Maurizio Pollini, who died on Saturday at the age of 82, was a young piano prodigy, capable of playing as a teenager “better” than anyone else – compliments of Arthur Rubinstein – before becoming, at maturity, an interpreter bright, globally sought-after.
For the prestigious opera hall of La Scala in Milan, which announced his death, Maurizio Pollini, who played in the theater for more than fifty years, was “one of the great pianists of our time”.
Born in Milan on January 5, 1942 into a family of artists – his father Gino was a modernist architect, his uncle Fausto Melotti a recognized sculptor -, in March 1960 he made a sensational entry into the cozy world of classical music.
He won first prize in the Chopin competition in Warsaw where he was, at 18 years old, the youngest entrant. The chronicle notes that the president of the jury, Arthur Rubinstein, complimented the prodigy: “he already plays better than any of us! “.
Half a century later, Maurizio Pollini corrected the quote, with his customary modesty. “Rubinstein said I played “technically” better than anyone on the jury. I always thought he said that to make fun of his colleagues on the jury. Someone tampered with this statement by removing the “technically” and it became an exaggerated compliment,” he confided to documentary filmmaker Bruno Monsaingeon (Pollini: Masterfully2014).
Weight of an anvil
During the same competition, the Polish grandmaster gave him this curious advice, placing a finger, heavy as an anvil, on his shoulder. “I always play with this weight and I never get tired,” said the master to the young winner.
“He managed to transmit to his middle finger all the weight of his arm, of his shoulder, in a perfectly natural way. He said it was the foundation of his technique. […] The more I think about it, after all these years, the more I find this advice very valuable! », he explained at the end of his career.
Winner of the prestigious Chopin competition, Pollini could have embarked on the well-trodden path of a great concert artist.
He chose to put his career on hold. “I felt that this intense life was a little premature for me. I wanted to study, to know the repertoire better, to play the music of Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms,” he explained in 2014.
“Instead of continuing with a bang and burning out in ten years, Pollini stopped: he began his career with retirement. His fingers were ready. Not him,” summarizes music critic André Tubeuf.
He then took some valuable lessons from the Italian master Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. Then he gradually extended his repertoire to contemporary music, notably that of Pierre Boulez and Luigi Nono with whom he became friends.
Cultural experiments
He became a traveling companion of an Italian Communist Party which had just condemned the Soviet repression of the Prague Spring (1968).
“I did not have a precise political idea, but I was intransigent on one point: I could not have sympathy for a party which was not democratic in every sense of the word,” he explained.
It was the Italy of the “years of lead”: groups of the far left and far right increased indiscriminate attacks on the peninsula.
It was also the time of cultural experiments: improvised concerts in factories, programming for students and workers at La Scala in Milan, with friend Claudio Abbado at the helm.
Pollini made his first American tour in 1968. In the 70s, 80s and 90s, he recorded recordings with the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon, concerts and tours.
Labeled from his early youth as a “Chopinian pianist”, Pollini made a reputation in his maturity with Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. He also attracted the admiration of critics with Johannes Brahms.
In 1981, the composer and journalist Maurice Fleuret wrote after one of his interpretations of 2e concerto of Brahms: “He is obviously the first pianist in the world to be able to play all the notes of the 2e concerto » and also “one of the most modest, a musician always more concerned with music than with himself”.
Late in life, Maurizio Pollini had the rare privilege of performing and recording under the baton of his own son, Daniele, himself an accomplished conductor and pianist.