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.

Picture from Alexander Bayen's Liszt page. Courtesy Alexander Bayen.

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 Op. 58 with Thor Johnson in 1954. And later in his carreer he played ‘Les Adieux’ at the Edinburgh Festival, the 'Moonlight Sonata' at the Barbican Hall in London, 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 was immediately noted and qualified as remarkable when the recording was ready for release by the end of 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. 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 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.)

The cover of Remington R-199-182: Jorge Bolet, piano, playing Prokofiev's 2nd Concerto with the Cincinnati Symphony conducted by Thor Johnson.

Jorge Bolet (born in Cuba) had studied under Josef Hofmann and Leopold Godowsky when he studied in Philadelphia at the Curtis Institute 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 after some time 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 with the important orchestras in the United States and in Europe and received much recognition. He did not yet make a name as a recording artist in the late nineteen fourties. His name cannot be found in the 'Gramophone Shop Encyclopedia of Recorded Music' from 1948. And in Irving Kolodin's "The New Guide To Recorded Music" from 1950 does not list this pianist.
Bolet's first recordings were on Lp, for the Boston label which was first introduced in December 1952. The company was based in Boston. (The label existed until 1966.)
Boston 300 with "Airs of Spain": Albeniz (Prelude, Malaguena, Cordoba); de Falla (Andaluza, Cubana); Lecuona (Y La Negra Bailaba, Danza De Los Nanigos); and Granados (Playera) was announced in the Schwann Record Catalog of December 1952, but was listed with the same reference of Boston 301 with Jorge Bolet playing "Favorites" which officially listed in the January 1953 edition. Sometime later On Boston 311 with the title "Recital Favorites", Bolet plays Funerailles (Liszt); Andante in F (Beethoven); Etude in the Style of a Waltz (Saint-Saëns); In Autumn (Moszkowsky); and Hunting Song and Rondo Capricioso (Mendelssohn-Bartholdy).
Bolet's many appearances in the concert halls and these recordings of the thirty nine year old artist may well have been noticed by Don Gabor and Laszlo Halasz and may have led to Bolet's Remington debut 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 SDBR 3062)

The two Remington records put his 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 recordings for RCA Victor.

Yet Bolet's really great fame came in the nineteen seventies when he was contracted by English Decca. 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).

Rudolf A. Bruil - Page first published in the fall of 2002.

)* As recounted by Hamish Pitceathly of Great Britain.