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Artist: Maurizio Pollini
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Maurizio Pollini:

Beethoven - The Late Sonatas Op. 101 & 106

Beethoven – The Late Sonatas Opp. 101 & 106 marks the completion of Maurizio Pollini’s survey of the five late piano sonatas. His landmark 1970s recordings of these works were recognised at the time with a Gramophone Award. A few years ago the pianist decided to revisit the five sonatas, and in 2019 made an acclaimed second recording of the final three at the Herkulessaal in Munich. Now he has returned to the same hall to record Opp. 101 and 106 – among the most technically challenging and musical adventurous works in the concert repertoire. Deutsche Grammophon will release his new album today.

The quixotic nature of Beethoven’s A major Sonata, Op. 101 and the complexities of the “Hammerklavier” Sonata, Op. 106 offer infinite scope for interpretation. “Every Beethoven piano sonata is a different world,” observes Maurizio Pollini. “He finds a different character in each one, from the first to the last. Each is unique.” The A major Sonata, he adds, “is very free”. Drafted in the summer of 1815 and completed the following year, its four movements are markedly different in style and substance from those of the composer’s earlier sonatas for piano. “It’s a great challenge to understand and play it,” says Pollini.

The scale of the challenge, however, pales beside that set by Beethoven in the “Hammerklavier” Sonata. The work was so difficult that it remained unperformed in public following its publication in 1819 until the young Franz Liszt showed the way seventeen years later at Paris’s Salle Érard. Pollini describes it as the “greatest Beethoven sonata”. Its slow movement alone is almost as long as all four movements of its companion piece on the album. “You can think also of the funeral march of the ‘Eroica’ Symphony – these are perhaps the two greatest movements Beethoven ever composed,” suggests the pianist. The transition into the fourth and final movement’s fugue, a sublime Largo, dissolves ordinary perceptions of time and space, as if opening the door to an otherwise inaccessible spiritual dimension. It prepares the way for a three-voice fugue sustained and developed over a sequence of contrasting episodes that combine to lift the music out of its historic context and leave it sounding fresh for all time.

Maurizio Pollini:

Chopin

Maurizio Pollini, "the pre-eminent Chopinist of his generation" (Fanfare), continues his revelatory and chronological re-exploration of the Polish master's late works. This album contains the pianist's latest thoughts on Opp. 55–58 (1843/4), including the B minor Sonata and Berceuse.

Maurizio Pollini:

Debussy - Preludes II

Released for the Debussy centenary in 2018, Maestro Pollini's new album features the second book of Debussy Préludes – recorded 18 years after his hallmark recording of the first book – as well as En blanc et noir, performed with his son and burgeoning pianist and conductor, Daniele Pollini.

Maurizio Pollini:

Chopin Late Works

After winning the International Chopin Competition over half a century ago, Maurizio Pollini adds an important new chapter to his ongoing interpretation of Chopin with some of the composer's most famous late works. On this album, the "grand master" (BBC Music Magazine) interprets some of Chopin's large scale masterpieces, including six Mazurkas and three Waltzes that he has never recorded before.

Maurizio Pollini:

Beethoven - Piano Sonatas Op. 31 & 49

Almost forty years have passed since Maurizio Pollini made his first studio recording of piano sonatas by Beethoven. His visionary interpretations of the composer's Piano Sonata opp. 109 & 110 on the Deutsche Grammophon label marked the beginning of an extraordinary artistic journey. The great Italian artist crowns his complete Beethoven cycle with this release of the Piano Sonatas opp. 31 & 49, a title certain to take its place in the pantheon of essential piano recordings. The new album, which was released on January 6 in the US, was recorded in the Herkulessaal Munich in 2013–14 and will also be released as part of an eight-disc box comprising Pollini's survey of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas.

Maurizio Pollini:

Brahms - Piano Concerto no. 2

Acclaimed pianist Maurizio Pollini Returns with Christian Thielemann and the Dresden Staatskapelle for Brahms's Piano Concerto no. 2 on Deutsche Grammophon. Many observers spoke of a stroke of good fortune when in June 2011 Maurizio Pollini returned to the Dresden Staatskapelle after an absence of twenty-five years. He had last appeared with the orchestra in 1986. A quarter of a century later his concerts took him for the first time to the orchestra's traditional home: Gottfried Semper's opera house.