Jorge Bolet
1976: South Africa & Japan
An advert for the Tokyo recital on 14 May of “First visit of keyboard giant to Japan” announces
the Wagner/Liszt Tannhäuser overture, rather than the Mozart/Liszt Don Juan Fantasy.
On 10 January 1976 Bolet left for a tour of South Africa, with concerts in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Windhoek (Namibia since March 1990), Pietermaritzburg, Durban, Salisbury, Rhodesia (from April 1980, Harare/ Zimbabwe). He flew back to the US on 20 February.
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Percy Tucker, Jorge's South African agent, was written about this. 'The return of Jorge Bolet [previously, in 1973] was a personal highlight of the year for me. He and Tex Compton stayed with me and Graham [Brian Dickason], and Jorge practised daily on the baby grand belonging to our then next-door neighbour, Anthony Farmer. Our townhouses bordered on a park where, every morning, people strolling or sitting in the open air revelled in what amounted to a free recital as Jorge went through his repertoire.'
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The Rand Daily News 28 January 1976:
'For piano students sorting out the complicated fingerings and phrasing of the Tausig transcriptions of Strauss waltzes we heard in the RAU auditorium (=Rand Afrikaans University, Braamfontein (English: blackberry spring, a central suburb of Johannesburg) on Monday night (26th), this type of music can be a nightmare; for Jorge Bolet it was a virtuoso's dream come true. The buoyant waltz rhythms and lilt-and-lift effects, marvellously conveyed by Bolet, added to the impression that Tausig had his tongue in his cheek
as he put fingers to keyboard and pen to paper.'
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The Rhodesia Herald reported on the recital (Saturday 14 February 1976, Valentine’s Day) in the Harry Margolis Hall, Salisbury - a visit in troubling times. ‘Rhodesia is ready for the worst of terror - we are undoubtedly one of the targets of the communists in Africa,’ announced Prime Minister Ian Smith.
The recital was an all-Chopin programme (Études Op.25 and the four Ballades); the Herald carried a hard-hitting review. ‘It was, I think, Cortot who observed that Chopin’s Studies are as inaccessible to the musician without virtuosity as they are to the virtuoso without musicianship. The key lies in a fine balance between that exultation in the new-found resources of the piano that Chopin so clearly felt, and their depth of poetic expression.
'To these decibel-assaulted ears, Jorge Bolet did not find that balance. There was plenty of evidence of a big technique, but where soft, light and even playing was called for, we were treated to lumpy phrasing, rhythmic squareness, tonal monotony and a bravera splashiness that, to those of us whose delight in the music's wonders is still undulled, were a travesty. In the event, one couldn't help regretting that those who sit in power over whom and what we are to hear…had not chosen the programme Bolet had given in Carnegie Hall two years ago. Far from suffering as I fear Chopin did, Liszt, Busoni and Tausig transcriptions gloriously find their raison d’être in this particular type of playing.’
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In a feature on 18 January in The Rand Daily, Mary Rorich wrote: 'You couldn't paint American pianist Jorge Bolet in watercolours or inks. You'd have to use oils, –dark, sombre colours, thickly applied – and make the picture a little larger than life. Because that's how he is. He has the air of well-being of a South American coffee tycoon.'
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Jorge was apparently the first classical concert pianist to play on South African television.
Japan, May 1976
On Saturday, 9 May, Bolet flew from San Francisco to Tokyo for recitals/concertos in Japan on 14, 19, 20, 21 and 22. This was the first time he had been back in Japan since 1946. He was to perform there again in 1988.
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On Friday 14 May, he gave a recital in the Bunka Kaikan Hall (Ueno Koen, Tokyo). The hall (built in 1961 in celebration of the five hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the mediaeval city of Edo, as Tokyo was formerly known) is in Ueno park, which is celebrated in spring for its cherry blossoms and hanami. High wind, however, had blown early blossoms off the cherry trees in Tokyo that April, but sufficient remained to give the city a springtime atmosphere.​
On Saturday, 9 May, Bolet flew from San Francisco to Tokyo for recitals/concertos in Japan on 14, 19, 20, 21 and 22. This was the first time he had been back in Japan since 1946. He was to perform there again in 1988.
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On Friday 14 May, he gave a recital in the Bunka Kaikan Hall (Ueno Koen, Tokyo). The hall (built in 1961 in celebration of the five hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the mediaeval city of Edo, as Tokyo was formerly known) is in Ueno park, which is celebrated in spring for its cherry blossoms and hanami. High wind, however, had blown early blossoms off the cherry trees in Tokyo that April, but sufficient remained to give the city a springtime atmosphere.
