Maurizio Pollini flops before a half-empty hall
NewsLast night in Zurich was another embarrassment for the 81 year-old Italian. Christian Berzins reports in his review that he had repeated first-half disagreements with the page-turner both in a Chopin mazurka, which Pollini has played all his life, and in a complex tape work by Luigi Nono.
For an encore, he began a Chopin ballade before the page-turner sat down, telling her loudly, ‘I don’t need you.’
The discomfort was widespread.
Read Berzins review here.
Wow. Abusive behavior regardless of age cannot be tolerated. Off with him.
‘Abusive, off with him’? I see your charity is of a monumental order.
Why does he still, unwell have the urge to communicate when the means to do so are now so fragmented? “O, reason not the need!” wails King Lear.
Why do people feel to urge to judge the decision of an 81 years old? Hopefully you commit these words to memory as a remainder for the future
paywall…
Can anyone stop these half-dead lunatics from performering?
Can anyone stop these heartless idiots from commentering?
Joe Biden would agree. Or drool. Probably both.
Hilarious. What wit.
Very droll, Mr Guest!
“heartless idiots” or not, we shouldn’t seek to shut them down as you suggest. I’m not particularly taken with your comment, but I would defend your right to make it.
Performering? Where does that word come from?
It sounds “Swenglish” for me.
You will be there some day, if you are fortunate, and you will feel very differently about your comment!
Unless Pollini is suffering from dementia, he is the one deciding to take up concert hall space and accept performance fees. I do not plan on doing that when I am his age. Does every old person have the right to a public space and appearance fees without adverse comment from the public?
Pollini has every right to perform as long as he wants to do it. Giving him a space (public or not), the appearance fees, purchasing tickets for his concerts are decisions freely made by other people with no coercion from Pollini. These people have not only all the rights to criticize but more importantly can do it based on their direct experience. Everyone else, of course, is free to criticize based on a few words quoting an article hidden behind a paywall which they may or may not have read, there is freedom of speech. Their comments however, more than reflecting the quality of a performance they never saw, reflect the quality of the commenter’s thoughts
Domingo is another one ! Get off the stage you sexual abusing has been.
It’s not always easy to become old. Have some love. It’s the people around him who should inform him.
I’m sure they’ve tried…and I say this as someone who has followed his career closely, and has loved his artistry up until recently..
I remember many years ago hearing Elton John say that if he had real friends, instead of groupies, he would have stopped taking drugs when they expressed severe disapproval of what he was doing.
But there is a senile President around who is actually controlled by these same groupies. That’s OK, apparently.
Cadet Bone Spurs can count himself lucky to live in 2023,not 1953. Back then he(and most of the Jan 6 insurrectionists) would have been grillled on the electric chair for treason. Rightly so.
You mean ex-president, Humpty Trumpty.
It’s the “ex” factor that is relevant here. He’s not pushing himself around with a mobility trolley.
It’s a cult with you guys, isn’t it.
I will take a slightly senile and decent human being over a traitorous, lying seditionist any day. Before you go into “it’s a plot!” Stop and think for one moment. Do you really believe that there are enough people with the intelligence required to organize a plot of this magnitude? 91 felony counts!
OK. Let us stipulate that what you say is true, that Biden is a senile figurehead doing the bidding of his “groupies”. This cabal has created a federal industrial policy initiative unmatched in at least a half century to address climate change, the existential crisis of our time. And he (they?) somehow got it through a woefully fractious legislature. He/they rallied an astonishing coalition in support of Ukraine when it had seemed that NATO was on the verge of fracturing. He/they have thrown the bully pulpit on the side of unions in a way unseen since arguably FDR, and the recent UAW settlements, perhaps not coincidentally, represent the biggest victory for labor in generations. He/they have been walking a tightrope in Israel, supporting our ally while working to rein in unconstrained slaughter of Gaza civilians. Not perfectly by any means; it is an impossible situation. But I’m not sure who could have better played the hideous hand we all were dealt.
