Maurizio Pollini: 6 decades of the classical pianist at the Southbank Centre

With his unaffected manner and an elegant clarity to his playing, Pollini has brought his individual voice to compositions from the 1700s to the present day.

With his sad passing in March 2024 at the age of 82, we looked back into our Southbank Centre archive to explore six decades of Pollini’s performances.

Born in Milan in 1942, the pianist was only 18 years old when he obtained international recognition, winning first prize at the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1960. Just three years later the maestro travelled to the United Kingdom, and made his London debut here in our Royal Festival Hall with the London Symphony Orchestra. Conducted by Pierre Monteux, the repertoire chosen for Pollini’s first solo performance was:

• Tchaikovsky Fantasy Overture, Romeo and Juliet
• Beethoven Piano Concerto No.3 in C minor, Op.37
• Schubert Symphony No.9 in C (Great)

Despite his undoubtedly high standing, Pollini spent some time away from the international concert circuit in the mid 1960s in order to expand both his interests and his repertoire. But by the end of the decade he was back into a full touring rhythm and marked the start of the next decade by signing a prestigious contract with Deutsche Grammophon. The German label duly released the pianists first recordings which included Stravinsky’s Three Movements from Petrushka and Prokofiev’s Seventh Sonata.

‘That boy can play better than any of us’

Arthur Rubinstein on Pollini

A left-wing activist, Pollini’s strong political convictions formed an important part of his musical life. Across the 1960s and 1970s he honed his performance technique by playing in factories, in support of causes such as peace in Vietnam, with fellow Italians, the conductor Claudio Abbado and composer Luigi Nono.

Pollini also performed concerts in the neighbourhoods around Reggio Emilia and recitals for students at La Scala, enthused by their ideals of justice and peace. This collaboration with Abbado continued beyond Italy too, with the pair performing several concerts here at Royal Festival Hall with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Pollini began the 1980s back at the Southbank Centre, with a televised opening season concert in which he played Mozart’s D Minor Concerto with Sir Georg Solti and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He went onto give several recitals in Royal Festival Hall throughout the decade, as well as a special performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1983 which featured Masse by Giacomo Manzoni – written as a homage to Varese, the first explorer of Manzoni’s favourite musical sounds – as part of the evening’s repertoire.

In 1996, Pollini brought his superb pianism back to Royal Festival Hall with the Beethoven Sonata Cycle. The audience was taken on an intense journey through eight recitals that followed the chronological order in which Beethoven wrote his works – with the exception of Opus 49. It was a concert that rightly earned the pianist favourable reviews in the UK press.

‘Pollini demonstrated how great playing can be achieved through quiet, undemonstrative means’

Annette Morreau, The Independent, 1996

Continuing into the current millennium Pollini’s career in London has sparkled with a number of very special highlights. In 2007 he took to our stage to perform Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in honour of their 75th birthday. And in 2011 the spotlight was on the man himself with the Pollini Project, which saw him embark on a five-recital pilgrimage, with the concerts spanning 250 years of piano repertoire from Bach to Boulez.

Whilst the performances undoubtedly enchanted the audience, Pollini himself had reason to be thrilled by the series as he took arrival of a brand new piano especially for the project. A Steinway concert grand, refined by the Italian piano technician Angelo Fabbrini; a firm favourite of Pollini.

‘I have played a recital in London more or less every year throughout my career and have a very strong relationship with the London public… I like their way of listening and their deep interest in music’

Pollini on playing for a London audience

Maurizio Pollini continued to be a fixture of the Southbank Centre’s classical music concerts, until the 2020s. He joined us in 2022 for a pandemic-delayed 80th birthday celebration, and in 2023, sixty years on from his debut in our Royal Festival Hall he made his 137th, and as it would transpire final, appearance on our stages with a solo recital of works by Schumann and Chopin, ending with the latter’s Scherzo No.1 in B minor, Op.20.