Customer Reviews

Jorge Bolet I: Great Pianists of the 20th Century, Vol. 10

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"Banga-banga-banga"? Nope, not even close! I've played the Chaconne and the Tannhauser myself, so I know what's in them and what Mr. Bolet accomplished with them. THIS is a GREAT recording.

The program recorded here is nothing less than heroic. Beginning with a definitive rendition of the J.S. Bach-Ferruccio Busoni Chaconne in D minor and establishing at that moment that this recital is something truly special, Cuban pianist Jorge Bolet then launches into the complete twenty-four Chopin Preludes, Op. 28. Commanding virtuosity and keen sensitivity to the music distinguish this offering of the Preludes, and the sold-out Carnegie Hall audience erupts with a standing ovation at the end - unusual given that the recital was only half over at that point.

After the intermission, Mr. Bolet returns to the stage to conclude the concert with no less than four different piano transcriptions of other composers' works. This was a courageous program for anyone to book, given the predominant view of the time that transcriptions were quaint at best and a disservice to the composer's music at worst. Jorge Bolet proved that night that the Art of the Transcription was alive and well and worthy of serious attention.

The first two offerings of the second half of the recital were Sergei Rachmaninoff transcriptions of Fritz Kreisler's Liebesleid, and Liebesfreud. To say these were warmly received by the always-critical New York audience is an understatement, and in fact the entire recital was marked with vocal ovations after the conclusion of each offering.

Bolet then began Adolf Schuz-Evler's Concert Arabesques on Johann Strass Jr.'s "On the Beautiful Blue Danube". This work is very rarely heard. There's a reason for that. Only an artist with equipment enabling him to exercise complete and confident mastery of the piano has any business attempting to perform the Concert Arabesques in recital and Mr. Bolet showed himself to be much more than up to the task by released pent-up forces from within that bowled over the audience with scintillating filigree passages and showers of octaves, always rendered with absolute clarity, seemingly with no effort required, all of which worked up everyone in attendance into an absolute frenzy at the Danube's conclusion.

And still Jorge Bolet wasn't done, for he then offered the final work on the formal program: the supremely difficult Richard Wagner-Franz Liszt "Tannhauser" Overture. Many pianists have tried to master this literal transcription of Wagner's music. None of them of which I know has reached the standard set by this performance. Mr. Bolet throws caution to the wind here. The opening chords are quiet and stately and the keen listener who knows the original Wagner Overture finds himself distinctly hearing the horns of this one-instrument orchestra pronouncing the main theme over the strings fill-in. The middle section with its demonically challenging runs and octaves come off with a grand flourish, and the finale is rendered with dazzling virtuosity accompanied by a majestic tone the likes of which is rarely heard, while avoiding the pounding and thumping that so often plagues performances of the "Tannhauser" by other artists. Here, truly, one finds an example of what real pianism is like.

Of course after such a triumphant performance, there was no way the audience was going to let Jorge Bolet get away without encores, and they're here in this recording, too. The first was Moritz Moszkowski's La jongleuse, from the Etudes, Op. 52. The second on this recorded set was the "Staccato" Etude in C, Op. 23 No. 2 by Anton Rubinstein. Neither one fails to please, not by a long shot, and Mr. Bolet eventually has to literally leave them screaming for more.

This 2-cd set is part of Philips "Great Pianists of the 20th Century" series. Very simply, if one had the choice of only one live performance to ever own, this is the one to get.

Jorge Bolet, in spite of his massive technique and impeccable musicianship, did not, early on, have as big a career as one might have expected. But in 1974 he mounted an unusual recital at Carnegie Hall that brought him to greater attention, and a few years later he recorded a large Liszt series to general acclaim. It was that latter series that put him on my own pianistic radar screen, and he remained a favorite.

This 2-CD set, part of the Philips 'Great Pianists of the 20th Century' collection, contains a live recording of that landmark 1974 recital. The main substance in that recital was a traversal of the Chopin Preludes. There are other complete Preludes in the Philips collection, those of Argerich, Arrau, Cherkassky and Cortot. I wouldn't want to be without any of them (except perhaps those of Argerich; for all her élan, she is too much the speed merchant for my taste). Of all these sets, Bolet's is the least idiosyncratic. Considering they are 'live,' they are amazingly clean. But more important, they are somewhat understated, unfailingly songful, and not showily virtuosic, although they are actually somewhat faster overall than Arrau's or Cherkassky's.

The other pieces in this set are primarily beautifully shaped encores and transcriptions, specialities of Bolet throughout his career; his program-building was often reminiscent of that of the Golden Age masters like Lhevinne, Friedman and the like. I particularly liked the Bach/Busoni Chaconne and Moszkowski's bijou, La jongleuse.

