Jorge Bolet
1936-1944
During the years 1936-39 there were concerts in USA, Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala, Dominican Republic. Bolet’s concerts in Havana were for Pro-Arte Musical, in the Lyceum,
the Anfiteatro, Teatro La Comedia and the Auditorium, with the Filarmonica and the Sinfonica.
On his return from Europe, he had gone back to Curtis, and among other things took two years
of lessons in conducting with Fritz Reiner (who had joined the faculty in 1931). Reiner said that Jorge was a wonderful pianist, but that he would never make a conductor
Fritz Reiner (1888-1963)
Fritz Reiner was a Hungarian born and trained conductor, who had emigrated to the United States in 1922, where he rose to prominence.
His job at Curtis was not onerous: he had only to undertake one conducting class (of two hours) a week. Some of his pupils included Leonard Bernstein and Lukas Foss, the latter fifteen years old “and still in kneepants”. Composer, Gian Carlo Menotti claimed to have learned more about how music was made in one Reiner rehearsal than in a month of composition lessons.
Reiner himself would reach the pinnacle of his career while music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the years 1953-63. The response he drew from orchestras was one of astonishing richness, brilliance, and clarity of texture, but it
was more often than not achieved with tactics
that bordered on the personally abusive.
Conductor Fritz Reiner...
or is it Hungarian Bela Lugosi
as Transylvanian Count Dracula?
Naumburg Prize
In April 1937, Jorge was awarded the Naumburg Prize. There were 55 international competitors and in the final 3 US pianists and Jorge Bolet. His sister Maria's letters suggest that the impresario Arthur Judson - 'the closest thing to a musical czar the United States ever had'
(Tim Page) - was now adding Bolet to his list (though Jorge seems to dispute this). The prize
of the Walter W. Naumburg Music Foundation competition was a recital in New York.
There is a review of that recital by Howard Taubman in The New York Times: Jorge's debut at Town Hall on Tuesday, 19 October 1937. ‘Jorge Bolet, 23-year-old Cuban pianist, made a striking debut yesterday afternoon, injecting excitement into a season that has leaned heavily thus far on mediocrity. Mr Bolet tended to be prodigal of his powers...several times he tore into the piano
as if he was about to dismantle it and astonishingly the resultant tone was rounded and pleasing in quality.’
His earliest recording
Young Jorge Bolet (aged 22) in the Casimir Hall, Curtis Institute (Wednesday, 9 December 1936)
This is a very rare recording. On 9 December, Jorge Bolet, pianist, was guest in the Curtis Institute “Hour”. The programme featured works of Franz Liszt, commemorating the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of the pianist-composer's birth and the fiftieth anniversary of his death. 'Mr. Bolet, who is a graduate in piano under Mr David Saperton, opened the concert with Liszt's Fantasie and Fugue in G minor on a Bach Chorale. Barbara Thorne, soprano, pupil of Miss Harriet van Emden, then sang Es muss ein Wunderbares sein, Du bist wie eine Blume, and Die Lorelei, with Ethel Evans, pupil of Mr Harry Kaufman, at the piano." [Overtones magazine]
Returning to the piano, Mr. Bolet played Liszt's Liebestraum, Waldesrauschen, Valse impromptu, and La Campanella, [in a version with additions by Busoni?] which brought the concert to
a conclusion.
Philadelphia Orchestra & Ormandy 1938
On a February afternoon, Friday 4th and on the following Saturday and Tuesday, Jorge made his first appearance with the Philadelphia Orchestra (in its 38th season) and its famous conductor Eugene Ormandy in the Academy of Music. The programme began with Menotti, Amelia Goes to the Ball (overture). Then Jorge played Rachmaninoff’s third piano concerto.
Edwin H. Schloss in The Philadelphia Inquirer states that this was ‘an unusually fine performance of the difficult concerto – which is a nice work if you can get it. Yesterday’s soloist did get it and beautifully.’ He mentions a ‘silken touch, luxuriously rippling technique and (best of all) a head and heart... greatest of ease and the best of good taste.’ The concerto is ‘super-Muscovitish’ in its plaintive mood and Tchaikovskian glamour which makes it a work easily cheapened into sentimentality by Grade B keyboard exhibitionists. ‘Young Bolet avoided that bog.’ The only possible 'rife in the lute' was the fear that young Bolet does not seem to have acquired ‘a tone of sufficient force and resonance to match his other equipment’.
Leopold Godowsky, that arch-magus of the keyboard, died on 21 November 1938 in the Lennox Hill Hospital, New York City. Jorge was to continue to champion his works for the
rest of his career, making a notable recording of a selection of the arrangements of Chopin’s études and waltzes for DECCA on its L'Oiseau-Lyre label in 1977.
Bolet and Sibelius
Josef Hofmann Award
On 10 May 1940, Bolet was awarded the Josef Hofmann Award by his alma mater, Curtis.
