|
Jorge Bolet's booking ad from 1950 mentioning his engagements with the
orchestras of Dallas, Pittsburgh and New Orleans, and with the New York
Philharmonic and the National Symphony.
(From the SoundFountain
Archive)
Gabor
issued Remington recordings in Germany on the Diamant label. Curiously
enough record and label of release No. 739 with Prokofiev's Piano
Concerto with Jorge Bolet mentions the Austrian Symphony Orchestra
instead of the Cincinnati Symphony.
Remington
R-199-161 with The Four Scherzi - A Laszlo Halasz Production.
Picture from 
Alexander
Bayen's Liszt page. Courtesy Alexander Bayen.
Alexander
Bayen is a amateur Liszt player.
Jorge Bolet at the
time of the recording of the soundtrack for 'Song without End'
Everest SDBR 3064
with Liszt's Sonata
Jorge
Bolet at Carnegie Hall, recorded live February 25, 1974 (RCA ARL2-0512)
Turnabout
TV-S34543
|
Jorge Bolet
was not so much the pianist to play a Bach Partita, a refined Mozart
Adagio or a dramatic Beethoven Sonata. He may have played Bach in
an adaptation by Busoni, and he may have exemplified Beethoven and
Mozart when he was teaching (Bolet was a much-loved teacher), but
if he played these great composers, then most likely in his own private
atmosphere for friends and rarely in a concert hall.
Indeed, rare
were his Beethoven performances. He had performed Beethoven's Concerto
No. 4, Op. 58, with Thor Johnson in 1954)*.
Later in his career he played ‘Les Adieux’ at the Edinburgh
Festival, the 'Moonlight Sonata' at the Barbican Hall in London; and
there was a ‘Moonlight Sonata', in which he achieved a marvelous
simplicity and limpid sound in the first movement, but he kept the
last movement curiously small in scale, though wonderfully fleet.
However there was an unfortunate performance of the ‘Appassionata’,
a recording made on the continent and relayed by the BBC.
Yet Bolet gave a wonderful performance of Op. 110.)**
Above all, Jorge Bolet was the man of the complexity of Liszt,
Chopin, Godowsky and Rachmaninoff - however diverse the styles
in which these composers may have written for the mighty concert
grand - and of Prokofiev, as he did materialize on Remington
R-199-182 playing the Second Piano Concerto in G minor,
Op. 16, with the Cincinnati Symphony under Thor Johnson.
This performance - recorded in 1953 - was immediately noted and
qualified as remarkable when the recording was released in December
1954 - and it still is today.
Bolet's concept of Prokofiev is broad and moving. He has
a great feeling for the varying moods ranging from the subtleness
in phrasing to the distressing virtuosity, from the bombastic
allure to the sensitive melody. His empathy is great. His is a
Prokofiev in optima forma, despite the fact that there
is a cut in the cadenza. The cooperation of Thor Johnson is exemplary.
Consequently many came to liken the Second Concerto Op. 16 more
than the Third. (The Second had actually been revised by Prokofiev
in the period when he wrote his most famous Third.)
The recording made in Cincinnati's Music Hall was supervised by
Laszlo Halasz and the engineer was Robert E. Blake,
and
Irving Kolodin
wrote the liner notes for the release.
(Bolet's later recording with the Nürnberg Symphony Orchestra
and conductor Ainslee Cox did not meet the same balance and intensity.)
- R.A.B.
|
|
|
The
cover of Remington R-199-182: Jorge Bolet, piano, playing Sergey
Prokofiev's 2nd Concerto with the Cincinnati Symphony conducted
by Thor Johnson. The recording was released in the fall of 1954.
|
|
|
Click
here
for a Sound Clip from the 4th movement.
|
|
Jorge Bolet
(born in Havana, Cuba, on November 15, 1914) had studied under
Josef Hofmann and Leopold Godowsky when he attended
the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia from 1927 till 1935. He
had appeared as a soloist with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra under
Fritz Reiner in Carnegie Hall, and had toured in Europe with
success. However for long he did not have the chance to really break
through. One reason for his late start was World War II. His biography
states that he was sent to the USA by the Cuban government as an assistant
military attaché at the Cuban Embassy in Washington, but in
1942 he resigned and enlisted in the US Army which took him
all the way to Japan where he entertained the troops. (He led a performance
of Gilbert & Sullivan's 'The Mikado'!)
After World
War Two Jorge Bolet concertized again. His booking ads tell that he
appeared with the important orchestras in the United States and also
in Europe and that he received much recognition. He did not yet make
a name as a recording artist, not in the late nineteen forties that
is. His name cannot be found in the 'Gramophone Shop Encyclopedia
of Recorded Music' from 1948. And Irving Kolodin does not mention
Bolet in his "The New Guide To Recorded Music", published
in 1950.
