Cuban Pianist Likes Beauty Around Him

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30560, 1 October 1964, Page 18

Cuban Pianist Likes Beauty Around Him

Mr Jorge Bolet, the Cuban pianist now touring New Zealand, was not very happy yesterday. He had just heard that his beloved black pug which he had owned for 11 years had died at his home in Spain, and on top of that he was feeling the effects of a way of life that involves almost continual travelling. “It is not so much physical exhaustion as spiritual, nervous, exhaustion,” he explained. “When I get home — a day or two now, a week here, a week-end there —I am so sick of travel, of people, of hotels, of trains, of aeroplanes, that I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to go anywhere or see anybody.” / Home to Mr Bolet is the fishing village of Fuenterrabia, on the Basque coast of Spain overlooking the French frontier. Although be was born in Cuba, he has not been back there since Fidel Castro took over the government.

“I was in Havana three weeks before Castro came to power,” said Mr Bolet. “Now I would not be allowed in. The name of Bolet is on his

black list, because of who we are and what we are, my brother and I.” Mr Bolet said he had an intense dislike for persons in the field of the arts “shooting off at the mouth about things political,” but he would say that he was a very rabid antiCommunist.

When he gets time, Mr Bolet collects valuable things such as crystal, china, silver, antiques, paintings, and old tea caddies and liqueur boxes. “I love anything that’s beautiful," he said. “I can’t conceive of living your life surrounded by anything that is not beautiful. At home I have the beautiful Pyrenees and those charming Basque valleys.” It will be some time before Mr Bolet will be able to return to his beautiful surroundings. After leaving New Zealand he will go to South Africa, then back to Europe for more concerts, then to the United States for six weeks, and then back to Australia for a 14-week tour. His bookings take him well into June next year. t