Jorge Bolet

Cuban-born concert pianist

• Born: November 15, 1914
• Birthplace: Havana, Cuba
• Died: October 16, 1990
• Place of death: San Mateo, California

One of the great exponents of the grand romantic style, Bolet was a brilliant but thoughtful virtuoso whose mainstays were the works of Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Leopold Godowsky. He taught throughout his life at the Curtis Institute of Music and Indiana University and was the first to conduct W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s The Mikado: Or, The Town of Titipu (1885) in Japan.

Early Life

Jorge Leopoldo Bolet Tremoleda (boh-LEHT), was born in Havana, Cuba, to Antonio Bolet and Adelina Tremoleda. Bolet’s family was upper-class (his father was a lieutenant in the Cuban army) and neither parent had any musical background. Despite this, three out of six of their children seriously pursued music: the second oldest, Alberto, was a professional conductor and violinist who spent much of his life devoted to the promotion of Spanish and Latin American music, and Maria, eleven years Bolet’s senior, studied piano with a graduate of the Conservatoire de Paris. Maria was Bolet’s first teacher when he was seven years old.

With funding help from an important Cuban musical society, the Pro Arte Musical, Bolet was sent to study at the newly formed Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 1927. While there, he studied with famous pianists Leopold Godowsky and Josef Hofmann (then director of the Curtis Institute) but his main teacher was David Saperton (Godowsky’s son-in-law), who was a strict disciplinarian and instructed Bolet in a European nineteenth century repertoire. Upon graduating in 1935, Bolet’s program included the work of Johannes Brahms, Frédéric Chopin, and a Godowsky paraphrase. Bolet also took lessons in Europe with Abram Chasins, and upon returning to the United States, he studied conducting at the Curtis Institute with Fritz Reiner.

Life’s Work

In 1937, Bolet won the Naumburg International Piano Competition and his debut recital, later that year in New York, included transcriptions by Godowsky and Liszt as well as works by Chopin, Franz Schubert, and Sergei Rachmaninoff, who actually attended the concert along with Horowitz and other music luminaries. Despite rave reviews from The New York Times, however, Bolet’s career was slow to evolve. In 1939, he became Rudolf Serkin’s teaching assistant at Curtis, a post he held until 1942, when he began serving in the U.S. Army.

After the fall of Cuban president Fulgencio Batista, Bolet joined the U.S. Army as a military attaché, and in 1945, he became an American citizen. The following year, while travelling with the Army, Bolet premiered W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s The Mikado: Or, The Town of Titipu (1885) in Japan as conductor. During the 1950’s and 1960’s, Bolet began recording with a number of minor labels, including Boston and Remington. In 1960, he recorded the sound track to a film about Liszt titled Song Without End.

Bolet continued to perform in Europe, the United States, and Latin America, but his concert schedule was relatively sparse. After the Fidel Castro-led Cuban Revolution in 1959, Bolet never returned to his home country (his brother Alberto escaped to the United Kingdom and his sister Maria was already living in Spain). From 1968 to 1977, he served on the piano faculty at Indiana University.

In the 1970’s, Bolet began receiving greater recognition, beginning with a series of concerts in New York that culminated with a performance of Liszt’s Totentanz (1849) with the New York Philharmonic. In 1974, he performed a legendary concert at Carnegie Hall that received rave reviews and was recorded and released by RCA. This led to a similarly successful recital in London two years later and an exclusive contract with Decca. In 1977, Bolet was appointed head of piano studies at the Curtis Institute. He remained at Curtis until 1986.

The 1980’s were very busy for Bolet, who played ninety to ninety-five concerts a year, featuring many of the world’s major orchestras. In 1983, he recorded a four-part series for BBC television (Bolet Meets Rachmaninoff) of a master class of several students performing Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto, followed by a recording of Bolet playing the work himself. By 1988, Bolet’s health began to decline, and in 1989, he underwent a brain operation. He died of heart failure in his home in San Mateo, California, in 1990.

Significance

Bolet did not achieve international success until he was in his sixties, when there was a revival of the interest of the romantic style of playing. His legacy lies primarily with the works of Liszt, Chopin, and often remarkably difficult nineteenth-century transcriptions, especially Godowsky. Bolet’s repertoire, however, was surprisingly wide and included works by Joseph Marx and Giovanni Sgambati. Interpretively, he treated the piano as a human voice rather than as a percussion instrument, and consequently his sound was never harsh but often glittering, intimate, and nuanced in its detail. He chose to use a Baldwin piano over the more popular Steinway, because he felt that the Baldwin’s “soft” pedal gave a more even tone change.

Bibliography

Bolet, Jorge. “Jorge Bolet.” Interview by Elyse Mach. In Great Contemporary Pianists Speak for Themselves, edited by Elsye Mach. Vol. 2. New York: Dover, 1988. A frank discussion with the artist (this is the largest published interview) about the ups and downs of his career and his opinions of other pianists.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Jorge Bolet.” Interview by Linda J. Noyle. In Pianists on Playing: Interviews with Twelve Concert Pianists, edited by Linda J. Noyle. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1987. An interesting interview on the process of learning the piano.

Hill, Brad. “Jorge Bolet.” In Classical. New York: Facts On File, 2006. Entry in a reference book offering useful details on Bolet’s repertoire and recordings.