One thing streaming has achieved is to make Christmas shopping trickier. Unless your loved ones are serious collectors, you can no longer give the gift of music. It is especially unfortunate when Australian Eloquence releases two such gift-worthy box sets of CD reissues. Still, as long as Cyrus Meher-Homji draws breath, the Yuletide spirit lives on. One of these releases covers the first recording decade of a great artist, and the other mirrors it by covering another’s final decade.

Jorge Bolet. Photo supplied

The Cuban-born Jorge Bolet (1914–1990) was among the last of the old school piano virtuosos, along with his contemporary Shura Cherkassky: that is, he concentrated on beauty of tone, a singing lyrical line, selective emphasis in voicing, and had an astounding but elegant technique at his disposal. During his final decade he toured Australia and recorded a recital for ABC radio. (Remember when the ABC cared more about high-achievers than wannabes?) An engineer later told me Bolet was “difficult”, because he was ultra-meticulous about the tuning and balance of the piano, placement of the microphones, and so on.

The truth is, like all the great virtuosos, Bolet...