Maurizio Pollini CHOPIN

Maurizio Pollini – Chopin comprises four works written between 1843 and 1844, including the haunting Berceuse in D flat major Op.57 and the four-movement Piano Sonata in B minor Op.58, a proud Polish musician’s spectacular creative response to the dominant legacy of German keyboard sonatas. The programme opens with Chopin’s two Nocturnes Op.55 and three Mazurkas Op.56, before moving to the composer’s Opp.57 and 58 scores, with each piece presented in the order of its publication. Pollini here trains the spotlight on the infinite breadth of Chopin’s melodic invention. As the pianist points out, Chopin always favoured variety over uniformity when constructing his own concert programmes.

Pollini’s choice of compositions from a narrow window in time allowed him to revisit works already in his Deutsche Grammophon catalogue and to add the Op.56 Mazurkas to his Yellow Label discography. Maurizio Pollini – Chopin preserves the fruits of a lifelong process of study and experience gained since the pianist began exploring Chopin’s art in the early 1950s. As he once told the New York Times, “The music of Chopin has been with me my entire life, since … I was a boy. My love for [it] has become greater and greater for years.”

For Maurizio Pollini, Chopin’s power lies in his capacity to express profound emotions in music of the utmost clarity and extraordinary beauty. “Chopin is an innately seductive composer,” he observes. “But there is an incredible depth to Chopin, and this depth should come, finally, in performance of him. What was extraordinary about him is that he was able to achieve universality. It is amazing that music so completely personal is able to conquer everybody.” Interviewed by BBC Radio 3 soon after his 75th birthday, the pianist suggested that Chopin wrote for the piano in a more beautiful way than any other composer and that there was a “touch of magic” about his music. “That magic is difficult to explain,” he noted, “but the balance between the different registers of the piano [allows] the music to sing wonderfully … He’s loved in all the world; everybody likes him.”