It seems to me that the legendary status of Bolet's justly famous Carnegie Hall recital in 1974 has led to some neglect of the pieces that occupy the rest of the second disc in this priceless volume of 'The Great Pianists of the 20th Century' series.

Besides the rest of Carnegie Hall recital, there are ten pieces more on the second disc. The most remarkable thing is that nine of them are Rachmaninoff's transcriptions of music ranging from Bach to Bizet, recorded by Bolet in the RCA studios in 1973. This is a most remarkable LP for it reminds us that Rachmaninoff really was The Last Romantic, very much in the tradition of Liszt himself, if necessarily on a smaller scale. Just like his famous Hungarian predecessor, Rachmaninoff was a great composer, stupendous pianist, fine conductor and tireless arranger of music by others in which he showed taste of rare catholicity. Jorge Bolet often said that his idol among the great pianists from the first half of the 20th century was indeed Rachmaninoff and it was his grand style on the keyboard that he tried to emulate (not to be mistaken with 'imitate'). And it shows. As far as orchestral sonority without banging and freedom of interpretation without any ostentation are concerned, Bolet's fabulous renditions of 'Liebesleid' and 'Liebesfreud' strongly remind one of Rachmaninoff's own (and great) recordings of these marvelous works. I can barely stand listening to Kreisler's appallingly sentimental originals, but Rachmaninoff's transcriptions are a different matter altogether. (By the way, during his late DECCA years Bolet re-recorded both pieces some 14 years after these RCA sessions; the late versions are more restrained and introverted, admittedly, but they make an interesting comparison with the early ones.) Fascinatingly enough, Rachmaninoff left us amazing recordings of all these transcriptions, yet Bolet's somewhat more refined and aristocratic approach holds well on its own: his renditions of the notoriously difficult scherzo from Mendelssohn's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' or the ebullient 'Hopak' from Mussorgsky opera 'Sorochinsky Fair' are not particularly dashing but they are wonderfully musical. The same goes for the 'Polka de V. R.' - which is listed here, and usually, as a Rachmaninoff's composition but it is in fact a transcription of Franz Behr's 'Lachtäubchen' polka - where I confess I prefer Horowitz's more unbridled approach, but wouldn't want to be without Bolet's either. But the prelude from Bach's Partita, the Menuet from Bizet's 'L'Arlesienne' and especially Bolet's colourful rendition of the famous 'Flight of the Bumble-Bee' and the tenderness of his 'Lullaby' (one of Tchaikovsky's most beautiful songs) are every bit as good, if not better, that what Rachmaninoff himself achieved. And the sound is conspicuously better, though the RCA engineers might have done a better job.

The last piece of the disc is Liszt's 'Reminiscences de Lucia di Lammermoor', more like a paraphrase than a transcription, and akin to, if less brilliant than, the better known Rigoletto Paraphrase. The fellows from Philips, inexplicably, state in the booklet 'rec. date unknown', even though this is obviously the same recording that Bolet made for Ensayo in 1969; it is now even available separately as part of the great LP with transcriptions and paraphrases which Bolet recorded at the time for this rather obscure label. Be that as it may, both Bolet's scintillating performance and Liszt's ingenious arrangement are well worth repetitive listening. They almost convince me that 'Lucia' is great music.

Now few words about the 'Banga-banga-banga-banga' stuff. (Yes, it's never too late to make yourselves ridiculous, fellows.) To begin with, Bolet's program for the recital is pretty daunting, if not a little eccentric by modern standards: Chopin's 24 preludes surrounded by no fewer than five transcriptions/paraphrases. Yet Bolet plays all that (and two encores) with inimitable grandeur, incredible power and wonderfully controlled Romantic passion. The Bach-Busoni's 'Chaconne' does not erase memories from the young Michelangelli's (1949) outstanding performance, especially that magnificent thunder in the bass right before the end, but Bolet's entirely different interpretation is not to be missed, either. Nor is his subtle rendition of Chopin's etudes, for that matter. It is charmingly different than Bolet's late version for DECCA (1987) but one still can't mistake those gorgeous additional bass notes in the last prelude. I have never heard the originals of the two Strauss waltzes, but Tausig's transcriptions - and Bolet's uncanny ease in executing them - make me wanting to rectify this. I understand Schulz-Evler's 'Arabesques' are notoriously difficult and seldom encountered in recital. Perhaps there is another reason for that, namely that the piece is a little more than meretricious junk which reduces Strauss' original (a wonderfully evocative tone poem) to a bag of worthless pianistic tricks; Liszt himself, so often accused of that, never ruined so fine a music in so cheap a manner. It takes Bolet's dedication to take this piece seriously indeed. The same is true for the two encores, particularly the so called 'Staccato Etude' by Anton Rubinstein who apparently was as great a pianist as he was a mediocre composer. 'La jongleuse' by Moszkowsky, the king of encore pieces, fares a great deal better. Bolet loved the piece (he re-recorded for his 'Encores' LP, DECCA, 1985) and used to say that what gave him the greatest pleasure was the fact that every time he played it as an encore everybody in the public had a big smile on his face.

