Summary
Milanese pianist, forty-three years old in the essay, who at eighteen won the Warsaw Chopin Competition, the first non-Slav to do so, and whose New York recitals of March 23 and March 31 are Said’s central instance in “Remembrances of Things Played” of an interesting pianist — a project unfolding in time rather than work that merely goes on (Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, PDF p.219-220).
Details
- His technique allows the listener to forget technique entirely; what comes through is a direct approach, aristocratically clear, powerfully and generously articulated, with no platform manner or set of poses — a totally unfussy reading of the piano literature, including Stockhausen’s Klavierstück X performed jacketless with the score before him (PDF p.219).
- His March programs paired Beethoven with Schubert and Schumann with Chopin, making clear the rigorously structured, almost Bach-like logic in the older composers’ free forms and the way the younger composers’ sonatas almost overflow their formal restrictions (PDF p.223).
- A successful performance of the Schumann Fantasy such as Pollini’s makes the listener feel both that this is the work Schumann wrote and that Pollini is commenting on it, giving his version of it (PDF p.224).
- He survived the paranoid atmosphere of musical competitions in part because after winning the Warsaw Chopin Competition he did not immediately go on tour to launch a major career but spent several years studying and maturing (PDF p.225).
- In his Schumann one hears not only the composer’s episodic genius but also the performances of other pianists, Michelangeli for instance, from whom Pollini has learned and gone beyond (PDF p.227).