Given this track record, I think I’ll happily accept the senile guy and his puppeteers if that is indeed what is going on, which you can’t possibly know.
The two great crises of our time in the US are exploding income inequality and the looming climate catastrophe (I’m leaving out race, a hardy perennial not at all unique to this historical moment). The Biden administration, with the Inflation Reduction Act (intentionally misnamed, rather skillfully, to get Manchin on board) and its focus on domestic manufacturing jobs and unions, is a plausible attempt to address both of these. I’m still trying to figure out what the GOP plan is, beyond useless bromides about less regulation, eliminating taxes on the wealthy, and chiding China for burning coal.
Biden wasn’t my first choice in 2020, maybe not even my fourth or fifth. I am delighted to have been proven wrong.
Max, while we appear to start from similar premises (Biden was not among my first choices either), I must say that I do not share your delight in judging the results. In the first two years there was a failure to take advantage of the majority in congress to fix issues that really impact people’s lives, like reforming healthcare after a pandemic (even just by simply fixing the mandate in Obamacare), immigration or any substantive middle class relief. The role of the US in Ukraine has been at best questionable in the lead up to the war, as well as afterwards in keeping alive a situation of stall that, despite all the rhetoric, is unlikely to produce anything else than a much higher number of casualties and burning resources so much needed by US citizens. As in all recent military endeavors, no obvious winning goal is visibly in reach, but in this case it has to be weighed against the risk of nuclear conflict
Sorry, my haiku was not meant as a response to any particular comment but as a general observation. My bad.
Haiku
Even on this site
Where music’s spell should prevail
The donkeys still bray
Well, he’s not the kind of guy to sit at home and watch Game of Thrones, read juicy spy novels, or take up knitting. Nor is he about to lie on a beach in the Caribbean. These guys don’t have hobbies. No doubt his son (a pianist & conductor) has tried to coax him off the stage, but he’s probably as stubborn as a mule.
I’m not too sure why we have to know about this.
And yet, you’re reading about it…
He is truly an extraordinary maestro.!
No doubt about it.
Not to beat a dead horse, but this is a headline that would fit like a glove to a number of octogenarian Italian musicians. Take one that comes to mind randomly: Muti.
The Bill Clinton of classical music has been flopping before not-so-full houses for many years. Full houses do not change the outcomes, either: he has flopped at Carnegie hall very recently, not once but twice, according to most reviews I have seen.
The New York Classical Review wrote:
“At Carnegie opening, Mussorgsky gets lost in translation with Muti, CSO” https://newyorkclassicalreview.com/2023/10/at-carnegie-opening-mussorgsky-gets-lost-in-translation-with-muti-cso/
“New Glass is clear highlight of CSO’s streamlined Italian tour” (Now you know that when Glass is the highlight of a concert, and the CSO best shot at a Grammy nomination, something desperate must be going down)
https://newyorkclassicalreview.com/2023/10/new-glass-is-clear-highlight-of-csos-streamlined-italian-tour/
Some good insights from the above mentioned reviews:
“Perhaps the newness of the music motivated conductor and musicians, because the playing had a clear, strong feeling to it.
Not so the rest of the evening.”
“this [Mendelssohn] performance was a strange experience, feeling almost rote.”
“Part of the orchestra’s skill is having sufficient energy to give some force to the music, yet there was no sense that there was any thinking behind it other than getting to the end of the phrase or following the dynamic markings.”
“That same pattern held true for Aus Italien, after intermission. The absence of deeper interest was compounded by the selection itself. … But it was about Italy, so presumably that’s all Muti needed. This was another high-technique, low-commitment traversal …”
“Muti is now in the bizarre position, starting this season, of being the CSO’s music director emeritus for life—retired but seemingly never leaving, expertly keeping this orchestral Ferrari guided down the centerline on a highway to nowhere. The evening recalled another film, Lost Highway.”
Except the Ferrari comparison, pretty accurate views and reflective of Muti’s contributions to classical music over the past 15 years.
