Technique and/or soul? (Pollini et al.)

[Barbirollians]

Here we go a new thread - perhaps a Mod could move those Pollini posts away from Mother Goose ?

[Ein Heldenleben]

[John] Wilson is peerless in film music . It’s just that sometimes I don’t think his performances are that engaged. I get the same feeling sometimes listening to , amongst others Maurizio Pollini , Ella Fitzgerald and , since you mentioned him , Herbert Von Karajan. I never got that feeling with Beecham - his La Boheme will never be bettered for precisely that reason (along with Bjorling and De Los Angeles).

[silvestrione]

(But then, if you don't respond to Pollini or Karajan, you're attuned perhaps to something more obviously interpretatively individual, moment by moment. Nevertheless, the opening example yesterday of the Prelude was wonderfully evocative)

[Nick Armstrong]

Well I listened to the Wilson/SofL recording [of Ma Mère L’Oye] when it came out and (as far as I recall) thought everything was there except the indefinable extra ‘something’ that makes me want to listen to this music. I’m not tempted to return to it. (It reminded me of Hamelin’s recording of Albeniz’s Ibéria - all the notes glitteringly there but… something essential missing )

It was the Martinon/OdeP that I wanted to seek out after this BaL … which taught me a lot about what’s going on in the ballet, after having simply basked in the music for 30+ years.

I did attend a live performance (of the Suite perhaps, can’t remember) conducted by Rattle, and the conclusion was dazzling - so perhaps I should try his “BBC Phil” recording too

[Ein Heldenleben]

Hamelin is a tremendous player but like Pollini not a single bar he’s played has ever moved me.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I recall listening to a Pollini version of op111 and thinking it feels wrong, very slow and to my ears inexpressive; just an impression recalled. I can also recall seeing him on the cover of the Gramophone in the 1960's, just having won the Chopin Competition and being feted and acclaimed.

I heard him do the final 3 Beethoven sonatas at the RFH - without a break as it happens - and completely agree with you. He did not play a single wrong note as far as I could make out - just slightly smudged a chord. An incredible technique though.

[Maclintick]

To each their own. I find Pollini DG Etudes thrilling in their steely brilliance, and who couldn’t appreciate the torrents of passion in the last of the Op.25 set? My current favorite alternative is Beatrice Rana

I think I read somewhere that DG tweaked the audio in Pollini's recordings to emphasise the upper mid-range thus amplifying that steeliness, in order to differentiate his piano sound from that of label stablemates such as Gilels and Michelangeli, whose discs of Grieg Lyric Pieces and Debussy Images of similar vintage remain touchstones of sonic excellence IMHO, at least in their vinyl incarnations. DG has a bit of a mixed reputation for the Original Image Bit-Processing re-masterings of the 90s, which attracted criticism from some in the pro audio community, esp. here in the UK. Tony Faulkner wrote a debunking article for Studio Sound sometime in the late 90s.

Having said that, I love Pollini's DG Schumann C maj Fantasy coupled with Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy, which doesn't have quite the brittle sound quality of the Chopin Etudes.

Sorry to be off-topic again....maybe a move to a new thread would be in order, hosts ?

[silvestrione]

I heard him do the final 3 Beethoven sonatas at the RFH - without a break as it happens - and completely agree with you. He did not play a single wrong note as far as I could make out - just slightly smudged a chord. An incredible technique though.

I find this much exaggerated. I've heard wrong notes (Schumann Fantasie in C at RFH) and things threatening to go off the rails (Liszt Sonata, RFH). At his peerless best in the 70s perhaps. Of Michelangeli, now, I'd believe it , that he never played a wrong note.

[pastoralguy]

About 35 years ago, a friend of mine who is a very fine pianist spent our college years declaiming Pollini as an android. Then he went to hear him in the Royal Festival Hall and rapidly changed his mind.

My friend felt that his recordings didn’t do justice to what he heard in the flesh.

[Barbirollians]

Very interesting - I do remember in the 1980s Abbado’s LSO Beethoven cycle in Radio 3 and Pollini played the concertos and I didn’t get much from them then but I was so in thrall in my late teens to Barenboim/Klemperer that I struggled with any other performances nothing seemed to compare . More recently I have greatly enjoyed his 3,4& 5 with Bohm and the Mozart 19&23

[smittims]