But the whole recital is completely obliterated by the last piece in the program: Wagner-Liszt's 'Overture to Tannhäuser'. Quite simply, this is BY FAR the finest version of this gigantic work ever committed on disc. Bolet's performance easily equals Howard and Cziffra in terms of technical prowess and completely blows them away in terms of sheer musicianship. The only other performance that comes close is Bolet's nearly accidental studio take for RCA in 1973 and available on Bolet Rediscovered. But even that performance, remarkable as it is, does not have the sweeping passion and the crystalline clarity of the one recorded live in Carnegie Hall on February 25, 1974. Especially unforgettable are the final two minutes or so. These must some of the most taxing two minutes in the whole piano literature, and they come after some 14 minutes or so of equally intimidating technical tour de force; to say nothing of the mammoth program prior to the last piece in this particular case. No matter. Bolet creates an astonishing whirlwind of sound which, for sheer power and beauty, has never been equaled, let alone surpassed. Nor has Bolet's impeccable musicianship which makes sense even of the most taxing passages. This performance alone is worth the full price for the disc.

The only drawback of this stupendous recital is the clangy, brittle and flat sound, rife with jarring high notes. At best, it gives a vague, but tantalizing, idea about the orchestral sonority which Bolet's playing must have had. Never mind. It is crass to complain about indifferent sound quality when we have such a unique artistry to enjoy.

The booklet is of the typical, fairly high, quality for the series. It contains the usual short biographical sketch (the same as in vol. 2), interesting if unduly purple essay by Bryce Morrison and some pretty rare, if yellowish, photos of Bolet. The CD has long since been out of print, criminally so, and is not especially cheap second-hand. However, I find it very difficult to think of another disc which is easily worth pretty much everything you may be asked for.

A truly powerful and charming performance by Jorge Bolet. Arabesques On 'An Der Schonen, Blauen Donau'(Track #1) was absolutely gorgeous and quite possibly the best live piano performance ever heard. Do yourself a favor and add this must to your collection.

The record, double, is a jewell.

The live performance sets again the question on why record companies are afraid to do more in this format. Just listen to Bruckner's 9th with Mr. Günter Wand.

Now to Mr. Bolet. The playing is magnificent and clear, and a complete raport with the public is felt in all the recording. CD 2 is specially warm, with the encores and transcriptions.

Previous review cover in an excellent way so I am not going to reiterate.

Buy it!

Jorge Bolet is my grandmother's brother. I never knew him, but I remember watching a performance recorded on video once. It was mesmerizing! He is an amazing performer.

Born in Cuba, Jorge Bolet represents all that I have never come to know from my fatherland. I hope to continue enjoying this and other of his recordings and teaching my children of my father's country, and the greatness that once came out of there.

Pray for Freedome for our Cuba.

I don't get the reputation of these recordings. For 45 agonizing minutes, we get to hear Jorge Bolet, a pianist without color or poetry, bang his way raggedly though Chopin's magnificent Preludes. When he's done with those, he bangs his way through a piano transcription of Wagner's Tannhauser Overture as though he's chasing a mouse with a jackhammer. I don't hear all the virtuosity everyone else is hearing. I hear brittle fingers, a right hand that's behind the left hand, and general inexpressiveness. There are moments all right--the Johann Strauss/Carl Tausig works at the end of disc 1 are pleasant and charming. Then again, I've never heard them before, so I don't have better performances as a yardstick, and perhaps my admiration would shrink if I did. As for the Preludes, good god, these are possibly the worst readings I've ever heard, with many score indications simply ignored and others perverted beyond recognition (accents, tempi, accents, dynamics, accents...). Try Cortot, Arrau, Moravec, even Kissin for better Preludes, and just about anyone else for better Rachmaninoff.

I agree with the previous reviewer's impressions: Banga-banga-banga-banga!
Like John Grabowski , I wonder if I am missing something about Bolet's performance or about this recording.
After anxiously listening for some sign of genius in Bolet's colorless and sophomoric renditions of Busoni's Chaconne and Chopin's Preludes, I had to stop the second CD when Schulz-Evler Arabesques on "The Blue Danube Waltz" and especially Liszt's Overture zu Tannhäuser assaulted my by then injured sense of musicality and tympanic membranes.
I hope the 2 CDs in Bolet II of this series are not as disappointing!