Maurizio Pollini

Maurizio Pollini – Debussy: Préludes II (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 48:39 minutes | 790 MB | Genre: Classical, Piano
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

Why yes indeed, this is a very recent recording of Debussy by Maurizio Pollini (with his own son Daniele at his side for En blanc et en noir), made in late 2016 in Munich’s sumptuous Herkulesaal. In it, the old lion of the piano unfurls for us the sumptuous and enigmatic musical tapestry of the Second Book of Debussy’s Preludes, finished in 1912: a superlatively delicate pattern, more sketched and suggested than really followed, the pianist being enjoined not to “overdo it”. Maurizio Pollini, 74 when the recording was made, can measure his performance out perfectly, and knows how to give the impression that the music is being written and improvised as he plays. And the album closes with En blanc et en noir for two pianos, of which Debussy wrote in 1915: “I have suffered greatly from the long drought imposed upon my brain by the war”; after months of silence, and his work editing Chopin, he entered a period of fevered creativity which continued with the two Books of the Études and the final sonatas. First entitled “Caprices en blanc et noir”, the three pieces of En blanc et noir refer neatly to the instrument’s keys and, as Debussy writes in 1916, “they aim to draw their colour, their emotion, from the simple piano, like Velasquez’s greys”. Grey, the fruit of the meeting of black and white…

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Maurizio Pollini – Chopin: Nocturnes, Mazurkas, Berceuse, Sonata, Opp. 55-58 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:33 minutes | 964 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

Frédéric Chopin made his name in the high-society salons of his native Poland and, above all, in the vibrant Paris of Eugène Delacroix, Victor Hugo and George Sand. His pieces for solo piano, often technically challenging, always enchanting, are in constant global demand today, especially when brought to life by a performer of Maurizio Pollini’s stature. The 76-year-old Italian musician has been in love with Chopin’s art since childhood, a passion clear in his critically acclaimed recordings of the composer’s works for Deutsche Grammophon. Maurizio Pollini – Chopin, set for international release on 25 January 2019, embraces a lifetime’s dedication to the composer and complements Pollini’s much praised 2017 album, Chopin – Late Works, opp.59–64.

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Maurizio Pollini – Beethoven: The Last Three Sonatas, Opp. 109-111 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:07 minutes | 826 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

Maurizio Pollini revisits Beethoven’s final three sonatas (Op. 109 to 111), forty years after recording the very same score for the first time, a score which sees the composer elevate the genre to dizzying levels of expertise. The Italian pianist explains that ever since January 1977 (the first time he recorded No. 32, Nos. 30 and 31 dating even further back to June 1975), he has continuously discovered an infinite number of details within the material and the structure over the course of the multiple times he has performed the three sonatas. Beethoven strays away from the conventions of the traditional sonata with these, something he had been doing since his Opus 27 (Quasi una fantasia, Moonlight), inserting various astonishing shapes. Thus, variation (Op. 109, Arietta of the Op. 111) and fugue (Op. 110, after that of the Opus 101) assume an innovative importance here, much like other unrestricted episodes where Beethoven appears to be expressing very personal emotions, initiating the Romantic era, where subjectivity reigns over structure. Recorded in concert, Maurizio Pollini brings a surprising amount of urgency (Op. 109) and lyricism (Op. 110) to this release that ensures its place as one of the best Pollini recitals in recent years (Beethoven, Debussy, Chopin). A must-listen. – Pierre-Yves Lascar

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Maurizio Pollini – Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Opp. 101 & 106 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:42 minutes | 967 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

After Pollini already recorded Beethoven’s Sonatas No. 28 and No. 29 back in 1977, he does so again in 2022 to elicit the last secrets from these late sonatas in a new interpretation. Like all of Beethoven’s late sonatas, these defied the formal conventions common to the genre and were ahead of their time. Beethoven no longer cared about constraints in society and music, instead giving free rein to his subjective feelings.

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Maurizio Pollini – Chopin: Polonaises (1976/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:38 minutes | 1016 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

Here is Pollini in all his early glory, in performances expertly transferred from 1976. Shorn of all virtuoso compromise or indulgence, the majestic force of his command is indissolubly integrated with the seriousness of his heroic impulse. Never have I been compelled into such awareness of the underlying malaise beneath the outward and nationalist defiance of the Polonaises. The tension and menace at the start of No. 2 are almost palpable, its storming and disconsolate continuation made a true mirror of Poland’s clouded history. The C minor Polonaise’s denouement, too, emerges with a chilling sense of finality, and Pollini’s way with the pounding audacity commencing at 3’00” in the epic F sharp minor Polonaise is like some ruthless prophecy of every percussive, anti-lyrical gesture to come. At 7’59” Chopin’s flame-throwing interjections are volcanic indeed, and if there is ample poetic delicacy and compensation (notably in the Polonaise-fantaisie, always among Chopin’s most profoundly speculative masterpieces), it is the more elemental side of his genius, his ‘canons’ rather than ‘flowers’ that are made to sear and haunt the memory.

To say that Pollini is ‘cold’ (a recent jury colleague; his exact description seemed to me as blinkered as it was unprintable) is to miss the point, to show an incapacity to identify with ‘other points of view’, with possibilities that lie at the very heart of re-creation. Others may be more outwardly beguiling (Pollini is already a wide step from Rubinstein’s belle epoque elegance or Horowitz’s reminder of Russian romantic pianism at its most volatile) but Pollini’s magnificently unsettling Chopin can be as imperious and unarguable as any on record. That his performances are also deeply moving is a tribute to his unique status. –Bryce Morrison, Gramophone

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