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Over three-and-a-half decades Maurizio Pollini has traversed the major works of Chopin as no other pianist of his time. Here is the legacy of this unique achievement, in a single box set for the first time. Including the complete Chopin recordings, from 1972 to 2008; the Études, Preludes, Polonaises, Sonatas, Scherzi, Ballades, and Nocturnes.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Really words cannot describe the beauty of Pollini's playing. It touches lives forever. How lucky we are to have paid witness to his love affair with the music of Chopin and how future generations will cherish having his Chopin recordings now in one box set. This is surely a must for anyone passionate about the piano!!!
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18 of 30 people found the following review helpful
[-] Chopin and Pollini--a Brilliant Match Made in Theory
20 Dec 2011
Format:Audio CD
It has been something of a lingering debate in classical music ever since Pollini won the Chopin Competition in 1960, namely whether his allegedly moderinsed way of playing Chopin brings greater depth and magisterialness, as claimed by his followers, or whether it merely amounts to cool stiffness. I believe it all boils down to one's view of Chopin's music, essentially whether it is seen as literal and objective ('unromantic'), or rather as flexible and subjective ('romantic'). I fully belong to the latter camp and thence find limited pleasure in Pollini's approach--though acknowledging the influence his playing has had on future generations of pianists (not least Yundi Li).
Chopin's music was my first love affair in music as a young boy learning to play the piano; more than two decades on I have had the opportunity of listening to the vast majority of pianists having recorded Chopin since Rubinstein's and Cortot's epochal mono recordings of the interwar period. Prior to Pollini, it is fair to say that few, if any, notable pianists played Chopin other than romantically (in the case of Cortot, it could almost be added 'approximately'). One can read that Chopin, like most composers, regarded the written score as a kind of formal articulation of a musical idea; for instance, he spent hundreds of hours trying to put down on paper that otherworldly Venetian gondola song he heard in his head, only to arrive at a score of the Barcarolle whose correspondence with his own performances was approximate at best (according to preserved written accounts). Consequently, to me it is obvious that the written score must be interpreted with individual inspiration in order for the music to be realised.
If I was to generally describe Pollini's way of interpreting Chopin, I would call it literal, inflexible, monochromatic and one-dimensional: most contrasts in tempo, dynamics and phrasing are equalised; the result is brilliant, immaculate and magisterial, as if the score was used as a blueprint for musical serial production. For many listeners, this seems to be more than enough--they do not want any intrusive elements of 'mannerism', 'schmaltz' or 'idiosyncrasy'. My reaction to Pollini's Chopin has always been a feeling of being shortchanged, as his delivery could be most closely likened to non-interpretations.
This brings us to the other main issue of whether Pollini's Chopin playing has remained consistent over the years, here spanning from 1972 to 2008 as recorded by DG. I think it is quite evident that his approach has remained pretty much unchanged, not only during the mentioned period but also including the 1960s with his 'classic' debut recording on EMI. However, conversely to most other pianists, Pollini's Chopin has not mellowed with age; instead, if anything, his keystroke has become fiercer, rubato sparser and tempos even more restless. There are a couple of interesting reference points for comparison, where there are two versions of the same work recorded with a considerable amount of time elapsed in between: the First Ballade sounded relatively conventional with some careful rubato in the 1960 EMI recording (8:58), whereas the 1999 remake is unequivocally dramatic and bare (8:35); the Second Ballade was tense enough in 1999 (6:51), only to become disturbingly impatient in the 2008 remake (6:29); Nocturnes Nos 4-5 and 7-8 came out straightforward but poised in 1960, turning blunt and hectic in 2005; the Second Sonata from 1984 may be my favourite Chopin performance from Pollini, appropriately large-scale and forceful, whereas the 2008 remake is uncomfortably tight.
At the other side of the spectrum, Ohlsson was brilliant but comparatively straightforward in his early Chopin playing from the 1970s--revealing little of the level of depth and reflective beauty that were to elevate his complete survey on Arabesque (recorded 1989-2000) to unequalled reference quality. The most interesting comparison to draw is in the greatest of the Nocturnes, in C minor (Op 48/1): 5:49 as opposed to 7:58 tells a great deal of the increased elegiac poetry and suppleness of the remake. Even more interesting is to compare Ohlsson's two versions with Pollini's, taken at a breathless 5:09 which allows little room for any sense or retrospection or poetry. In fact, the Nocturnes are the works that most clearly expose Pollini's shortcomings in Chopin, as seen from the 'romantic' camp perspective. Of bel canto (Op 9/2), intimacy (Op 9/1), nostalgia (Op 62/1) and dusky sonorities (Op 27/1) we get little with Pollini's fierce and often blunt aggressiveness (Op 32/1), virtually deprived of rubato (Op 37/1) and true pianissimo (Op 27/2).
Pollini has recorded only four Mazurkas for DG (another three can be found in his 1960 competition programme), and it is not hard to understand why: try the simple C major (Op 33/3) or the greatest of the pack in B minor (Op 33/4), neither of which I have heard played with such stiffness and unidiomatic perception of the Polish national dance. Against that backdrop, the worst disc in the set is the third one containing the mature Polonaises, where Pollini's playing is a combination of lifeless and edgy (Op 26), fierce and bare (Op 40), harsh and percussive (Op 44), and unheroic and distantly observed (Opp 53 & 61). The Etudes and Preludes are largely characterised by steely technical brilliance, harsh tone production and arctic grey-scale colours. It should be mentioned that DG's close-up, airless piano sonics adds to the tinny sound quality.
