Jorge Bolet (piano)
The Ambassador Auditorium Recitals
rec. 11 November 1981 and 3 December 1986, Pasadena, USA
First Hand Records FHR178 [3 CDs: 202]
Jorge Bolet was hardly unusual in performing with greater tension and excitement in recital than in the studio. His Carnegie Hall recital of 1974 is a case in point. This latest release in First Hand Records’ Ambassador Auditorium series presents a rather rare opportunity to sample Bolet on the wing, albeit toward the end of his career. The other volumes in the series are devoted to Claudio Arrau and Shura Cherkassky.
The first half of the 1981 recital contains two works, Mendelssohn’s Fantasia in F sharp minor, Op.28 and Schumann’s Fantasy in C major. The former is especially convincing, warmly textured and pointed with great skill and clarity. At a few moments I worried about the piano’s middle register which can sound a touch brittle or maybe that is a feature of the recording set-up. The Schuman exudes a similarly authoratative stance to his 1986 London recording of it, though there are a few negligible slips, assimilable by virtue of the nobility of his playing. Applause has, rightly, been included. After the break came a sequence of Schubert-Liszt song transcriptions familiar from the 12-song transcription LP album that he made soon after for Decca. He finds manifold voices in these songs and shows marvellous chording and coloration.
The recital continues on CD2 with more Liszt with Mephisto Waltz No.1, very similar in tempo and approach to the following year’s Kingsway Hall Decca recording but with an explosive quality that the LP doesn’t quite replicate. There are four encores. Abram Chasins’ two Preludes from his Book 3 are new to Bolet’s discography. He took advice from Chasins, who was something of a mentor. No.2 is pensive and especially well nuanced by Bolet whilst No.3 is a self-confident, Rachmaninovian statement and powerfully dispatched. He balances two other encores, starting with Chopin’s Nocturne No.5 in F sharp major and ending with that in E flat major, a gentle unwinding to the recital.
Bolet returned to the auditorium five years later to perform a typically ingenious recital of Ballades. He begins with Grieg’s Ballade, a work in which he generally jettisoned a number of repeats. That said, even here the work stretches to 18:45. In Berlin in 1961 he took 15:30 (it can be found on Audite). There is still much to engage the listener, so much colour does he find in it. There are no Bolet commercial recordings of the Brahms Ballades, Op.,10 which makes their inclusion here valuable and narratively convincing. Liszt’s Ballade No.2 is, however, the standout. Here some of the frailties that sometimes afflicted him are slung off for a no-holds-barred exhibition of brilliance. Yes, it’s not dissimilar in outline to the London recording of 1983, but it’s charged with a greater intensity. After which I found the Chopin Ballades occasionally rather fragile. The Bizet transcription by his teacher Leopold Godowsky is played with eloquently spun tonal qualities. Two Chopin Etudes end the recital.
This is a valuable set not least because of the relative lack of live Bolet material. If I feel that he is tiring in the second recital and there are, throughout both recitals, a far higher number of mishits than are to be found in the recitals in the same series by Arrau and Cherkassky, there are many compensating features as the splendid Liszt Ballade shows.
The notes set the scene well and the remastering is excellent.
Jonathan Woolf
Contents
11 November 1981
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Fantasia in F sharp minor, Op.28 ‘Sonate écossaise’ (1833)
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Fantasy in C major, Op.17 (1838)
Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
12 Lieder, S558 No.2 Auf dem Wasser zu singen (1838)
6 Müllerlieder, S565 No.2 Der Müller und der Bach (1846)
Winterreise, S561 No.7 Der Lindenbaum (1839)
Schwanengesang, S560 No.3 Aufenthalt (1839)
12 Lieder, S558 No.4 Erlkönig (1838)
Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke, S514 ‘Mephisto Waltz No.1 (1856)
Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849)
Nocturne No.5 in F sharp major, Op.15 No.2 (1832)
Abram Chasins (1903-1987)
Preludes, Book 3, Op.12; Nos 2 and 3 (1928)
Moritz Moszkowski (1854-1925)
La Jongleuse, Op.52 No.4 (pub 1894)
Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849)
Nocturne No.2 in E flat major, Op.9 (1832)
3 December 1986
Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
Ballade in G minor, Op.24 (1876)
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
4 Ballades, Op.10 (1854)
Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
Ballade No.2 in B minor, S171 (1853)
Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849)
4 Ballades: No.1 in G minor, Op.23 (1835): No.2 in F major, Op.38 (1839): No.3 in A flat major, Op.47 (1841): No.4 in F minor, Op.52 (1843)
Georges Bizet (1838-1875)
L’Arlésienne Suite No.1(1872); III Adagietto arr Leopold Godowsky, 1927
Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849)
12 Etudes, Op.25: No.1 in A flat major. No.2 in F minor (1837)
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