Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini, who performed ceaselessly at La Scala, dies at age 82
ROME — Maurizio Pollini, a Grammy-winning Italian pianist who carried out ceaselessly at La Scala opera home in Milan, has died. He was 82.
Pollini died on Saturday, La Scala mentioned in an announcement. The announcement did not specify a reason for dying, however Pollini had been pressured to cancel a live performance on the Salzburg Competition in 2022 due to coronary heart issues.
Throughout a six decades-long worldwide profession, Pollini’s repertoire expanded past the usual classics. He embraced early Twentieth-century masterpieces by Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern and postwar modernists similar to Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez and Luigi Nono.
La Scala outlined the pianist as “one of many nice musicians of our time and a elementary reference within the creative lifetime of the theater for over 50 years.”
Pollini was thought-about a pianist with distinctive mental energy, whose unrivalled approach and interpretive drive compelled listeners to suppose deeply.
He was born in Milan on Jan. 5, 1942, right into a household of artists. His father, Gino Pollini, was a violinist and a number one rationalist architect. His mom, Renata Melotti, sang and performed the piano, as did her brother, Fausto Melotti, who was additionally a pioneer of summary sculpture.
“I grew up in a home with artwork and artists,” Pollini mentioned in an interview. “Previous works and fashionable works coexisted collectively as a part of life.”
Pollini started giving concert events earlier than his tenth birthday, performing Chopin’s Etudes at age 14 after which successful the Worldwide Chopin Piano Competitors at 18, because the youngest overseas pianist amongst a bunch of 89 contestants.
Arthur Rubinstein, president of the jury, reportedly mentioned that the younger pianist “already performs higher than any of us.”
After his first worldwide recognition, nevertheless, Pollini put his profession on maintain to review, explaining that performing straight away would have been for him “a little bit untimely.”
“I needed to review, get to know the repertoire higher, play the music of Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms,” he mentioned.
Within the late Sixties, Pollini participated in improvised concert events in factories and applications for college students and employees at La Scala, carried out by longtime pal Claudio Abbado.
Throughout his lengthy worldwide profession, he additionally collaborated with different well-known conductors, together with Riccardo Muti, Daniel Barenboim and Riccardo Chailly.
Pollini carried out his first American tour in 1968. From the Nineteen Seventies to the ’90s, he made a sequence of recordings with the Deutsche Grammophon label, changing into a celebrated interpreter of classics like Beethoven, Schumann and Schubert.
His albums gained a number of awards, together with a Grammy in 2007 for Finest Instrumental Soloist Efficiency (with out orchestra) for Chopin: Nocturnes.
He’s survived by his spouse Marilisa, and his son Daniele, additionally an acclaimed pianist and conductor.
