Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestrea Archive

LISZT: Piano Concerto Nos. 1 & 2; Petrarch Sonnets; Tannhauser Overture – Jorge Bolet, piano/ Lawrence Foster/ Edo de Waart – Audite 

by Audiophile Audition | Feb 26, 2018 | Classical Reissue Reviews

A restored series of RIAS appearances by Jorge Bolet will delight and astound in his thorough grasp of the Liszt style. LISZT: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major; Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major; Annees de Pelerinage, Deuxieme Annee: 3 Petrarch Sonnets; Overture to Tannhauser – Jorge Bolet, piano/ Radio Symphony-Orchestra Berlin/ Lawrence Foster/ Edo de Waart – Audite 97.738, 79:09 (1/19/18)  [Distr. by Naxos] ****: The Cuban piano virtuoso Jorge Bolet (1914-1990) enjoyed a special relationship with the music of Franz Liszt, his having been selected to supply the sound track for the 1960 motion picture Song Without End, in which Dirk Bogarde portrayed the legendary Hungarian musician.  Bolet traveled to Berlin and the RIAS studios several times between 1971 and 1982, and happily, his studio and concert performances have been preserved and here issued for the first time. The familiar 1855 E-flat Concerto (30 November 1971) with Lawrence Foster, live, combines electric fluency and romantic girth, eagerly indulging the dialogue between the piano, individual instrumental colors, and the full complement of strings, brass and tympani.  After a blistering Allegro maestoso, the one movment work glides into an operatic Quasi Adagio in which Bolet’s keyboard exerts recitative […]