Maurizio Pollini 20th CENTURY

Maurizio Pollini was born in Milan on 5 January 1942. His father was the famous architect Gino Pollini, one of the leading representatives of Italian rationalism and also an expert violinist. His mother, Renata Melotti, studied piano and singing and was the sister of the well-known sculptor Fausto Melotti, who had a lasting influence on the young Pollini. In 1948 Maurizio Pollini received his first piano lessons from Carlo Lonati. From 1955 until 1959 he continued his studies with Carlo Vidusso and in 1958 he began to study composition with Bruno Bettinelli. In 1960 he was awarded first prize at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw and appeared at La Scala playing Chopin’s First Piano Concerto under Celibidache. Since then Pollini has become one of the most admired and respected pianists of our time and has appeared all over the world with leading orchestras and conductors. He is particularly renowned for his innovative concert programmes which champion works by contemporary composers and contrasts these with those of the Classical and Romantic eras. An exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist for four decades, his recordings have won innumerable awards, including Gramophone and Echo Awards, Diapason d’or, Record Academy Prize, Tokyo, and Stella d’oro as well as two Grammys.

 

More than any other leading pianist of the second half of the 20th century, Maurizio Pollini has made a point of championing radical new music. One of his principal aims in life has been to introduce new audiences to works by Nono, Boulez, Stockhausen and Sciarrino. Passionately opposed to the idea that art is a meditative medium conducive to rapt contemplation, he prefers to offer his audiences the sort of programmes whose fare is regarded by many as unpalatable or at least as taxing. The first new work he performed was Giorgio Federico Ghedini's masterly Fantasia for piano and strings, which he premiered at La Scala, Milan, on 11 October 1958 under the direction of Thomas Schippers. During the following decades he made a name for himself as a technically impeccable performer with rare powers of objective analysis and a remarkably cultured tone in a repertory extending from Bach, Beethoven and the Romantics to the most modern works. Since the 1990s he has appeared at every major music festival performing programmes of new works that he himself has planned in the form of special projects. Among the awards he has received in consequence are the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize and the Japanese Praemium Imperiale.

From the outset of his recording career, Maurizio Pollini has championed modern music - in benchmark accounts of Bartok, Boulez, Manzoni, Nono, Prokofiev, Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Webern, to which can be added his later recordings of Debussy and Berg. Here are his complete recordings of 20th-century music, brought together on a 6-CD set for the first time.

CD 1
STRAVINSKY: Three Movements from Petrushka
PROKOFIEV: Piano Sonata No. 7 in B flat major, Op. 83
WEBERN: Variations for piano, Op. 27
BOULEZ: Piano Sonata No. 2
Maurizio Pollini, piano

CD 2
NONO: Como una ola de fuerza y luz for soprano, piano, orchestra and tape
Slavka Taskova, soprano
Maurizio Pollini, piano
Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks / Claudio Abbado
.....sofferte onde serene... for piano and magnetic tape dedicated to Maurizio and Marilisa Pollini
Maurizio Pollini, piano
MANZONI: Masse: Omaggio a Edgard Varese for piano and orchestra
Maurizio Pollini, piano
Berliner Philharmoniker / Giuseppe Sinopoli
Live recording

CD 3
SCHOENBERG
Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11
Six Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19
Five Piano Pieces, Op. 23
Suite for Piano, Op. 25
Piano Piece, Op. 33a
Piano Piece, Op. 33b
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 42
Maurizio Pollini, piano
Berliner Philharmoniker / Claudio Abbado

CD 4
BARTOK
Piano Concerto No. 1 Sz 83
Piano Concerto No. 2 Sz 95
Maurizio Pollini, piano
Chicago Symphony Orchestra / Claudio Abbado

CD 5
DEBUSSY: 12 Etudes
BERG: Sonata for Piano, Op. 1
Maurizio Pollini, piano

CD 6
DEBUSSY:
Preludes
L'Isle joyeuse
Maurizio Pollini, piano