POLLINI

The world is well supplied with promising pianists, accomplished pianists, even
a few great pianists. Yet Maurizio Pollini stands apart, a musician of such
towering intelligence and originality, coupled with with a virtuoso’s technique
so close to flawless as anyone could hope from mortal fingers, that he seems to
merit his own category.
A cheering capacity crowd at the Music Center on Tuesday night roared its
agreement. The program had no startling novelties: the complete Preludes of
Chopin, Berg’s Piano Sonata, Schoenberg’s “Small Pieces,” Opus 19 and
Stravinsky’s fiendishly demanding transcription of parts of his “Petrouchka”
ballet, with Ravel and more Chopin as encores. Pollini’s playing was thoroughly
novel, however; not a moment in this extraordinary recital failed to give off
the sense that a sovereign intellect seemed to be creating each musical phrase
anew.
The effect in the Chopin was particularly arresting. Never a pianist to shrink
from taking chances, Pollini brought to these visionary miniatures a broad
spectrum of interpretive devices. Moments linger in the memory: the recitative-
like passages in the second Prelude, so softly, mysteriously played that they
seemed like voices from another planet; the thundering onrush of No. 16 and the
soft but insistent mood-painting in the so-called “Raindrop.” Miniatures
these works might be; as Pollini played them they fused into a single, most
grandiose, musical entity.
The Berg and Schoenberg works, appropriate contributions to the current
showings around town of suppressed Germanic art, were also wonderfully put
forth.There was a control of line and color here that set both pieces into a
historic continuum: romanticism’s last gasp, and the first steps into a new
musical territory where the old artistic standards no longer mattered.
The Stravinsky was there, of course, to send the crowd home happy. Such useless
music this is, contrasted to the orchestral original! Yet such exhilaration, as
Pollini seemed to turn his resonant Hamburg Steinway into an idealized
orchestra beyond even Stravinsky’s wildest dreams!
Of course, the crowd didn’t exactly go home, happy or otherwise, at that point.
As the final reward there came nothing less than the soaring, ecstatic B-flat
minor Scherzo of Chopin. Hardly a mere encore piece, the work capped an
enchanted evening. Music-making doesn’t get much better than this.