Jorge Bolet (November 15, 1914 – October 16, 1990) was a Cuban-born but mostly American-resident pianist and teacher.
Bolet was born in Havana, and studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he himself taught from 1939 to 1942. His teachers included Leopold Godowsky, Josef Hofmann, David Saperton, Moriz Rosenthal and Fritz Reiner.
In 1937, he won the Naumburg Competition, and gave his debut recital. In 1942 Bolet joined the U...
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Jorge Bolet (November 15, 1914 – October 16, 1990) was a Cuban-born but mostly American-resident pianist and teacher.
Bolet was born in Havana, and studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he himself taught from 1939 to 1942. His teachers included Leopold Godowsky, Josef Hofmann, David Saperton, Moriz Rosenthal and Fritz Reiner.
In 1937, he won the Naumburg Competition, and gave his debut recital. In 1942 Bolet joined the US Army. He was sent to Japan as part of the Army of Occupation. While there, he conducted the Japanese premiere of The Mikado. He made his first recordings for Remington.
Bolet provided the piano soundtrack for the 1960 biopic, Song Without End, which starred Dirk Bogarde as the legendary 19th-century piano virtuoso, Franz Liszt. (The film won the Academy Award for Best Music score.) However, Bolet's playing was condemned by American music critics for decades as being too focused on romantic virtuosity, so his recordings in the 1960s were...
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