Pollini, Maurizio

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    Maurizio Pollini’s Final Recording, Made With His Son

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    Maurizio Pollini didn’t think his farewell on disc would be an album of music by Schubert with his son, Daniele. Now, it serves as an emotional coda.The pianist Maurizio Pollini was still exploring, right to the end.Throughout his long partnership with Deutsche Grammophon, Pollini, who died in March at the age of 82, offered invariably accomplished, intellectually alert recordings of repertoire including Bach and Chopin, Schoenberg and Boulez. In his twilight, he rethought music that he had recorded before, not least the last five sonatas of Beethoven — works with which he had previously confirmed his stature in the 1970s, in versions that still sound strikingly modern today.Pollini’s last recording, which was recently released, bids a somewhat surprising farewell. Dedicated to Schubert, it marks a welcome return to a composer whose music Pollini had not taped since the 1980s. But what makes the program so remarkably poignant is that Pollini is joined by his son, Daniele. Each musician first plays a solo work: Maurizio, a taut rendition of the Piano Sonata in G; Daniele, a shapely set of the “Moments Musicaux.” Then, father and son share a single instrument in a concluding, breathtakingly direct interpretation of the Fantasie in F minor, for four hands.And so Maurizio Pollini’s discography ends with one of the bleaker cadences in music, confronting tragedy without flinching. The recording was not intended to be valedictory, though. Made in Munich in June 2022, the Schubert was one of several studio projects that Pollini still had in mind, among them the second book of Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier.”Instead, the sessions were an opportunity for father and son to work together. It was only their third time doing so. In 2016, they recorded a two-piano piece, “En Blanc et Noir,” as a coda to Pollini’s recording of the second book of Debussy’s “Préludes.” Before that, Daniele Pollini had conducted his father in Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto, in a filmed performance that made the elder Pollini particularly proud.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Maurizio Pollini, Celebrated Pianist Who Defined Modernism, Dies at 82

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      His recordings of Beethoven and Chopin were hailed as classics, but his technical ability sometimes invited controversy.Maurizio Pollini, an Italian pianist of formidable intellectual powers whose unrivaled technique and unwavering interpretive integrity made him the modernist master of the instrument, died on Saturday morning in Milan. He was 82.His death, in a clinic, was announced by the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, where he performed frequently. The announcement did not specify a cause, but Mr. Pollini had been forced to cancel a concert at the Salzburg Festival in 2022 because of heart problems and had pulled out of a number of subsequent recitals.Mr. Pollini, who performed for more than half a century, was that rare pianist who compelled listeners to think deeply. He was an artist of rigor and reserve whose staunch assurance, uncompromising directness and steadfast dedication to his ideals were evidence of what his colleague Daniel Barenboim called “a very high ethical regard of music.”Whether he played Beethoven, Schumann or Stockhausen, Mr. Pollini was almost unmatched in his capabilities. He took perfect command of his instrument, a prowess that came across “as neither glib facility nor tedious heroic effort,” the critic Edward Said once wrote, but instead as a technique that “allows you to forget technique entirely.”There were, however, many listeners who could not forget that technique, and Mr. Pollini was long a subject of controversy. Detractors heard only cold objectivity, accusing him of being too distant, too efficient or too unyielding when compared with the great characters of the piano; one of his few equals in sheer ability, Sviatoslav Richter, privately complained of hearing Mr. Pollini play Chopin on the radio with “no poetry or delicacy (even if everything’s impeccably precise).”“It was not a very imaginative performance,” Harold Schonberg of The New York Times said in his review of Mr. Pollini’s Carnegie Hall debut in 1968, eight years after the pianist had stormed to victory in the sixth International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw — the first Westerner to do so, and at only 18. “With all his skill,” Mr. Schonberg continued, “Mr. Pollini failed to suggest that he was deeply involved in the music.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More