphony No. 4 in A minor Op. 63.
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The Sydney Morning Herald was quite critical. 'Bolet's performance was unquestionably massive - no suggestion here of a pianistic style and stamina too puny or retiring... But what musical, as distinct from athletic, pleasure was there in hearing the hard monotony of attack in all strenuous passages, the big bang-bang-bang of clattering virtuoso machinery? The soft passages were unmistakably soft but it was a softness illustrating a dramatic contrast rather than a positive quality in it. The lyricism in the slow movement failed to flow.'​​
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On 21 and 26 May 1965 at the Capitol Theatre, Perth, Jorge performed with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and Paavo Berglund.​ He also gave a solo recital there on 25 May.​ This heritage theatre on 10 Williams Street was demolished. There had been a bust of the late Rudolph Valentino in the foyer; reportedly the lips on Valentino's bust were constantly red with the adoring kisses of his Perth fans. From 1973 onwards the newly constructed Perth Concert Hall was the location.
Circular Quay, Sydney 1968
"This Guy Fawkes night music"
Felix Werder's wacky report in The Age, 19 May, 1965 is a delight. Bolet ‘opened a Lisztian box of tricks at last night’s [Melbourne] Town Hall recital’. Liszt’s 12 Transcendental Etudes ‘are a veritable stud of pianistic nightmares that enter the circus ring of virtuosity dressed in dazzling splendor and breath-taking bravura. Here one cannot speak of a performance: it is an act, a seemingly gaudy ritual, in which hands fly all over the piano, notes are juggled, left hanging in the air only to await the clash of that poised hand as it swoops for a thundering chord. All sensibility is buried under an avalanche of sound – almost a turbulent Nile flood... Dr. Bolet [sic] gave a fierce rendering of this Guy Fawkes night music... One may say, perhaps, that he is a great performer rather than a great artist. He gave some indication of his musical stature, however, in Beethoven’s Sonata No. 31 Op. 110... [but] for all his delicate touch, he failed to give depth to the tragic arioso dolente which he treated as a sort of Schubertian left-over... Three-quarters of the hall was empty, showing once again how concert promoters have lost touch with the musical needs of our community.’
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The author of the above Felix Werder [1922-2012] was a German-born Australian composer and noted critic; he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 1976.​​
Nights in the gardens of Spain, 1960s
Newspaper interviews occasionally refer to Jorge living on the northern coast of Spain in the 1960s. The place to which they refer is Fuenterrabia (Hondarribia, ‘sand ford’ in the Basque language), a colourful fishing village situated on the west shore of the Bidasoa River, just on the border with France, and also only half an hour away from San Sebastián. Some accounts suggest stayed there only for six years and that the house no longer exists. He once listed his address as Apartado 5, which is possibly a flat/ apartment in the building.
Jorge himself told a New Zealand journalist in 1964: 'At home, I have the beautiful Pyrenees and those charming Basque valleys'.. According to an interview with the Edmonton Journal, 21 February 1981, he still kept a house in Fuenterrabia.
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Elsehwere, he claimed that when he was old and no longer possessed the physical strength to play his present repertoire, he would then play a lot more Mozart. He also said that he had scarcely any time to visit his house in
the little fishing village in northern Spain, Fuenterrabia.
Fuenterrabia, northern Spain
The Boletín de la Sociedad Filharmónica de Bilbao (No.10, July 2009) has an article "Recuerdo de Jorge Bolet" by someone (signed R.R., female) who got to know Bolet and who had visited him in northern Spain in the spring of 1966. She states that he was living in the Villa Egoki, an attractive house in the Basque style overlooking the beautiful bay between Fuenterrabia and Hendaya. Is this to be equated with the address he gives in biographical dictionaries as ‘Apartado 5’? He lived there for, perhaps, 6 years in total with Tex Compton.
'I arrived at Villa Egoki with Alberto Bolet, and Rosita, his wife. Alberto was as chatty and outgoing as Jorge was quiet - he could almost seem taciturn and introverted. His height and build transformed him into a dark giant (‘gigante moreno’), endowed with a deeply penetrating gaze. I must confess that this penetrating but impenetrable look, and the fact that he did not say much, had an intimidating effect on me. Later I discovered that when he relaxed, behind those unfathomable eyes there lay hidden an affable, friendly personality and an intelligent conversationalist.
