Has it really been almost 50 years since Maurizio Pollini (b. 1942) won the 1960 Warsaw Competition, making his famous E Minor Concerto recording with Paul Kletzki? Now, a studied hand at the Chopin repertory, Pollini focuses (rec. March 2008, in Munich) on a narrow range of works, 1836-1839, when the composer had refined his technique and had begun more audacious–though highly concentrated–excursions into chromatic harmony. What had endured as salon pieces Chopin now expanded into hybrid forms, combining waltz and rondo or mazurka-rondo – the latter an experiment Chopin had conceived as early as his Op. 5.
We recall that after his victory at Warsaw, Pollini went on to study with Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, whose spiritual heir Pollini surely is. The same objectivity, the emotional distance countered by fleet, plastic filigree and brilliant colorations, the insistence on clarity in all parts, the hard patina, all certify the older master’s influence. After a stunning F Major Ballade, whose middle, A Minor section explodes with passionate fury, we have the mostly melancholy affects of the Op. 33 (1837-1838) mazurkas, of which only the D Major carries a light heart. The B Minor, an old Michelangeli tour de force, Pollini delivers with the same, delicate balance of arioso and recitative, its suspensions floating alternately on a gossamer, silken palette or rounded, kneaded marble. The three Op. 34 Waltzes (1838) render alternately fleet and introspective (No. 2 in A Minor) affects, crystalline and eminently lilted. Many auditors will think of the late Dinu Lipatti for the same etched clarity of line, though Lipatti’s sound had more warmth. The F Major opens with a cannonade of sparklers; then the lightning agogics proceed, the tricky, infinitely shifting metrics and accents that swirl in the mind as they defeat gravity.
Pollini applies a firmly controlled andante to the Impromptu No. 2 (1839), whose title belies its “learned” textures and gilded counterpoints, often requiring of Pollini all sorts of pedaled adjustments to dynamics. The chorale section swells up majestically, certainly a presage of what Debussy wanted in The Sunken Cathedral. Pollini’s trill always commands our wonder, and the free flow of variations could supply Moszkowski with ideas to last a lifetime.
Finally, the epic B-flat Minor Sonata (1839), whose first movement repeat has Pollini incorporating the opening, four-bar Grave section, a correction (to the German edition) that may well be adopted by posterity. A combination of emotional violence and agonized reminiscence, the music tears and heals us at once. Pollini’s massive approach rivals, perhaps even surpasses, the classic readings by Horowitz and Rubinstein for sheer girth and range of emotional densities. Even the soft emotions of the Scherzo’s trio fail to slacken Pollini’s internal tension. The Funeral March brings noble despair, tempered by–along with Pollini’s palpable breathing–what Francesca da Rimini calls “thoughts of past bliss in misery.” The last movement continues to glean morbid analogies, its perpetual mobile within a narrow dynamic, as Pollini crescendos to a fierce, hard-won conclusion. A powerful Chopin recital, to say the least, expertly realized. Sound engineering by Klaus Hiemann quite compels our admiration.
–Gary Lemco
