Chopin: Etudes op. 10 & 25 Maurizio Pollini

• Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849):
• 1 No.1 In C 01:57
• 2 No.2 In A Minor Chromatique 01:27
• 3 No.3 In E Tristesse 03:41
• 4 No.4 In C Sharp Minor 02:02
• 5 No.5 In G Flat Black Keys 01:39
• 6 No.6 In E Flat Minor 03:10
• 7 No.7 In C 01:29
• 8 No.8 In F 02:21
• 9 No.9 In F Minor 02:07
• 10 No.10 In A Flat 02:04
• 11 No.11 In E Flat 02:16
• 12 No.12 In C Minor Revolutionary 02:45
• 13 No.1 In A Flat Harp Study 02:13
• 14 No.2 In F Minor 01:28
• 15 No.3 In F 01:53
• 16 No.4 In A Minor 01:41
• 17 No.5 In E Minor 02:56
• 18 No.6 In G Sharp Minor 02:04
• 19 No.7 In C Sharp Minor 04:52
• 20 No.8 In D Flat 01:04
• 21 No.9 In G Flat Butterfly Wings 00:57
• 22 No.10 In B Minor 03:58
• 23 No.11 In A Minor Winter Wind 03:32
• 24 No.12 In C Minor 02:32
• Total Runtime 56:08

Info for Chopin: Etudes op. 10 & 25

You cannot get much further from the conventional image of Chopin as a purveyor of attractive salon trifles than Pollini's various recordings of the Polish composer's works; Pollini was already making his name as an interpreter of twentieth-century music at its most radical, with his classic performances of Schoenberg and Boulez, and he brought to Chopin a tigerish approach that shakes up listener certainty. The Etudes were always one of Chopin's more startling productions, pieces which instruct and challenge the pianist with the technical problems they pose, but which also test innate musicality; each of them is in its different way a short passionate statement which has to be made to please the ear. Pollini brings a steely intensity to the more dramatic studies--the Revolutionary Etude, Op.10 No. 12, for example, or Op. 25 No. 10--and in the more lyrical ones is plangent without being tearstained. Even those listeners who like their Chopin more delicate and charming will find Pollini's approach a refreshing alternative, and those who tend to dismiss Chopin altogether will perhaps be persuaded entirely to reconsider.

Maurizio Pollini, piano

Digitally remastered

Maurizio Pollini
was born in 1942 and studied with Carlo Lonati and Carlo Vidusso. After winning First Prize at the 1960 Warsaw Chopin Competition, he went on to establish an international career of the greatest importance, performing in the world’s major concert halls and working with the most distinguished orchestras and conductors including Karl Boehm, Herbert von Karajan, Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez, and Riccardo Muti. He was awarded the Vienna Philharmonic Ehrenring in 1987 after performing the Beethoven concertos in New York, the Ernst-von-Siemens Music Prize in Munich in 1966, the ‘A Life for Music – Arthur Rubinstein’ Prize in Venice in 1999 and the Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli Prize in Milan in 2000.

In 1995 Maurizio Pollini opened the Festival that Tokyo dedicated to Pierre Boulez and, in the same year, he devised and performed in his own concert series at the Salzburg Festival. He gave similar concert series in New York at Carnegie Hall, in Paris for la Cité de la Musique,Tokyo, and in Rome at the Parco della Musica. The programmes included both chamber and orchestral performances and mirrored his wide musical tastes from Gesualdo and Monteverdi to the present. In summer 2004 he was the ‘Artist Etoile’ at the International Festival Lucerne, performing a recital and concerts with orchestra conducted by Claudio Abbado and Pierre Boulez.

Maurizio Pollini’s repertoire ranges from Bach to contemporary composers (including première performances of Manzoni, Nono and Sciarrino) and includes the complete Beethoven Sonatas, which he has performed in Berlin, Munich, Milan, New York, London, Vienna and Paris. He has recorded works from the classical, romantic and contemporary repertoire to worldwide critical acclaim. His recordings of the complete works for piano by Schoenberg, and of works by Berg, Webern, Manzoni, Nono, Boulez and Stockhausen, are a testament to his great passion for music of the 20th century. Most recently Maurizio Pollini was responsible for the commissioning of the expansion of the original Grido (String Quartet No.3) by Helmut Lachenmann - a pupil of Nono - into Double (Grido II) for a 48-strong string orchestra.

In 2007 Pollini was awarded a Grammy for best Instrumental Soloist Performance and the Disco d’Oro; he received the 2006 Echo Award in Germany, and the Choc de la Musique, Victoires de la Musique and Diapason d’Or de l’Année in France. Most recently he won the Echo Klassik award in the Best Concerto category for his recording of the Brahms First Piano Concerto with Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden.

In 2010 Pollini performed the Chopin Birthday Recital on the anniversary of the composer’s birth in the International Piano Series in London as part of the Chopin 200 celebrations and last season he played a highly successful series of five recitals in the Piano Series at the Royal Festival Hall - The Pollini Project – charting the development of piano music from Bach to Boulez, for which he won the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist award.

Booklet for Chopin: Etudes op. 10 & 25