 Bolet's
first recordings were on LP and for the Boston label which
introduced its first releases in December 1952. The company was based
in Boston. (The label existed until 1966.)
Boston B 300
has the title "Airs of Spain" and entails compositions by
Isaac Albeniz (Prelude, Malagueña, Cordoba); Manuel de Falla
(Andaluza, Cubana); Ernesto Lecuona (Y La Negra Bailaba, Danza De
Los Nanigos); and Enrique Granados (Playera). This release was announced
in the Schwann Long Playing Record Catalog of December 1952.
In an advertisement this release was by mistake also listed as B 301.
On Boston B 301 Bolet plays "Favorites": by Camille
Saint-Saens (Etude in the Form of a Waltz / en forme de Valse), Moritz
Moszkowski (Autumn), Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (Hunting Song, Rondo
Capriccioso), Franz Liszt (Funérailles), and Ludwig van Beethoven
(Andante).
These recordings of the thirty nine year old artist and the many appearances
in concert halls may well have been noticed by Don Gabor and Laszlo
Halasz and in the Summer of 1953 it was officially announced that
Jorge
Bolet was added to Remington's artist roster.
Bolet's Remington debut was on R-199-161 with the performances
of the Four (4) Scherzi (Scherzos) of Chopin - No. 1 in B minor,
Op. 20, No. 2 in B Flat minor, Op. 31, No. 3 in C Sharp minor, Op.
39, and No. 4 in E major, Op. 54. Bolet's was a Chopin with a very
personal, yet captivating virtuoso-approach, showing energy and strong
dynamics. This recording was supervised by Laszlo Halasz as the cover
clearly indicates
'A Laszlo Halasz Presentation'.
Jorge
Bolet at the piano.
(Picture taken from
Everest LP SDBR 3062.)
|
The two Remington
records put Bolet's artistry on the map of the connoisseur, but seven
years later his performances for the soundtrack of the biopic
about the life of Franz Liszt, 'Song Without End', brought
him much wider recognition and resulted in several recordings for
the Everest label, followed later with a few recordings for
RCA Victor.
Yet Bolet's great
fame came in the nineteen seventies when he was contracted by English
Decca (London, USA). This resulted in the series of recordings
of works by Liszt, of the concertos of Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Schumann
and Grieg, and of solo pieces by Brahms, Debussy and Reger.
Very enlightening was his in-depth master class of Rachmaninoff's
3rd Concerto for BBC-television entitled 'Bolet Meets Rachmaninoff'
(1983), at the time when he recorded Rachmaninoff's Op. 30 for Decca
with Ivan Fischer (SXDL 7609).
The liner notes on Remington R-199-182 read:
Jorge Bolet
was born in Havana, Cuba. He received his early training at
the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Returning to the USA after
his European tour he won the coveted Naumburg and Joseph Hofmann
Awards.
Following his debut with the New York Symphony under Mitropoulos,
which the press hailed as "the most outstanding concerto reading
of the season", he made equally successful appearances with
the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood.
He has since toured extensively in North America and Central
and South Americas.
On the West Coast, the noted critic of the San Francisco Chronicle,
Albert Frankenstein, summed up the 1952-53 season with, "Of
all the soloists who appeared here during this season the ones
we most would like to have return are Serkin and Bolet." - and
Gerald Ashford of the San Antonio Express writes, "There are
but few great pianists living today, and Bolet is sure one of
them." The Baldwin Piano Company has awarded Jorge Bolet a special
concert grand that travels in a custom build trailer to all
his engagements.
|
Regrettably Jorge
Bolet only made two recordings for the Remington-catalogue. There certainly
would have been room for transcriptions by Liszt or a concerto if there
had not been the historic performances of Liszt by Simon Barere and
the recordings by Edward Kilenyi.
The recording of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16,
with the Cincinnati Symphony and conductor
Thor Johnson
was re-released in 1974 on Turnabout TV-S34543 in electronic
stereo (coupled with Prokofiev's 5th Concerto played by Alfred Brendel
and the Vienna State Opera Orchestra conducted by Jonathan Sternberg).
The engineers did a fine job, but of course the recording lacks the
impetus of the original. The original monaural tapes were licensed from
Tapeworld Inc. which was the company of Don Gabor's who then released
recordings on cassette tapes.
Jorge Bolet was born on November 15th, 1914, in Havana, Cuba. He
died October 16th, 1990, in Mountain View, California, USA.
In 1998 his performances of Liszt's "Liebesträume"
were heard in the soundtrack of the movie "A la place du coeur"
(1998).
)*
"Thor Johnson - American Conductor" written by Louis Nicholas
and published in 1982 by The Music Festival Committee of the Peninsula
Arts Association, Ephraim, Wisconsin.
)**
As recounted by Hamish Pitceathly of Great Britain.
Rudolf A. Bruil
- Page first published in the fall of 2002.
|
