His teachers included Leopold Godowsky, Josef Hofmann, David Saperton, Moriz Rosenthal and Fritz Reiner.

However, Bolet's playing was condemned by American music critics for decades as being too focused on romantic virtuosity,[4] so his recordings in the 1960s were confined to fairly small and hard-to-find labels.

[5] From 1968 to 1977, Bolet was Professor of Music (piano) at Indiana University, where he taught alongside his childhood friends Abbey Simon and Sidney Foster.

In 1977, Bolet became Head of Piano at the Curtis Institute of Music, succeeding Rudolf Serkin, but he resigned from this post to concentrate on his performing career.

[7] Bolet is particularly well remembered for his performances and recordings of large-scale Romantic music, particularly works by Franz Liszt, César Franck, and Frédéric Chopin.

He also specialised in piano transcriptions and unusual repertoire, including the fiendishly difficult works of Godowsky, many of which Bolet had studied with the composer himself.