Jorge Bolet
1980-84
In the 1980s, the DECCA recording company and enterprising producer Peter Wadland came to the rescue.
From 1983 onwards they issued a series
of recordings, principally of the music of Liszt, setting down a large section of Bolet's repertoire and leaving an invaluable legacy.
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Tex Compton, manager and partner since the early 1940s, died on 9 December 1980. 'His death created both a breathing space and an impossible gap, and Bolet was left, once more, to search for someone who could attend to the practicalities of his life and fully engage with a nature at once imperious and submissive. Such considerations may seem both marginal and intrusive, but they are vital to an understanding of a pianist who reached out in his playing to communicate in a manner he found exceptionally difficult off-stage.'
(Bryce Morrison 1997)
'When Tex died in 1980, times were very difficult for Jorge. Huge medical bills, poorly booked itineraries - Tex, during his illness, could not take care after these things. At that moment Mac Finley stepped in, making many changes and actually accelerating Jorge' career tremendously.
(Mattheus Smits)
R.R. has the following reminiscence. ‘One afternoon in early 1981, we met by chance in London, in fact almost bumping into each other in the shop Fortnum & Mason [a luxury emporium famous for its grocery at 181 Piccadilly, where it was established in 1707]. Surprised and delighted, we made a date for dinner together that night. I took him to one of my favourite fish restaurants, which was also to his liking. With great excitement he announced to me that he had signed an important contract with the Decca label to record Liszt. It was, naturally, a task of several years, and he told me about it honestly.
They talked about his Godowsky disc. 'And I assured him that Godowsky's No. 25 (on Chopin's Op.25, nº1) was, in his hands, a unique gem, "the jewel in the crown". Jorge smiled at my enthusiasm. He probably already knew.'
'His face changed when I asked about Tex, and he looked at me with downcast face.' Tex death the previous year in San Francisco had left at one and the same time breathing space and a great void in Jorge’s life ('un respiro y un gran vacío en la vida de Jorge'). 'He told me sadly that in the last weeks, when he visited the clinic, he did not recognise him. "Imagine that, after living together for nearly forty years."'
Bolet & the two Chopin Piano Concertos
On Friday/Saturday, 21/22 March 1980, Jorge played Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor Op.11 with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under the young Japanese conductor Kazuhiro Koizumi
(who was making his debut with the orchestra) in Music Hall, Cincinnati, Ohio. It was a remarkable performance.
Telemann/Reger
On 29 February-2 March1980 in London's Kingsway Hall Bolet had set down Reger’s Telemann variations for DECCA alongside the much more famous Brahms-Handel ones.
Max Harrison in Gramophone (November 1981) wrote:
‘Though probably a less central contribution to twentieth-century piano music than his Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Bach, Op. 81 of ten years earlier, Reger's Telemann set is a magnificent work. The quickest way to dispel any surviving notions of Reger's supposed turgidity is to hear Bolet in, say, the first half-dozen variations. Written at the beginning of the First World War and premiered at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on March 14th, 1915 by Frida Kwast-Hodapp, it was the composer's last major solo piano work and is in some ways even more monumental in effect than the Bach set. Bolet responds extremely well to this aspect of the music's character, all of its musical and pianistic problems are vanquished and the score is presented absolutely at full strength, cumulatively being quite overwhelming.'
'The greatest JB recording most people have never heard of, much less listened to.' (Alexander Arsov)
Jorge's special gift to Hamburg, March 1981
In a typically huge recital in Hamburg, Germany the following year, on 24 March 1981, Jorge appropriately included the Reger/Telemann.
BEETHOVEN: Sonata No. 31, Op 110 in A flat; REGER: Telemann Variations; LISZT: 3 Petrarch Sonnets, 47, 104, 123; MOZART/LISZT: Don Juan Fantasy.
'This only happens in Hamburg: you always follow the same names that have been known for decades. Bad luck for the American master pianist Jorge Bolet, who is only giving solo recitals here for the second season. The Great Hall of the Music Hall was half-empty again yesterday. But the connoisseurs in the hall gave him a great welcome.
'He had Reger's Telemann Variations on the programme as a special gift, 23 pieces of magic based on a minuet from "Tafelmusik". This gigantic work with the technically most brilliant fugue that has ever been written can probably only be mastered by a piano titan of the supersize of Bolet!'
Sabine Tomzig, Hamburger Abendblatt 25.3.1981
"A special gift..." Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767) had settled in Hamburg in 1721, where he became musical director of that city's five main churches.
Australia, July & August 1981
On Saturday, 11 July, Bolet flew on Qantas (via Honolulu) from San Francisco to Sydney.
He gave concerts in: Hobart (Tasmania), Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane
There was a solo recital in concert hall of Sydney Opera House on 15 August. The Sydney Morning Herald had a most memorable description: ‘Slowly striding on stage like some patriarchal walrus, then bending over the keyboard with the statuesque immobility of an Easter Island idol, Jorge Bolet presents a monumental image. His first notes announce mastery. He commands a wonderful kaleidoscope of tone and his technical security has come a long way since we first heard him here in 1965.'
