In a career spanning more than 60 years, Maurizio Pollini is one of the great keyboard legends. He has a broad repertoire ranging from Bach to contemporary composers and has recorded works from the Classical, Romantic and contemporary repertoire to worldwide critical acclaim.
Since winning first prize at the 1960 Chopin Competition, Pollini has established an international career of the highest importance, performing in the world’s major concert halls and working with distinguished orchestras and conductors such as Karl Boehm, Herbert von Karajan, Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez and Peter Eötvös. In 1987, he was awarded the Vienna Philharmonic’s Ehrenring, the orchestra’s highest honor.
In 2010, as part of the Chopin 200 celebrations, Pollini performed a Chopin birthday recital at London’s International Piano Series. He went on to present “The Pollini Project,” a series of five recitals charting the development of piano music from Bach to Boulez, for which he won the Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award.
Pollini has performed the complete Beethoven sonatas in Berlin, Munich, Milan, New York, London, Vienna and Paris, and has given world premieres of works by Manzoni, Nono and Sciarrino. His recordings of Schoenberg’s complete piano works, and of music by Berg, Webern, Manzoni, Nono, Boulez and Stockhausen, are testament to his great passion for 20th-century music and his support for contemporary composers.
A lifelong Deutsche Grammophon artist, Pollini won a Grammy Award for best instrumental soloist in 2007. He is also the recipient of Choc de la Musique, Victoires de la Musique and Diapason d’Or de l’Année prizes. He recorded Debussy Preludes for the Debussy anniversary in 2018. In recent years, he has returned to Chopin, a composer with whom he is most particularly associated.
Born in Milan in 1942, Pollini studied with Carlo Lonati and Carlo Vidusso.
