Bolet: The Ambassador Auditorium Recitals

The two Jorge Bolet recitals in this collection were created during the final decade of his career. While his 1974 Carnegie Hall recital was recorded and released by RCA, very few other live Bolet performances recorded under professional conditions have been commercially available. This archival recording offers us a wonderful opportunity to hear Bolet before an audience – something he preferred over working in the recording studio. Bolet was a rigorous, controlled, and serious musician who could sometimes appear emotionally reserved in his studio recordings. Occasionally, however, he would give a recital that surpassed his studio work, where everything came together perfectly, and this first concert from November 11, 1981, possesses that quality. Bolet was clearly in top form as he gave an enthusiastic audience five encores. The two preludes by Abram Chasins are not represented in Bolet’s commercial discography. The 1,262-seat Ambassador Auditorium on the campus of Ambassador College in Pasadena, California, was a prominent concert hall on the West Coast between 1974 and 1995, hosting around 2,500 concerts and attracting the greatest instrumentalists and orchestras.