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Virtuoso pianist Jorge Bolet began his keyboard studies at the age of nine. His progress excited his local teachers and he received a scholarship at the age of 12 to study in the United States, at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. There his piano teacher was David Saperton. Beginning in 1932 he studied with Leopold Godowsky and Moritz Rosenthal, and, briefly, with Rudolf Serkin. He won the Naumburg Prize in 1937 and the Josef Hofmann Award in 1938. He became Rudolf Serkin's teaching assistant at the Curtis Institute in 1939. In 1942 he joined the United States armed forces. After the end of the war he was a part of the U.S. cccupying forces in Japan. There, he conducted the first performance in that country of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado. He resumed his piano career after taking private lessons with Abram Chasins. Over a period of a few years he developed a reputation as a virtuoso player of astonishing power, able to play the most difficult works by Liszt with an impression of natural ease that left the feeling that there was no limit to his pianistic range. He became the head of the piano faculty at Curtis, and also was on the piano faculty of Indiana University at Bloomington. While in the United States he preferred the pronunciation "George" for his first name.

Until nearly the end of his life he maintained a major performing and recording career. His recordings were primarily for the Decca (London) company. He produced many estimable performances, notably those of the major piano works by Franz Liszt, as well as concertos and other works. As exciting as some of these recordings were, he was an artist whose full range of brilliance was not caught by the microphone.

The fifth oldest symphony orchestra in the U.S., the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is one of the country's most distinguished. The group, which also performs as the Cincinnati Pops, has been shaped by various top-notch European and American music directors. The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra has a long recording history stretching well back into the LP era. That history has continued into the 2020s; the group released American Dreams in 2024.

Orchestral music appeared early in Cincinnati, a city heavily shaped by German immigration, and a Cincinnati Orchestra was founded in 1872. That was expanded in 1895 to 48 players when the Cincinnati Orchestra Association formed the new Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, with Frank Van der Stucken as music director. The following year, the orchestra moved into the Music Hall in the heart of the predominantly German Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. One of the most impressive concert halls in the U.S., the Music Hall has remained the orchestra's home ever since, except between 1911 and 1936. The orchestra disbanded briefly after labor strife in the 1900s; when it was re-formed, the new conductor was Leopold Stokowski, serving his first stint as a chief conductor. He remained in Cincinnati for only three years but expanded the group to 75 players and laid the foundations of its sound. Stokowski was succeeded by Ernst Kunwald, violinist-composer-conductor Eugène Ysaÿe, Fritz Reiner, and Eugene Goossens, who served from 1933 to 1947. Thor Johnson served as music director from 1947 to 1958 and made some of history's first stereo recordings with the group in the late '40s.

The orchestra gave the world premieres of Copland's A Lincoln Portrait and Fanfare for the Common Man and the American premieres of many works, including some by Mahler, Richard Strauss, and Shostakovich. Later music directors include Max Rudolf (1958-1970), Thomas Schippers (1970-1977), Michael Gielen (1980-1986), Jesús López-Cobos (1986-2001), Paavo Järvi (2001-2011), and Louis Langrée (2013-2024). The Cincinnati Pops Orchestra was formed in 1977, with a membership drawn from the Cincinnati Symphony's ranks. Its longtime conductor was Erich Kunzel, who also conducted the main Cincinnati Symphony on recordings, including on an early digital album, Tchaikovsky: 1812, released in 1979. Until the late 2000s, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra was known for audiophile releases on the Telarc label. In 2010, the group moved to its own CSO Media label, also marketing its work under the Fanfare Cincinnati imprint; in 2024, under Langrée, it released American Dreams. Cristian Măcelaru was set to become the orchestra's new music director beginning in the fall of 2025. ~ James Manheim