Maurizio Pollini's Piano Recital at Carnegie "Perspective Series"

Italian Pollini is a respected figure in piano world for his undefeatable and terrific accuracy musical memory and athletic piano performance. I was personally amazed at his recording of Three Movements of Petroushka composed by Stravinsky. I had been longing to watch/listen to his live performance since I've listen to that recording (to figure out how many fingers he has LOL). Last year fall, I was lucky enough to attend his solo recital in Carnegie Hall.


While the audience applauding, Pollini walked enthusiastically toward piano bench and then smiled and bowed to greet the audience. From his smile, he looks like an innocently charismatic person.

Pollini opened his recital with Beethoven Sonatas: Tempest Sonata, and Appassionate.I think his performance of the sonatas were energetic but steady and careful but fabulous.In short, he "rocks". However, the aria beginning of the Tempest Sonata first movement sounded a little unsure of himself. But of course, he didn't hit a single wrong note, so that makes his performance perfect in certain sense :) because maybe audience will agree that they don't pay that much of money to hear wrong notes. LOL

After the Beethoven pieces, he proceed with a set of Chopin's Mazurkas.It actually surprised me to find lyrical side of Pollini's performance. In fact, in my personal opinion, although I like Yundi Li's performance style in general, Pollini performed this set of marzurkas better than Yundi Li's (note: Yundi Li performed a different set of Chopin's Mazurkas earlier in his own recital at Carnegie)

Then Schumann's Fantasy were performed. This time though, Pollini sounded a little emotionally confused. Maybe he hit all the right note. I kind of lost myself in figuring what Schumann was trying to "express" through the piece.

Then his performance of virtuosic Chopin's Scherzo in b-minor was very athletic and robotic in general. His digital accuracy seemed carefully calculated. However, he seemed to ignore the atmosphere that the Scherzo conveys.

As a sincere gratitue to the audience's eager support (his recital tickets were all sold out), Pollini gave 3 encores to end the afternoon recital. They were Chopin's Nocturne (forgot the opus number, but my favorite one), Revolutionary C minor Etude,and Etude in C sharp minor. Please note, he played the etudes with "NO SWEAT". Looking at his appearance, he may be an old guy but he is definitely pianistically "fit".