Amazon.co.uk Review
Maurizio Pollini likes to live with a work before he commits it to CD, and he's been refining his approach to these astonishing variations for 25 years. Though as he himself stresses, they are not so much variations as transformations--of a theme which stays relentlessly in the banal key of C major. Until now,
Alfred Brendel's has been the ideal version, but here he's been trumped: Pollini brings Beethoven's vast landscape into high and exciting relief in an unprecedented fashion. The opening few pieces seem quite unassuming, but by the time he reaches the visionary stasis at the work's pivotal point he's got the listener in the palm of his hand. Thereafter it's all magic: massive mountains emerge and furious storms erupt on their slopes; the moments of delicate lyricism and broad comedy are played out with a touch which is marvellously varied, but always imbued with nobility and grandeur. Addictive. --
Michael Church