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​On this occasion, Jorge played:
Bach-Busoni: Chaconne
Chopin: 24 Preludes Op. 28
Liszt: Three Petrarca Sonnets (From "Italy", Second Year of "Year of Pilgrimage")
Mozart-Liszt: "Don Giovanni" Fantasia
On 19 and 20 May in Tokyo's NHK Hall in Shibuya, he performed Brahms' Piano Concerto No.2 in B flat op.83 with Wolfgang Sawallisch and the NHK Symphony Orchestra (who also played Schumann's 4th symphony)​. And on Friday evening, 21 May 1976 with the same forces, he played Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.3 in C minor op.37, repeating it at a concert the next afternoon.​
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In the Japan Times 23 May 1976 (SHOWA 51, the reign of Emperor Hirohito), Donald P Berger reports:
'In addition to Bolet's ability to thunder out the complex (at times overly complex) musical lines, his playing also exhibited a control of dynamics which brought the piano to the point of near inaudibility - a hushed whisper. In the Chaconne his immense power tended to cloud over many of the musical issues and imparted a certain heaviness to the music that seemed at times clumsy and intruded upon the clarity.
In the Mozart/Liszt Don Juan, he unleashed such a furious display of technical fireworks that you fully expected to see the piano collapse into a smouldering heap upon the stage.​
Joseph Marx, Romantisches Klavierkonzert
"A bear hug big enough to embrace Willy Wonka’s entire chocolate empire."
It was in 1976 that Joseph Marx's Romantic Piano Concerto in E major (1916-1919) was finally resurrected – and by Jorge who reported that he had discovered the score in a private music collection in the mid-seventies. The score was first performed by Marx himself in a version for two pianos in the summer of 1919 with the Trieste- born pianist Angelo Kessissoglu, who also performed the orchestral premiere in Vienna in January 1921, conducted by Ferdinand Löwe. The Romantisches Klavierkonzert was played in Austria and Germany throughout the 1920s - frequently by Walter Gieseking - but (perhaps because of the phenomenal difficulty of the solo part) it had disappeared from the repertoire by the mid 1930s.
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Over the following decade, Jorge performed his ‘favourite concerto’ with well-known orchestras all over the world, including Germany (Berlin, Hamburg, Hannover, Munich) and other parts of Europe - Vienna, Linz and Zagreb... ​​
Bolet himself described it as ‘a bitch of a work...Much as I like it, I have played it seldom. Although I’ve played it several times in Germany, I’ve only played it in New York in America with Mehta.’ He had looked at Castelli Romani by the same composer but felt it was more like Respighi’s Pines of Rome or Feste Romane than Marx. In the same interview he praised Ginastera’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and John Corigliano’s Piano Concerto – ‘a truly marvellous, wonderful work’.​
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The Marx Concerto - with the Bavarian Radio SO under Marek Janowski - was recorded – probably on 30/31 August 1982 (but only for radio transmission). There were also performances earlier that month in Avery Fisher Hall, New York with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic; there is a recording of the
4 May performance.
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'Still, the most memorable performance remains the enormous success at its legendary United States premiere with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta in 1976.' (Berkant Haydin)​​
Mexico, summer 1977
There was a tour of Central (and possibly South) America in July 1977. On Monday 4th, he gave a recital
in the Palacio de Bellas Artes, México City. He stayed in the Hotel Ritz, Calle Francisco i. Madero 30,
in the historic centre, near the Zócalo.
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The programme of the 4 July recital in the Palacio de Bellas Artes included familiar items for him,
Haydn sonata in E flat major, Schumann’s Carnaval, Liszt’s Sonnetti di Petrarca and Don Juan fantasy.
'The Cuban-American pianist was presented by [Conciertos] Daniel in a recital of works by Haydn, Schumann and Liszt. He has acquired a very particular style of execution that pleases some and repels others. Even in his piano technique he shows very personal traits.' (Heterofonía 56, México, Sept./Oct., 1977)
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Then on Tuesday 5th, he followed this with a Guadalajara recital in the Teatro Degollado, replacing an indisposed Horacio Gutierrez (a fellow Cuban pianist). There was another concert in Mexico City on Friday 8 July, then Jorge flew back on Saturday 9th to San Francisco.
February 1977 and a return to Great Britain
It is usually said that Bolet finally made a return to United Kingdom in 1977 for regular concerts, but he seems to have visited periodically in the 1970s, see for example October 1974. There was a Queen Elizabeth Hall recital on 17 February 1976. And on Friday 25 February, he played Rachmaninoff's 2nd concerto with the New Philharmonia and Yoav Talmi in the Royal Albert Hall (organised by Dutch impresario G. de Koos​)
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Joan Chissell in The Times writes this of the February recital: ‘As a comparative stranger on these shores, Jorge Bolet was not greeted by a large audience last night. In Paris in the 1830s and 40s, this kind of pianism must have been common enough with Liszt himself. Nowadays the emphasis has shifted from fingers to mind, from the instrument to the music itself, so of course such a feast of greased lightning runs and octaves, cascading arpeggios, wide skips and leaps and every other dazzling feat was spellbinding – the more so since Mr Bolet was so totally unostentatious in the way he threw everything off.
(‘He went a long way in disguising the fact that some of the Telemann/Reger is very dull.’)