It was given to the pianist 'who, over and above his technical proficiency, has, in the practice of his art, arrived at spiritual and artistic maturity. Such an award is deemed worthy of the master whose name it is to bear.' A recital was the reward, and this took place on Tuesday, 29 October 1940 at Town Hall, New York City.
Assistant to Rudolph Serkin
The eighteenth season of Curtis opened on 6 October 1941. The new director was the famous Russian-born violinist Efrem Zimbalist (1889-1985). On the piano staff were: Rudolf Serkin, Isabelle Vengerova, Mieczyslaw Munz, Jeanne Behrend, Freda Pastor and Eleanor Sokoloff and Jorge Bolet.
In the winter of 1940 Rudolf Serkin, who had become Head of Piano at Curtis in 1939, found himself suffering from an attack of boils on his fingers and the infection by early spring was deep enough and painful enough to require surgery. Bolet took over some of his teaching.
Manuel de Falla, 1942
In the Auditorio, Havana, Bolet played Spanish music on Monday 12 January 1942 with the Havana Philharmonic under Massimo Freccia, an Italo-American conductor who died at the grand old age of 98 in 2004.
Turina, Sevillana, de Falla, Fire Dance, and Noches en los jardines de España with Bolet as soloist. The evening ended with Albeniz’s Iberia Suite (two pieces, Evocacion & Triana, in 'the marvellous orchestration' of Fernández Arbós from the original piano version). The concert was reviewed in Noticias de Hoy by the flamboyant critic known as "Custodio" who began dramatically by claiming that 'Manuel de Falla is the Goya of music'.
"Bolet made a pleasing impression. With youthful impetus and spirit, endowed with strong and manly 'fingerwork', and a promising personality, he showed that he had understood the work, in which the piano is but a distinguished companion of the orchestra."
Among the eminent patrons listed in the programme that January evening in 1942 was Amelia Solberg de Hoskinson, the benefactor in whose salon Jorge had first made a name for himself in 1927.
Who is he?
Raymond Fayette Stover, 1894-1979, crops up a lot in Jorge's biography at this time. He was born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, into a wealthy family, and as a world traveller, lived off private means. During the First World War he served in the Royal Flying Corps. He toured the world including Africa and the Arctic, and made more than 50 Atlantic crossings - "thoroughly at home in New York, London, Paris". He lived in Detroit, although Philadelphia served as his base for many years.
The Windsor Star, obituary, 13 October 1979
'The days of The Great Gatsby, days of good times and the best of red wines, are not dead for Raymond Fayette Stover, 80, self-described “inveterate world traveller,” a genteel man in this age of getting and spending. “I knew Scott Fitzgerald intimately.”
The Windsor Star, 29 June 1974
Jorge's connection with him - which probably runs from the late 1930s to about 1946 - seems to have met with high disapproval from his sister Maria. One can speculate about the relationship between the two men, and the newspaper gossip pages seem to hint with nudges, winks and nods that it went beyond "business".
The Detroit Evening Times records on 21 December 1941 that Raymond Stover 'has landed in Havana with his friend Jorge Bolet to visit Jorge's parents. At present the two chaps are touring Cuba and having a pretty merry time, but will return to Havana in time for the concert which Señor Bolet will give at the Palace, after which he is to be decorated, we hear, by President Colonel Batista, no less.'
Carnegie Hall, December 1942
Friday, 18 December at 8.30pm
Schubert 2 Impromptus B flat Op. 142/3 E flat Op.90/2, Chopin 4 Scherzi, Falla Cubana, Andaluza, Albeniz El Albaícin (from Iberia), Godowsky 3 pieces from Java Suite "Phonoramas" (Gamelan, In the Gardens of Buitenzorg & In the Streets of Old Batavia)
Jorge Bolet, 28-year-old Cuban pianist, who was largely trained here, is a brilliant young artist. One of the leaders of the younger generation.’ There were moments when he was carried away by his own exuberance.
[Howard Taubman, The New York Times]
Surprise Washington debut, January 1944
Bolet’s Washington debut as a pianist on 11 January,1944 was purely accidental. ‘A member of an audience of 3,000 assembled to hear a wartime performance of the Sigmund Romberg Orchestra, Bolet heard Constitution Hall’s frantic manager explain an unavoidable delay and beg for local talent to come to the fore.’
Mifflinburg Telegraph (Pennsylvania), 15 March 1951.