I've never heard Pollini live but I've always treasured his recordings of 20th-century music, and his second tranche of Chopin discs . No-one could call these latter 'definitive', since Chopin of all composers is so subject to diverse but equally-valid interpretation; but when it comes to Beethoven's sonatas, I'm reluctantly compelled to agree with critics who found them technically immaculate but unmoving. Maybe I'm used to a different school; I've been listening to a Backhaus and Gieseking in the earlier sonatas a lot recently; but I can't help wondering just what Pollini was trying to do here. Beethoven leaves us in no doubt that he wanted Empfindsamkeit (hence his instruction 'mit innigster Empfindung '. Maybe Pollini felt this has been ovedone in the age of the modern piano, with its infinite range of dynamics and timbres. by such as Daniel Barenboim and (dare I add) Murray Perahia.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Apologies for hi jacking the Mother Goose thread but it looked like it had run its course. On the technique v soul debate I am of course not saying that Pollini’s playing is soulless . I am saying that it leaves me relatively unmoved . In the case of a live recital one has to be very careful about these things. One might not be particularly receptive because of a difficult day at work , car parking problems any number of reasons. Or it might be something more difficult to pin down
To give a recent example. I went to a Boris Giltburg recital at the Wigmore Hall. He was playing Schumann and Chopin - the complete scherzi not something pianists often do. Absolutely phenomenal playing but far too loud l it also left me curiously unmoved - even Kreisleriana.
Last week I heard him in the Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto and by about twenty bars in I was saying to myself this is going to be amongst the best Brahms playing I’ve ever heard. His playing in the slow movement , phrasing , rubato. Just things like chord voicing and trill playing all remarkable and in service of the music, Then as an encore the A major Intermezzo - a grade 8 piece a few years back - absolutely beautifully played. So how can the same pianist playing the same piano in similar repertoire produce such a divergent response?

[french frank]

Here we go a new thread - perhaps a Mod could move those Pollini posts away from Mother Goose ?

I think I've copied them over to here (or am in the process - 11 in all ) as some of the comments were about other things. I will edit out the bits than seem irrelevant

[silvestrione]

I think the 'inwardness' that was there in his Beethoven playing in the 70s has largely disappeared in the last 20 years or so. I used to go regularly to his recitals. Two of the best were 1970s, Beethoven op 90, op 101, and 'Hammerklavier', with marvellous rapt playing when needed; and the last three Schubert sonatas, a recital of 'heavenly length' indeed. Those at RFH. At the Barbican in the 2000s, there was a fantastic recital including the Liszt sonata, and ending, as last encore, with a stunning Chopin first Ballade. My last would have been well before covid, and I remember, treasure, again two encores, the Chopin Berceuse (time stopped), and on another occasion, after a less-than-secure Liszt sonata, the Liszt f minor Etude.

His repertoire is broader than appears on record: on Youtube can be found the late Brahms pieces, and even some Stockhausen.
(Great Debussy player too!)

[Barbirollians]

I have ordered his Brahms concertos from the 1970s which had rather mixed reviews.

[richardfinegold]

Well I listened to the Wilson/SofL recording [of Ma Mère L’Oye] when it came out and (as far as I recall) thought everything was there except the indefinable extra ‘something’ that makes me want to listen to this music. I’m not tempted to return to it. (It reminded me of Hamelin’s recording of Albeniz’s Ibéria - all the notes glitteringly there but… something essential missing )

It was the Martinon/OdeP that I wanted to seek out after this BaL … which taught me a lot about what’s going on in the ballet, after having simply basked in the music for 30+ years.

I did attend a live performance (of the Suite perhaps, can’t remember) conducted by Rattle, and the conclusion was dazzling - so perhaps I should try his “BBC Phil” recording too

I am going to send this thread back to Mother Goose land. I agree completely with Nick after streaming both Wilson and purchasing the Martinon. I haven’t heard very many Wilson recordings but I don’t get the extravagant praise for this one. Every years it seems as though there is a British Artist who is up and coming, heavily recorded, and while extremely competent tends to be anointed by Gramophone and others from the Isle to a height that they don’t quite seem to have merited. I haven’t heard enough of Wilson to judge, but I am getting that Deja vu feeling.

[Barbirollians]

Wrong thread Richard this is the new Pollini thread

[richardfinegold]

Apologies for hi jacking the Mother Goose thread but it looked like it had run its course. On the technique v soul debate I am of course not saying that Pollini’s playing is soulless . I am saying that it leaves me relatively unmoved . In the case of a live recital one has to be very careful about these things. One might not be particularly receptive because of a difficult day at work , car parking problems any number of reasons. Or it might be something more difficult to pin down
To give a recent example. I went to a Boris Giltburg recital at the Wigmore Hall. He was playing Schumann and Chopin - the complete scherzi not something pianists often do. Absolutely phenomenal playing but far too loud l it also left me curiously unmoved - even Kreisleriana.
Last week I heard him in the Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto and by about twenty bars in I was saying to myself this is going to be amongst the best Brahms playing I’ve ever heard. His playing in the slow movement , phrasing , rubato. Just things like chord voicing and trill playing all remarkable and in service of the music, Then as an encore the A major Intermezzo - a grade 8 piece a few years back - absolutely beautifully played. So how can the same pianist playing the same piano in similar repertoire produce such a divergent response?

I heard Giltburg in recital playing early Beethoven recitals and thought he was excellent. OTOH I haven’t liked any of his recordings. Maybe he is just uneven?

[french frank]

Wrong thread Richard this is the new Pollini thread

It was changed to Pollini et al.

My version of technique v soul was to think of virtuosic v poetic. But can you have both (as the thread title implies)?