At the age of 18, having just won the tough Chopin Concours in Warsaw, Maurizio Pollini suddenly became world famous. But don’t rush into your career, just wait, continue studying, rarely appear in public. It was not until the early 1970s that his great recording of Chopin’s etudes came out, and Deutsche Grammophon, the noble classic label, gave him a stable contract.
The young man from Milan will soon be celebrated by SZ colleague Joachim Kaiser, “The Pollini miracle”. And the Herkulessaal in Munich will in future be one of the sold-out halls in which Pollini will build his musically profound, pianistically brilliant portraits of heroes: Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and of course Chopin. Soon too, not to everyone’s delight, Schönberg, Bartók, Stravinsky. Pollini defeats the music of the 20th century vehemently, furiously with the second sonata by Pierre Boulez, the hairy tenth piano piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen. He combines such monsters of the avant-garde on the podium, at that time still bold, with old heavyweights, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations or Franz Schubert’s last sonata.
But Maurizio Pollini, the piano citizen of the music metropolis, always feels like an Italian. In the 1970s and 1980s, the country’s culture was politically decidedly left-wing. Pollini works closely with two friends there, the communist composer from Venice, Luigi Nono, and the conductor Claudio Abbado. Nono leads music and his two friends, under the sign of “Musica e Realtà”, into social criticism. Pollini plays anti-Vietnam War concerts and provokes scandal with his protests, the whole of Italy is discussing the music / politics amalgam.
The artist remains loyal to great piano music into the difficult phase of old age, the lifelong appeal to lead intellect and emotion to the highest level by making music. On his 80th birthday, this Wednesday, Maurizio Pollini may feel steadfastly close to the confession of Frédéric Chopin, the god of his beginnings: “I hate all music that doesn’t hide a lot of thought.”