Jorge Bolet

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jorge Bolet (November 15, 1914–October 16, 1990) was a pianist and conductor and artist/teacher.

Bolet was born in Havana in Cuba and studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he himself taught from 1939 to 1942. His teachers included Leopold Godowsky, Josef Hofmann,David Saperton, Moriz Rosenthal and Fritz Reiner.

In 1942 Bolet joined the US Army and was sent to Japan. While there, he conducted the Japanese premiere of The Mikado. He made his first recordings for Remington. He provided the piano soundtrack for the 1960 film about Liszt, "Song without End". His playing, though, was condemned by American critics for decades as too focused on virtuosity. Hence he only made a few recordings for smaller labels in the 1960s. He only came to prominence with a stupendous recital at Carnegie Hall 1974 which set a seal on his reputation. Bolet, "stung by years of neglect" (as one critic put it), showed exactly what he could do and his phenomenal playing can be heard on CDs issued most recently by PHILIPS in their Great Pianists Series. He later became Head of Piano at the Curtis Institute, succeeding Rudolf Serkin, but retired from this to concentrate once again on his career. In 1984, the A&E Network broadcast a series of three programs entitled Bolet Meets Rachmaninoff, in which the pianist was shown giving masterclasses on Piano Concerto No. 3 (Rachmaninoff), or, as it is popularly known, "The Rach Third". This is followed on the series by a complete performance of Bolet playing the concerto.

The DECCA/London recording company contracted him in 1978, so that Bolet got his first major record contract at the age of 63. They made recordings of key sections of his repertoire from 1978 up to his death, but there are also tapes of many live concerts which can be found in archives, principally the International Piano Archive at Maryland. These include a speciality of his, which he studied with the composer himself: J. Strauss/L.Godowsky Fledermaus paraphrase.

Bolet is particularly well remembered for his performances and recordings of large-scale Romantic music, particularly works by Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin. He also specialised in piano transcriptions and unusual repertoire, including the fiendishly difficult works of Godowsky, many of which Bolet had studied with the composer himself. In an interview given to Elyse Mach ("Great Contemporary Pianists Speak for Themselves"; Dover Books on Music), Jorge Bolet extensively mentioned the "Romantic Piano Concerto" by Joseph Marx which was, according to Bolet's own words, his favorite among the great virtuoso concertos because of the enormous show of strength required from the soloist.

Throughout his career, Bolet bucked the system endorsing and performing on Baldwin and C. Bechstein pianos worldwide. When others aligned with the Steinway piano, he chose to show a different approach and a unique broadly varied tone through the non-standard instruments. It is common knowledge that Bolets best DECCA/London recordings were on the Baldwin SD-10 concert grand. Some of the most celebrated, near the end of his career, were made with Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (Orchestre Symphonic de Montreal). Most pianophiles agree that the most perfect piano sound and tone (through masterful piano technical preparation) was the last DECCA/London solo piano recording of Debussy.

Bolet died in 1990 in Mountain View, California from AIDS-related diseases.