The tour continued with a Newcastle recital) and then 19-26 (in Sydney with East German maestro Kurt Sanderling). A valuable film of Liszt's first piano concerto in Sydney Opera House on 25 August can be seen in the link below. 'A colossal concentration of power... Here was one pianist able to win any tussle of strength with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.' (Fred Blanks)
JB was travelling with his business affairs manager Mac Finley, and the nephew of his former partner, also - confusingly - called "Tex" Cummings. On 30 August, Jorge departed Sydney for Singapore on Qantas. On 2 September, he took a flight from Singapore to Bangkok - as a keen photographer, Jorge took photos of the city's distinctive klongs, canals, which are in the Bolet archive in Maryland - and thence to Hong Kong.
DECCA and Liszt
It was in November of this year (1981) that Jorge recorded his first Liszt pieces in the Kingsway Hall, London for the Decca series (music which turned out to be Vol. 2 Liszt/Schubert songs, one of the finest of his recordings.
The producer of that recording was Michael Haas and the date was 24-27 November, 1981 Kingsway Hall.
It was issued in November 1983.
And in February 1982 (and later, in September) Bolet recorded for Decca the material that would constitute volume 1 of his Liszt series, the first recording I ever owned of JB, bought just when it was issued in March 1983.
Producer: Peter Wadland
17-19 February, 1982 Kingsway Hall, London
Liszt, Funérailles S173/7
Hungarian Rhapsody S244/12
Rigoletto - paraphrase de concert S434
Mephisto Waltz No.1 S514
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What might have been...
The reason the recording never took place is because Ms de Larrocha's husband was very sick and she decided to cancel all her commitments (from June 1982) to be by his side. He passed away on 9 August of that year.
Masterclasses for BBC Scotland
On 27 February 1983, Jorge performed Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 in the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, with the BBC Scottish SO and Bryden "Jack" Thomson, a twinkling Scottish conductor with a witty turn of phrase. This would be broadcast on BBC television in the summer of 1983, as the culmination of three programmes of masterclasses on the concerto (which were presumably recorded around the same time).
In the introductory programme, JB was interviewed by Robin Ray (1934-1998), an English broadcaster, actor, and musician, famous among other things for an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Köchel numbers of Mozart works, which he displayed on a popular Sunday evening music panel show Face The Music. The theme music for the show was the Popular Song from the Façade suite by Sir William Walton (who was a guest on the programme in his 70th birthday year).
Jorge himself was also a guest on the programme which went out on Sunday afternoon, 2 December 1984. The role of the BBC is bringing Jorge Bolet to a wider international public was considerable.
“Four television appearances can do for
an artist what music critics fail to achieve
in twice as many years”
There was a BBC 2 broadcast on 13 August at 7:40 pm of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No 3 in D minor Op. 30, with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Bryden Thompson. It had been recorded before an invited audience in the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, earlier in the year on 27 February.
In the previous few weeks there had been masterclasses on BBC television from Edinburgh on the concerto which brought Bolet considerably wide publicity in the UK. The programmes set the seal upon the DECCA Liszt volume 1 which had appeared earlier in the year to a very favourable review in Gramophone by Max Harrison. Students included Barry Douglas from Belfast, Ira Levin, USA and Jose Feghali, Brazil
Photo: Edinburgh (Kenny Lam)
Rigours of the touring life
The Royal Academy of Art, London had put on a show, “The Great Japan Exhibition, Art of the Edo Period 1600 – 1868” (October 1981 - February 1982). It was a significant and unprecedented event in UK-Japanese cultural relations. According to the Royal Academy’s Annual Report of 1982, it was the most comprehensive exhibition ever devoted to its subject, even in Japan itself.
Bolet talks of failing to see it, and gives an interesting insight into the life of a touring musician.
St John Smith Square, London 1983
On 28 February, Jorge gave a recital in St. John’s, Smith Square, London, which included Mendelssohn, Fantasy Op. 28 in F sharp minor (‘Scottish’), Chopin’s Third Sonata and the Kreisler/Rachmaninov lollipops.
Joan Chissell, in a review from a more gracious age, said in The Times [1.3.83] that the presto section of the Mendelssohn was, on this occasion, ‘very much the province of elves, sprites and hobgoblins. Mr Bolet did the composer a real service’. On the Chopin, she said that ‘it was a reading of mature years, of someone recollecting emotion in tranquillity, but doing so with quite exceptional keyboard authority as well as musical sympathy’.
‘Notes [were] thrown off in Liebesleid like sea spray caught in sunlight...and the ‘richer melodic succulence’ of Liebesfreud was achieved ‘without textural clotting.'
Hear the magic which Ms Chissell was describing from a later London performance at St John's Smith Square, June 1987 (the DECCA recording of these two gems is slightly constrained by comparison).
