Musicians - Jorge Bolet

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	Musicians - Jorge Bolet

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

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 and David Saperton. His graduation recital included Chopin's Third Sonata and Godowsky's Fledermaus paraphrase. A valuable recording exists of Bolet as a student playing Busoni's reworking of Liszt's La Campanella study.

In 1942 Bolet joined the US Army and was sent to Japan. While there, he conducted the Japanese premiere of The Mikado. He provided the piano soundtrack for the 1960 film about Liszt, "Song without End." He came especially to prominence from the early 1970s onwards and there was a stupendous recital at Carnegie Hall, New York City, 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.

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.

The DECCA/London recording company made important recordings of key sections of his repertoire from 1978 onwards. 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 This was recorded at Butler University in 1976.

There is a very valuable recording of Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto which Bolet recorded for DECCA/London with Ivan Fischer and the LSO but it has disappeared from the catalogue.

He died in 1990 in Mountain View, California.

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de:Jorge Bolet ja:ホルヘ・ボレット

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Musicians - Jorge Bolet

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