Maurizio Pollini

Celebrating the legacy of late DG artist Maurizio Pollini, we announce the upcoming digital release of the pianist’s winning 1960 International Chopin Piano Competition recordings.

The two works included in this album are among the most unlikely of recording combinations, but here they are, under the baton of Claudio Abbado and the BPO, collaborating with Abbado's bosom friend Pollini.

This is unbelivably good. I have heard this concerto many times live, on record, on tape, on the radio, and on disc. I have never heard it performed this well. My favorite performance had been Pollini's with Abbado in the late 1970s (maybe early 1980s). This surpasses it in every way, which I would not have believed possible. Pollini's technique is perfect. His and Abbado's interpretation, nuances, shading and dynamics could not be better. The orchestra balances the piano just as Brahms always intended. And then there's the sound quality: as acoustically superb as I have ever heard on any disc. This is truly one of the all-time great classical recordings. Do not miss it.

Both sets of Chopin's etudes can be as fiendishly difficult for the performer as they are mesmerizing for the listener, yet Maurizio Pollini makes them sound as if they pose no problems whatsoever for him in this 1972 recording. Every one of the etudes is played with easy precision, energy, and an entirely enjoyable musicality that demonstrates why Chopin's etudes are no mere exercises and are as suited to the recital hall as to the practice room. The Op. 25 No. 5 Etude in E minor has some tricky finger acrobatics in it, but Pollini brings out a singing melody all the same in the middle section, while adding a bit of dancing animation to the outer sections…

Pollini's traversal of Chopin's 19 Nocturnes (he leaves out the pair of posthumous ones) is one of his finest recordings in years. His long-lined yet detailed performances are comparable to the very different ones that have long stood at the pinnacle of recorded sets. Not as serene as Artur Rubinstein's, not as philosophical as Claudio Arrau's, nor as warm as Ivan Moravec's, Pollini's interpretations have their own allure. One is the way he shapes the melodies with a natural flow enhanced by his tonal beauty, less lean and streamlined than his usual way with Romantic music.

"Refined accounts by Pollini that vividly illuminate Chopin's genius." ― Gramophone
Not surprisingly, the veteran virtuoso dives far beneath surface pleasures in this recital of popular Chopin. Pollini claws deep inside each note: haltingly tender in the mazurkas, subtlest of dance partners for the waltzes, limpid and furious in the second Ballade, piercingly sober in the funeral march.