‘In Villa Egoki, Jorge lived with Tex Compton, an American who had sacrificed his own business career to concentrate his energies on helping Jorge achieve great success [...]’
‘Tex... was outgoing and friendly. When we arrived at Villa Egoki, he greeted us, smiling, warm and jovial. One might have thought he himself was the host. He prepared drinks and snacks in the garden, and he served an impeccable lunch. In the garden, peaceful and quiet, no kind of noise reached us, and the warm spring day was very nice. Jorge smoked a lot and spoke little, maybe because he knew what I could only guess - the tense relationship that existed between Tex and his brother. After coffee, we went to the living room, white from the carpet to the ceiling, where a black Bechstein grand paradoxically dazzled. Jorge sat at the piano and in that moment was transformed. He played several transcriptions, wonderful transcriptions by Godowsky of Schubert songs, plus the ballet music from Rosamunde, but offered the surprising confession that his secret dream was to play and record all Mozart's piano concertos.'
(He never recorded a single one.)
"More eagle than nightingale"
​Tuesday 17 November 1966 in the Auditorio Ministerio, Madrid. Chopin's four Ballades and Liszt's Sonata plus the Mephisto Waltz. (The concert was reviewed in ABC on 19.11.66). 'He has an enviable international career and possesses - as a fundamental virtue - a powerful sound. But this power is not an enemy of the quality of sound.
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Last September in San Sebastian (on the northern coast, about 14 miles from Fuenterrabia where Jorge lived), he was in extraordinary form playing Rachmaninov's 2nd concerto. He is a pianist more for Liszt than for Chopin, more Eagle than Nightingale; more capable of turning his piano into a huge orchestra than an instrument for small salons; 'de encender el entusiasmo en duelo con nutrida formación sinfónica, antes que comovermos con un claroscuro',
'[more able] to fire enthusiasm in a duel with a large symphony orchestra, than deal with chiaroscuro'.
The University of Indiana, Bloomington
During the years 1968 – 1977, beginning in September, Bolet was on the staff of the University of Indiana, Bloomington. This afforded him the security of a fixed income, and in his diaries for this period, he meticulously marks ‘Pay Day’. The minutes of the Board of Trustees of Indiana University, 20 September 1968, state the appointment of ‘Jorge Bolet as Professor of Music in the School of Music for the period of three academic years beginning in September, 1968, at an initial salary rate of $17,000.00 payable on a ten months' basis.’
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'I met [Bolet] in 1968 when he came to Bloomington, Indiana. His hiring by the school was prompted by the recommendations of Sidney Foster, (1917-1977) another Saperton student at Curtis. Foster and Bolet were childhood friends. They were 10 and 13 years old, respectively, when they met in Philadelphia. In 1968 Bolet was living in Fuenterrabia, Spain. Foster had been encouraging him to return to the US, thinking that his career prospects would improve back in this country...' Alberto Reyes (in correspondence)​
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Pianist Francisco Rennó, a student of Bolet at Bloomington, Indiana:
‘I first met Jorge Bolet in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1974 at the Teresa Carreño International Piano Competition, where I was one of the competitors and he served as chairman of the jury. Bolet was one of two people who made it possible for me to leave behind the impoverished conditions of my native Brazil, come to the US to acquire a proper musical education and eventually become a citizen and settle here as a professional musician. As you can imagine, my gratitude and admiration for the man go beyond words.
'During the two years that I was in his class in Bloomington I had the privilege of having many hours of one-on-one conversations with him, not only in the studio but also in several dinner parties at his place and mine. He and his manager Tex were delightful hosts (and guests), liked to eat well and they both loved my wife's cooking. After a few glasses of wine and some paella the stories and jokes would start to flow, he would relax and come out of his usually very stern public persona, and we would go late into the night laughing, listening to music, and having the best of times. My years in Bloomington were the best years of my life and Jorge Bolet played a big part in it.