Pollini's unsentimental, unstylised and blunt playing works best in the more large-scale works, above all the Scherzos (except No 4), the Ballades (chiefly Nos 1 & 2) and the Second Sonata (from 1984). But what this 9-disc box set, featuring the bulk of Chopin's music for solo piano (excluding most of the Mazurkas, the early Polonaises, three Impromptus, four Rondos, the First Sonata and several one-off works), ultimately displays is that Pollini and Chopin was a brilliant match made in theory that just never worked very well in practice. Since I believe the half-a-century-old debut recording remains his most successful Chopin outing, I find the pending Testament release of the Etudes, recorded by EMI in September 1960 but previously unpublished, to be of greater interest.
REFERENCE: Ohlsson
Chopin's music was my first love affair in music as a young boy learning to play the piano; more than two decades on I have had the opportunity of listening to the vast majority of pianists having recorded Chopin since Rubinstein's and Cortot's epochal mono recordings of the interwar period. Prior to Pollini, it is fair to say that few, if any, notable pianists played Chopin other than romantically (in the case of Cortot, it could almost be added 'approximately'). One can read that Chopin, like most composers, regarded the written score as a kind of formal articulation of a musical idea; for instance, he spent hundreds of hours trying to put down on paper that otherworldly Venetian gondola song he heard in his head, only to arrive at a score of the Barcarolle whose correspondence with his own performances was approximate at best (according to preserved written accounts). Consequently, to me it is obvious that the written score must be interpreted with individual inspiration in order for the music to be realised.
If I was to generally describe Pollini's way of interpreting Chopin, I would call it literal, inflexible, monochromatic and one-dimensional: most contrasts in tempo, dynamics and phrasing are equalised; the result is brilliant, immaculate and magisterial, as if the score was used as a blueprint for musical serial production. For many listeners, this seems to be more than enough--they do not want any intrusive elements of 'mannerism', 'schmaltz' or 'idiosyncrasy'. My reaction to Pollini's Chopin has always been a feeling of being shortchanged, as his delivery could be most closely likened to non-interpretations.
This brings us to the other main issue of whether Pollini's Chopin playing has remained consistent over the years, here spanning from 1972 to 2008 as recorded by DG. I think it is quite evident that his approach has remained pretty much unchanged, not only during the mentioned period but also including the 1960s with his 'classic' debut recording on EMI. However, conversely to most other pianists, Pollini's Chopin has not mellowed with age; instead, if anything, his keystroke has become fiercer, rubato sparser and tempos even more restless. There are a couple of interesting reference points for comparison, where there are two versions of the same work recorded with a considerable amount of time elapsed in between: the First Ballade sounded relatively conventional with some careful rubato in the 1960 EMI recording (8:58), whereas the 1999 remake is unequivocally dramatic and bare (8:35); the Second Ballade was tense enough in 1999 (6:51), only to become disturbingly impatient in the 2008 remake (6:29); Nocturnes Nos 4-5 and 7-8 came out straightforward but poised in 1960, turning blunt and hectic in 2005; the Second Sonata from 1984 may be my favourite Chopin performance from Pollini, appropriately large-scale and forceful, whereas the 2008 remake is uncomfortably tight.
At the other side of the spectrum, Ohlsson was brilliant but comparatively straightforward in his early Chopin playing from the 1970s--revealing little of the level of depth and reflective beauty that were to elevate his complete survey on Arabesque (recorded 1989-2000) to unequalled reference quality. The most interesting comparison to draw is in the greatest of the Nocturnes, in C minor (Op 48/1): 5:49 as opposed to 7:58 tells a great deal of the increased elegiac poetry and suppleness of the remake. Even more interesting is to compare Ohlsson's two versions with Pollini's, taken at a breathless 5:09 which allows little room for any sense or retrospection or poetry. In fact, the Nocturnes are the works that most clearly expose Pollini's shortcomings in Chopin, as seen from the 'romantic' camp perspective. Of bel canto (Op 9/2), intimacy (Op 9/1), nostalgia (Op 62/1) and dusky sonorities (Op 27/1) we get little with Pollini's fierce and often blunt aggressiveness (Op 32/1), virtually deprived of rubato (Op 37/1) and true pianissimo (Op 27/2).
Pollini has recorded only four Mazurkas for DG (another three can be found in his 1960 competition programme), and it is not hard to understand why: try the simple C major (Op 33/3) or the greatest of the pack in B minor (Op 33/4), neither of which I have heard played with such stiffness and unidiomatic perception of the Polish national dance. Against that backdrop, the worst disc in the set is the third one containing the mature Polonaises, where Pollini's playing is a combination of lifeless and edgy (Op 26), fierce and bare (Op 40), harsh and percussive (Op 44), and unheroic and distantly observed (Opp 53 & 61). The Etudes and Preludes are largely characterised by steely technical brilliance, harsh tone production and arctic grey-scale colours. It should be mentioned that DG's close-up, airless piano sonics adds to the tinny sound quality.
Pollini's unsentimental, unstylised and blunt playing works best in the more large-scale works, above all the Scherzos (except No 4), the Ballades (chiefly Nos 1 & 2) and the Second Sonata (from 1984). But what this 9-disc box set, featuring the bulk of Chopin's music for solo piano (excluding most of the Mazurkas, the early Polonaises, three Impromptus, four Rondos, the First Sonata and several one-off works), ultimately displays is that Pollini and Chopin was a brilliant match made in theory that just never worked very well in practice. Since I believe the half-a-century-old debut recording remains his most successful Chopin outing, I find the pending Testament release of the Etudes, recorded by EMI in September 1960 but previously unpublished, to be of greater interest.
REFERENCE: Ohlsson
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