Word: pollini
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Meet that distinguished dropout, Italy's Maurizio Pollini...
...early 1960s Maurizio Pollini of Milan, Italy, looked like the keyboard's most glamorous Cinderella since Van Cliburn of Kilgore, Texas, conquered Moscow. At 18, Pollini beat out a field of 78 to win the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. He was promptly whisked off to recording studios in London, and the result-an LP of the Chopin Concerto No. 1-brought critical raves on both sides of the Atlantic. Concert bookings were thrust upon...
...most young pianists, the glittering path that stretched before him would have been the sheerest fantasy fulfillment. But for Pollini, there were two things wrong: it came too easily and too soon. He astonished musical observers by turning his back on celebrity, suspending all recording activity and curtailing most of his concerts. He returned to Milan for a few more years of musical study and reflection; he sought out the reclusive pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli for lessons; he read philosophy and pursued his passion for chess...
...takes an individual of great inner conviction to risk a dropout like that. It also takes a pianist of extraordinary brilliance to come back afterward, on his own terms and at his own pace, to rebuild a major career. Pollini is such an individual and such a pianist. Becoming active again around 1967, he made a belated New York debut in 1968 that was well worth waiting for. By the early 1970s he was ready to resume recording, and a succession of superb discs has followed: the Chopin Etudes, the late Beethoven sonatas, last year's Grammy Award-winning...
Even in an age when a juggernaut technique tends to be taken for granted, Pollini's is outstanding. Triphammer octaves, high-velocity passage work, densely woven inner voices, all are managed with breathtaking ease and control. In highly rhythmic, percussive music-Prokofiev, Bartok, Stravinsky-he attacks with exhilarating ferocity and precision...