Bolet Rediscovered: Liszt Recital

Bolet Rediscovered: Liszt Recital

Bolet Rediscovered: Liszt Recital
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CD Details

Composer: Franz Liszt
Performer: Jorge Bolet
Edition: Music CD
Format: Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2001-04-03
Music Label: RCA
Soundtracks:
  1. Liebestraum No.3
  2. Gnomenreigen
  3. Un Sospiro
  4. Funerailles
  5. La Campanella
  6. Waldesrauschen
  7. Grand Galop Chromatique
  8. Rhapsodie Espagnole
  9. Tannhauser Overture

Music reviews of Bolet Rediscovered: Liszt Recital

Music Review: A revived wonder
Rating: 5 Stars

I have seldom been in a situation, where formulations by the preceding reviewers perfectly reflect my own feelings and experience. I and my family were so hooked by this CD that I immediately ordered a 9-CD Liszt set with Jorge Bolet (despite I had not been a Liszt fan) and started hunting on other Bolet's recordings on amazon. Today I have 15 Bolet CDs in my collection and am waiting for several other CDs, including Bolet's live Carnegie Hall recital (on BMG) and Rachmaninov's 3d Concerto (on Palexa). I don't agree with the editorial review above that Bolet's later Decca recordings are `stolid and inhibited': some Liszt pieces from the Decca collection are dazzling (cf. Schubert-Liszt transcriptions, the Swiss book of `Annees de pelegrinage', the `Chasse-neige' transcendental study or the `Reminiscences on Norma'). But it is beyond doubt that the great pianist was in a better form in 1972-3 than in his Decca period - and was younger. His earlier variants of La Campanella, Un Sospiro and Liebestraum No. 3 are stronger and more mesmerizing than autumnal later versions. And Bolet's sound is simply incredible. Epithets like `singing' don't tell what it is about: it is a soft sound produced by a man with extraordinary strong fingers who could measure his power. Bolet's legato is perfect, but every note is limpid, salient and rounded. The textures remain clear and transparent even in the most difficult and ungrateful passages, as in the climax of the Tannhäuser Overture.
I cannot explain why these Liszt recordings were buried in the RCA vaults. Probably the managers imagined that a contemporary pianist playing in a grand style was no longer interesting for the audience. I guess that they would refuse to listen to Godowsky or Hoffmann in a fine stereo sound of the 70-s. My mother said after hearing Bolet's Liebestraum and La Campanella that it reminded her of Hoffmann or Rachmaninov: she did not know that Rachmaninov was indeed Bolet's idol and that Bolet graduated from Hoffmann's Philhadelphia Institute and was the only laureate of the Hoffmann prize.
A few words about Rhapsodie espagnole and Chromatic Galop -- pieces called `nonsensical' in the excellent review posted by Huibert Jonkers. Surely this is not profound music and I'll never return to it for the notes sake. But Bolet plays it with such a tactful restraint and glimpses of humor that it is great art. I conclude that banality is often concealed not in the score itself, but in the soul of the performer -- happily not this one. And self-sufficient music may benefit from a congenial great artist. This is the case with Bolet's breathtaking account of the Tannhäuser Overture. I love the famous recording of this piece left by another great pianist -- Benno Moiseiwitsch (Naxos, vol. 2). Moiseiwitsch has a gorgeous touch, too, and is even more fluent than Bolet (his version is several minutes shorter). But when I am listening to Moiseiwitsch and the accents he makes, I first of all hear a barn-storming concert piece, while when I am listening to Bolet, I hear both grand romantic piano and Wagner's great overture with its orchestral sound.

One of greatest piano CDs of the second half of the 20th century. And if you neglected Liszt's pieces, there is a chance to change your mind. I also heartily recommend a 2CD Bolet's Chopin set with his terrific live Chopin recordings (Marstonrecords): the pianistic voltage is at times even higher than here. That set is labeled `Bolet in Concert. Vol. 1' by the producer. Probably Ward Marston will one day issue Vol. 2. We are waiting.
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It shouldn't take more than a few seconds into the first track, the Liebesträum No. 3, for this disc to hook you. It exhibits masterly playing of the sort we rarely hear these days or even from Bolet's later recordings for Decca/London, when his playing was stolid and inhibited. But this Liebesträum is awash in poetic lyricism of the first order, with marvelous legato playing.

Bolet links every note seamlessly to the next, like a string of beads, an effect reinforced by a pearly, limpid tone. Bolet always refused to subordinate his lyric gifts to mere technical facility, so even pieces other virtuosos turn into barn-burners, like Funérailes and Rhapsodie espagnole, are more measured here, with each note given its full value and the flashier aspects present but secondary to the total picture. The final track, Liszt's dazzling piano arrangement of Wagner's Tannhäuser Overture, is breathtaking, not only because of Bolet's supreme mastery of this devilishly difficult piece, but also because it was recorded in one impromptu take after a formal recording session was over.

The entire contents of this disc, recorded in 1972 and 1973, were buried in RCA's vaults and never released until now. Their discovery and release are something to be grateful for, since they burnish Bolet's posthumous reputation and give enormous pleasure. --Dan Davis

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