Jorge Bolet - Curtis Institute 1936 broadcast (unreleased)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
- not available commercially. His earliest known recording.
If you wish to support Classical Piano Rarities, you may do so through PayPal:
www.paypal.com...
12/9/36, Curtis Institute (radio broadcast)
Bach/Liszt - Fantasy and Fugue, G minor, BWV 542
Liszt - Valse-Impromptu
Liszt/Busoni - La Campanella
"On 9th December, Jorge Bolet, pianist, was "guest" in the Curtis Institute "hour." The program 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.
Returning to the piano, Mr. Bolet played the Liebestraum, Waldesrauschen [lost or not recorded], Valse impromptu, and La Campanella, [in a version with additions by Busoni?] which brought the concert to a conclusion.
European debut in The Netherlands
It was in May 1935 that Bolet made his European debut. (He possibly sailed to Europe on 26 January 1935.) There were recitals in Amsterdam in the Small Hall of the Concertgebouw (Wednesday 8 May) and The Hague, in the Diligentia Hall (Friday 10). The reviews are highly encouraging, one referring to the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla’s Fantasía Bética, an impressionistic description of Andalusia.
"We are thankful that he did not use his really sensational technical gifts merely to dazzle. In his hands the de Falla became something of great musical importance." Avondpost, den Haag, 11 May 1935
"A new star in the musical firmament, a pupil of Godowsky...a fervid imagination, no trace of nervousness. We hope he will not become one of those brilliant keyboard wonders of today [?here today, gone tomorrow?] for his musical gifts are too genuine and precious." Vaderland, den Haag, 11 May 1935
The Nieuwe Rotterdam Courant [9.5.35] described the audience of the Amsterdam recital as "small but entranced".
And then Paris, London, Vienna, Madrid, Milan. From memory, without consulting his files, Bolet told journalist A. Ramirez in 1943: the Salle Chopin (Paris), Bechstein Saal (Berlin), Aeolian Hall (London), the Diligentia Hall (the Hague) , the Conservatorio Verdi (Milan) and in 1936 (Spain) concertos with José María Franco (Madrid), concerts in the Teatro la Comedia; and also in Gijón, Oviedo and Pamplona. It is worth noting that the Spanish concerts were in April, 1936, barely three months before the outbreak of the Civil War on 17 July.
The Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (17 May, 1935), reporting the Berlin début, talked of a phenomenal technique but said that everything was guided more by intellect than by emotion.
London, 1935
On 31 May 1935 8.30pm Aeolian Hall, London, Bolet made his first appearance in Great Britain, playing on a Steinway piano. This Hall was at 135-137, New Bond Street and had begun life as the Grosvenor Gallery, built by Sir Coutts Lindsay in 1876 who in 1883, decided to light his whole gallery with electricity.
JB’s programme included Beethoven’s sonata Appassionata, César Franck’s Prelude Choral & Fugue and pieces by Chopin: Etudes Op. 10 (E flat) and Op. 25 (A minor) and the Ballade No. 1 in G minor.
The Times 4 June 1935 reports:
“Unfaltering control... his powerful fingers enable him to annihilate any technical problems.” The Appassionata was occasionally too theatrical but the essential urgency was well suggested, “though at times, especially in his rather prosaic treatment of the Andante, much of the poetry of the work seemed to vanish”. In the Chopin tenderness was only achieved in a curiously deliberate fashion. Liszt's Waldesrauschen and Strauss/Godowsky Fledermaus were also included in a programme which “seldom called for spontaneity, the quality most lacking from Mr Bolet's style”.
Pinned! Thank you for the research.
Critics! Interesting read. Thank you for sharing.
Bolet is still educating us through how thoroughly he understood his subject and goals.
I find it tragic that Jorge wasn't generally recognized as a huge talent until his Carnegie Hall performance in 1974 at the age of 60 when may pianists have already burned out from touring.
What a fabulous treat! As a good friend of Bolet, I was around during his climb to richly deserved international prominence and heard him play many times. This recording is priceless and brings to light the beginning of the career of one of the greatest pianists of the 20th c.
Your were so fortunate to have been his friend, Ms Shaw! I adore Jorge Bolet.
Great pianist! Heard him many times in London in the eighties... fantastic playing, what a shame for today's pianists when compared to these masters of the past!
What a lovely surprise!
Such a gem; flawless technique and great interpretations! Huge thanks for sharing!
Thank you for this. Terrific Bach/Liszt.
La Campanela ,cuando cresi. la aprendi. ❤️🖐️
He had made his European debut in 1935 and had now returned to the United States. Overtones 1936, the magazine of the Curtis Institute, has the following: "Summer 1936 fairly teemed with the peregrinations hither and yon of Curtis Institute people bent upon more or less musical pursuits. This year the President (Mary Louise Curtis Bok) herself took to the sea and cruised the Arctic Circle. Looming high amongst professional travels was Dr. [Josef] Hofmann's monumental South American tour. Mr. (Fritz) Reiner conducted opera at Covent Garden in June. Jorge Bolet, Curtis graduate, gave two piano recitals in Havana. Jorge, by the way, is back at The Curtis Institute, studying, this time, conducting.”
If only some broadcasts from Hofmann’s South American tour would surface....
Precious rarity. Fascinating to compare this "Valse impromptu" (10:39) and La campanella" (14:00) with the Decca almost half a century later.
Yes!
Completely different! Age makes changes for better...
Amazing mastery from the 21/22 year old Bolet.
Muy guapo. ❤️
"La Campanella" (finally) sounds like a piece of music!
Anyone else note that Josef Lhevine is playing Hoffman's Berceuse at the end? That is also astonishing !
It’s another Lhevinne, identified as a “graduate student of Josef Hofmann”
@@ClassicalPianoRarities I believe this student spelled his name Joseph Levine, I remember seeing a picture of him with Hofmann and several other students in the booklet accompanying a Hofmann LP. What an albatross to have around your career's neck while Josef Lhevinne was still active. Didn't Arthur Rubinstein have a sign or notice in early concert programs that said "no relation"?.
Dedicating this to the memory of Viorica Ursuleac s birthday today.
Lo que mas me gusta que esta interprtando para el mismo. No para pensar en el publico.
Fe esta. obrae acuerdo mas.
He would have just turned 25 years old the month before.
Yes!
Wouldn't he have been 22?
10:40 Liszt