Maurizio Pollini was born in Milan in 1942 and studied with Carlo Lonati and Carlo Vidusso. Already in 1952 he gave his first public concert, and in 1960 he capped his youthful career by winning the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. After this he continued his studies, taking further instruction with Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and Arthur Rubinstein. This period saw the beginning of his friendship with Claudio Abbado and Luigi Nono, which led to an intensive involvement with the Second Viennese School and contemporary music. Since the middle of the 1960s Pollini has been appearing as a soloist in all the major music centers around the world with a repertoire that ranges from Bach to Boulez. He has collaborated with the most prominent conductors of our time, including Karl Böhm, Herbert von Karajan, Claudio Abbado, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Pierre Boulez, Sergiu Celibidache, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, and Riccardo Chailly. In 1995 he launched the “Progetto Pollini,” a series of concerts under his artistic direction of music from the Middle Ages to modernism. At first he led these at the Salzburg Festival and subsequently in New York, Paris, Tokyo, Rome, and Milan. At LUCERNE FESTIVAL, which named him its “artiste étoile” in 2004, he launches a new cycle in 2011: Pollini Perspectives, which features sonatas by Beethoven as well as world premieres of newly commissioned works. Pollini’s extensive discography has received many awards; most recently, in 2007, he received a Grammy Award and the Disco d’oro Prize for his recording of the Chopin Nocturnes. In 1996 Maurizio Pollini was awarded the Siemens Music Award, in 1999 the Rubinstein Prize, in 2000 Milan’s Benedetti Michelangeli Prize, and in 2010 Japan’s Praemium Imperiale.
LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF) debut on 26 August 1976 in three piano sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven (Op. 28, 57, and 106)
August 2011