'The train bringing Sigmund Romberg from Canton, Ohio had not arrived by 8.50pm Dorothy Sandlin would sing if someone in the audience would accompany her. A young Cuban army man got up. He played Chopin’s B flat minor scherzo and the audience realised that he was no amateur; they clamoured for more. He will appear tomorrow in Carnegie Hall.' The New York Times, 6 February, 1944
Pan American Day
Andre Mertens and Horace J. Parmelee, heads of the Haensel & Jones division of Columbia Concerts Inc., announced the addition of three new artists, Lt. Jorge Bolet, Cuban pianist, John Sebastian, harmonica virtuoso and Portia White, 'Negro contralto'. Musical America, 10 April 1944
In Washington, 14 April 1944 'with the free nations of the world still engaged in a gigantic struggle for the preservation of their freedom, the solemnity of the fourteenth celebration of Pan American Day echoed throughout the Western Hemisphere.' At the evening concert JB performed Schubert's Impromptu, D. 899, No. 2 in E flat, Chopin's Nocturne in F sharp major, Scherzo in B flat minor, then - for him - more unusual repertoire: Roberto García Morillo (Argentina), Canción triste y Danza alegre, Mozart Camargo Guarnieri (Brazil, 1907-1993), Toada triste & Alberto Ginastera (Argentina) Piezas infantiles.
Pan American Day, Washington was reported in the Evening Star. 'A distinguished audience was headed by Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt in the stately Hall of the Americas. The presence of Lieutenant Bolet was most appropriate, for this gifted young Cuban has in his concerts here and abroad fulfilled a mission in gaining recognition for the talents of Latin American artists.
'On Friday evening, I went to a concert at the Pan-American Building, which was attended by many of the diplomats. The young pianist from Cuba, Lieutenant Jorge Bolet, played, and I enjoyed again his great artistic gift.
My Day, Eleanor Roosevelt, 17 April, 1944
“In the uniform of the Cuban Army...”
8 December 1944: Carnegie Hall
‘He does not appear to be a pianist of remarkable insight as yet, or to be the possessor of highly individual talents. But there was all-round efficiency.’ His programme included Bach’s French Suite in E major (did he ever play that again?!), where the Courante and Gigue were ‘too fast’. In the Brahms/Handel variations, there was technical security and the necessary brilliance. The New York Times
Musical America is a little more favourable. 'Jorge Bolet, young pianist, who is a first lieutenant in the Cuban army and at present assistant Military Attache at the Cuban Embassy in Washington, gave an extraordinarily vital concert in Carnegie Hall on the evening of December 8. Some pianists woo the instrument; others ride it high with spurs and whip. It is to this latter group that Lieut. Bolet allied himself during most of the recital. In the Haydn Variations and in the Forlane of the Ravel Suite, he proved that he can produce a liquid tone and phrase sensitively, when he wants to. And his interpretation of the Chopin Ballade in G minor had an heroic sweep which recreated that much-abused work and made it fresh and vital. But in the hectic speed of the Courante, Bourrée and Gigue of the Bach suite and the rhythmless rush of the Prelude to the Ravel work, Mr. Bolet let his fingers run away with his judgment. His performance of the Brahms Variations, fine as it was, suffered from a lack of imagination in the quieter, more introspective sections. One missed the Sehnsucht, the haunting melancholy of the music.
A Cuban in America
At the outbreak of World War II, Jorge Bolet joined the Cuban army and as a Lieutenant (Cultural) served at the Cuban Embassy in Washington under regime of President Batista. After the Batista government fell, Bolet joined the United States Army and became an American citizen.
‘I was just about to be called up in the US army because I’d made my home in America by then, when the President of Cuba heard about it from my brother. I got a cable immediately ordering me back to Cuba, so I served President Batista and eventually went back to America to assist the military attaché in Washington.’
[Interview with Nicholas Kenyon, The Times 6 October 1980]
In December 1944, political changes at home rendered Bolet’s military commission void. The President, Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar retired and was succeeded by the civilian Ramon Grau San Martin. For the next eight years, Batista remained in the background, spending time in the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City and a home in Daytona Beach, Florida
The pianist-diplomat Lieutenant Bolet answered this challenge by enlisting in the United States Army (31 January, 1945 in Baltimore Maryland). After 6 weeks as a private, he was chosen valedictorian of his naturalisation class at Camp Croft, South Carolina. He now became an American citizen.
In an interview Jorge gave to Leandro Garcia in a Cuban newspaper in late 1944, his father Antonio was also present. The headline reads dramatically: Jorge Bolet is no longer ‘The Cuban Pianist’
‘My last visit to Cuba was in November 1944. I gave a concert in the Auditorio and another in the Teatro Nacional, for the benefit of the victims of the cyclone. Then I was 2nd Lieutenant in the Cuban Army. I had a contract with Columbia Artists. 15 concerts in the USA for 1944/5, a tour of 30 concerts in Australia and New Zealand for the spring of 1945/6. [There are no reports in Australian newspapers of this tour so it probably did not go ahead.] My position as Cuban Army official was going to present difficulties.
I explained this to President Grau. [etc.]’
It was on 17 March 1945 in Spartanburg, South Carolina that Jorge Bolet swore an oath of renunciation and allegiance, thus becoming a United States citizen. He states that he had entered the US Army on 31 January 1945.