A major loss for the music world: Maurizio Pollini, one of the genuinely era-defining pianists of the past half-century, has died at 82. Pollini was especially beloved at Lucerne Festival. I count his interpretations among my most meaningful musical experiences.
In the Washington Post, Tim Page writes: “For other listeners, Mr. Pollini was simply one of the greatest artists of his time, a musician who offered pristinely clear, clean, linear, and proportionate playing, yet found fresh and unexpected beauties in anything he took on.”
Page quotes Pierre Boulez’s portrayal of Pollini for the New York Times in 1993. “He does not say very much, but he thinks quite a lot,” Boulez said. “I find him very concentrated on what he is doing. He goes into depth in the music, and is not superficial, and his attitude as a musician is exactly his attitude as a man. He is as interesting as anyone could be.”
David Allen, in the New York Times, writes that Pollini “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.'”
Allen also summarizes the naysayers: “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…” He points out that, in spite of the controversy Pollini aroused, the consensus emerged that he embodied “the definition of what it meant to be a modernist pianist, or at least what it meant to play the piano in a contemporary way.”
Filed under: music news, obituary, pianists
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 