South America
On 14 and 16 June 1983, Jorge performed Rachmaninoff's third concerto in the Teatro Municipal, Santiago de Chile, with Juan Pablo Izquierdo and the Orquesta Filarmónica de Santiago. This may have been his first appearance in the country. A review of the concerto by Federico Heinlein in El Mercurio said that Bolet and Izquierdo 'took the Teatro Municipal by storm'.
Next, Jorge was in Brazil during July. On Friday 29th, he gave a recital in the Cine-Teatro Embaixador, Gramado (Rio Grande do Sul). Saturday was for chamber music (Schubert's Trout Quintet) with cellist Peter Dauelsberg and violinist Viktoria Mullova - who had just sought asylum in the West - and on Sunday 31 he played one of the two concertos by Brahms with the Orquestra Sinfônica de Porto Alegre with conductor Eleazar de Carvalho, the driving force behind the festival.
Gramado is 'like a Swiss mountain village – boutiques sell avant-garde glasswork and gourmet chocolate, local restaurants specialise in fondue, hotels are decked out like Swiss chalets'.
[Lonely Planet Guide]
“It has come late, but it has finally arrived”
Friday, 30 March 1984 in Fairbanks, Alaska in the Hering Auditorium. Fairbanks Daily News Miner (22 March) had already announced the imminent arrival of the 'Cuban-born superpianist. Jorge Bolet is definitely a one man show.'
Fairbanks is the second-largest city in Alaska (after Anchorage), and its origins can be traced to the founding of a trading post by E.T. Barnette on the south bank of the Chena River on 26 August, 1901. Gold had been found.
A later report in the same newspaper (October 1984) says that Jorge Bolet is performing 150 times this season and has signed a contract to open a new hall in Köln/Cologne, West Germany in 1987. 'I've had a frustrating career in many ways. It has come late, but it has finally arrived.
In May/June 1984 there was a tour of South America (as stated by Bolet on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in March 1985 when discussing the thousand of miles travelling he does every year).
Bolet's strangest recital venue
Another BBC masterclass
It was also in July 1984 that Jorge spent a week teaching one of the most well-known and loved concertos in the piano repertoire, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No 2 in C minor. Students included Katheryn Stott. On Sunday 15 Dec 1985, as the culmination to masterclasses, workshops and discussions on the work, Michael Oliver introduced a performance of Rachmaninoff's Concerto played by Jorge Bolet with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Paavo Berglund, probably also recorded in 1984. There is a valuable video of a section of the rehearsal.
Hilary Boulding, who produced the programmes, has written:
"When JB arrived in the studio in Edinburgh for the second series he was very relaxed. I had selected the same camera and sound crew so that he felt at ease.
"He had boundless energy – at the end of recordings he would sit at the piano and talk about pianists he had met, telling stories about the quirks of their playing. He described seeing Rachmaninoff play when he (JB) was young. And he would demonstrate all sorts of features about different piano pieces. He was most at ease at a keyboard."
Peter Wadland, JB's producer for DECCA
'In the USA, he played a Baldwin while in Europe he played a Bechstein, right up until 1987, when he changed to a Baldwin also. Having watched him playing for hours, I understood why he did not like playing a Steinway. In his opinion the soft pedal changed the tone of the instrument too much.
'During his playing, he kept both feet on the pedals, using the 'soft' pedal as much as the sustaining pedal. This helped to produce his very individual sound for the instrument. I was always amazed at how the keyboard shifted from side to side constantly when performing.
'I have to say that we did tend to have problems with the Bechstein. There was only one instrument then in London, and every time it appeared for a recording, it had been reserviced in Germany and returned in a different state. It was very lucky that I had the good fortune of employing Michael Lewis (son of the late Richard) and Denijs de Winter, both of whom Jorge adored, to tune and maintain the piano during recording sessions.'
Gramophone, January 1991
‘One of the most memorable occasions was when I took Jorge to an Emil Gilels (great Russian pianist) concert around 1984, at the Royal Festival Hall. At the end, he asked me if I knew Gilels. I did not, but felt sure that there would be some backstage who could introduce him. My main worry was that I thought Gilels would have no idea who he was. My fears were unfounded, for on introduction, Gilels kept embracing Jorge, exclaiming "Jorge Bolet—great. pianist", to which Jorge replied "So are you". It was a peculiar sight, with big Jorge (he was over six foot tall) being embraced by the diminutive Gilels.'
Liszt, Volume 3
Hilary Finch reviewed Liszt volume 3 (recorded in September 1982) in March 1984 for The Times.
'Jorge Bolet continues his homage to Liszt, turning now to a big-framed, grandiloquent performance of the B minor Sonata. This is not a reading which, like [Chilean pianist Claudio] Arrau's for instance, has steeped itself for long, dark hours in the Faust legend; rather it gives a lovingly perceptive understanding of how quintessentially pianistic inspiration gives shape to musical evolutionary ideas. No less rich in bright Bolet detail - and revealing him now as a white-jacketed entertainer - are the Valse Impromptu and Grand Galop.'