Maurizio Bling

Here's the kind of big-name, big-budget Mozart concerto recording that's not as common as it used to be. And lo, even one of the giants of contemporary pianism shows signs of having encountered the leaner approach of historical performances, and even of having absorbed them. Maurizio Pollini, best known for Chopin and the other lyric Romantics, conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra from the keyboard.

The great Italian legend of the piano Maurizio Pollini sadly passed-away earlier this year, on 23rdMarch 2024. This album recorded together with his son Daniele, is dedicated to three different aspects of Schubert's piano oeuvre covering: the sonatas, the collections of short pieces, and music for four hands. The first time that both musicians performed a piano work for four hands: Schubert's great F minor Fantasy. The release is accompanied by a 16-page booklet with an essay by Maurizio Pollini's long-time companion Paolo Petazzi.

Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his 32+4 Piano Sonatas - including 4 Sonatinas (doubtfull) - between 1782 and 1822. Although originally not intended to be a meaningful whole, as a set they comprise one of the most important collections of works in the history of music. Hans von Bulow called them "The New Testament" of the piano literature (Johann Sebastian Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier being "The Old Testament").

This review is my celebration of two anniversaries. Composer Frederic Chopin was born 200 years ago, and this recording was made 50 years ago today. Chopin's piano concerto in F minor op 11, while carrying the number 1, was actually his second piano concerto. In any case it has always been my favorite of the two. The first maovement (allegro maestoso risoluto) contains a lenghthy (four minutes here) orchestral introduction and is by far the longest of the movements.

Combining clarity with a dazzling technique, investing the music "with a symphonic gravitas, elemental power and electrifying modernity" (International Record Review), 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. The complete Chopin recordings from 1972 to 2008 Comprising the Études, Preludes, Polonaises, Sonatas, Scherzi, Ballades, Nocturnes Also includes the 2008 recital.

Maurizio Pollini's second Deutsche Grammophon release with Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden is a live concert recording of Johannes Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2, a fitting follow-up to his successful 2011 CD of the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor. That recording marked Pollini's triumphant return to Dresden, but this 2013 recording is less about the significance of the concert and more about the consolidation of Pollini's working relationship with Thielemann and the orchestra.