The Italian Maurizio Pollini, considered one of the great pianists of the 20th century, has died at the age of 82 after a long illness that forced him to cancel his last concerts, including the one that Ibercamera had initially scheduled for April 25 in Barcelona. The news was announced this Saturday by the La Scala theater in Milan, the temple of opera to which the maestro was very close.
Admired for his prodigious virtuosity, the breadth of his repertoire and the originality of his interpretations, with his death “one of the great musicians of our time and a fundamental reference in the artistic life of the theater for more than fifty years” disappears. reads on the La Scala website.
Born in Milan on January 5, 1942 into a family of artists (his father, Gino, was a modernist architect, and his uncle Fausto Melotti, a renowned sculptor) he was married to Marilisa and had a son, Daniele, an orchestra conductor (his batonist and directed some of his father’s concerts and recordings) and also a renowned pianist. The burning chapel of the maestro, “absolute protagonist of the international concert scene since his victory at the age of eighteen in the Chopin competition in Warsaw in 1960”, has opened in La Scala itself. In that competition, the president of the jury himself, Arthur Rubinstein, complimented him by saying that “he already plays better than some of us!” Fifty years later, Pollini himself clarified that he must have meant that he “played better technically,” but with his characteristic humility he also believed that Rubinstein “would have said it to mock some other member of the jury.”
He was an interpreter capable of revolutionizing the perception of authors such as Chopin, Debussy and Beethoven himself and promoting listening to the historical avant-garde, especially Schönberg. “From his debut on October 11, 1958 until his last recital on February 13, 2023, Pollini has played at La Scala 168 times,” explains the theater in which he collaborated with artists such as Claudio Abbado, Paolo Grassi, Riccardo Muti, Daniel Barenboim or Riccardo Chailly, without forgetting his concerts with Carlo Maria Giulini, Pierre Boulez or Zubin Mehta.
In addition, he performed his music with major orchestras such as the Wiener Philharmoniker (with Abbado) and the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester (with Chailly). He also stood out in chamber music, but at the center of his career “we find above all recitals, from the historic cycle with Beethoven’s 32 sonatas in 1995 to the long-awaited annual concert in which the fixed stars of his universe came together.” : Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Schönberg and Nono.”