So mio Pollini, you are not alone. Your buddy Muti is working with you to keep the Italian flag flying as high as it can.
Like Italian bashing? There is pretty much an endless list of accomplished Italian musicians so you had better get started.
Does this guy have anything better to do than sit around all day and night and wait for chances to bash Muti on this site? We get your point, let’s move on.
Short answer to your question: “Evidently not.”
“The Bill Clinton of classical music.”
!!!???
Think brother. Think.
and you conveniently leave out the NYT review…
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/06/arts/music/chicago-symphony-carnegie-hall-review.html
you still have not produced any ounce of proof to back up the outlandish, baseless claim, “The Bill Clinton of classical music”, which really ranks as one of the most ridiculous things i have ever heard. how many years has it been already, spewing such nonsense? and yet, still there is nothing concrete from you. i’m sorry that your ego is so fragile that you feel the strange need to constantly attack an individual who has done a lot of good for the world of music, not to mention giving so much of his time and wisdom to the musicians of the orchestra, along with teaching and mentoring countless young musicians all over the world. he isn’t MD anymore, so what on earth is your problem?
The CSO was very, very good at Carnegie Hall last month. It’s sad that your entire identity here seems to hinge on the basis of railing against Muti in every thread that you can manage to fit your post into. Such is the way of the internet, where armchair posters attempt to lend credence to their anonymous posts by the way of sheer repetition.
I have had the dubious pleasure to ‘review’ three concerts by elder statesmen and women – who I used to admire greatly – when they were well past their prime. In each case, I did so without referring to a single note of the music they performed. For anyone who read the reviews, that should say it all. Relatively few performers retire at the right time or die with their boots on, as it were. When one is so used to the limelight and the adulation, it’s hard for many to voluntarily give it up.
Perhaps a lifetime of public acclaim has caused them to neglect the private to the extent that there’s little remaining for them to retreat towards!!
Very wise words, alas.
Limelight and adulation are not always the reason. More than anything else, it is the music and the sharing. Performance was never a job…it is a permanent lifestyle. I found myself with compressed nerves in my right hand after a medical error.The best therapy: piano practice. With my extensive repertoire, my therapy recitals in Retirement Homes and on church Disability programs provide me with a physical and spiritual outlet and my audiences with a forgiving, learning experience. ( They chart the progress of my strength and flexibility….I still perform more musically than most musicians in our region, and I still enjoy teaching Music History.) There is no competition with my former ability. Life is good.
Mazurkas are notoriously long and difficult.
Well, when you get senile, you re the last one to know….his family should do something about it now
He must be taking the same meds that John Elliott Gardener did when he slapped the boy.
And who are the judges? ))
Relatively harmless. Unlike the President of the United States…
You mean the orange rapist who filed 5 times for bankrupcy and tried a putsch?
No, the other one who seems so keen on war…
I’ve got a mental image of over 50s clowns storming the US government using sticks, bull-horns and clubs and providing an existential threat to the US. Has it really sunk this low for US defense forces?
The one ruining the economy.
i don’t know what economy you’re living with, but here in the us, it seems just fine. why not stick to music with your comments, or maybe stick with fox news and stop commenting on things unrelated to music?
Giving recitals when past your prime is sad but forgivable, publicly humiliating your page turner in the process is not.
Whatever… He is one of my favorite performers.
+1
https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/maurizio-pollini-in-zuerich-wenn-der-pianist-mit-seiner-notenwenderin-zankt-ld.1762407…
Actually,the concert per se seemed to be quite good….
Message to all performers who are well-past their sell-by date: Hang it up already!
Commenters here are missing one of the essentials about these ‘living legends’ who overstay their welcome: Managers and publicists. The number of people feasting off the Pollinis and Domingos are significant. They definitely don’t want the gravy train to stop.
As we see the patina turn to tarnish create a send off where past exploits cherished smaller venues gratis retirement home performances & easement off stage in a gentle manner is de rigueur
Enough already… Does no one who contributes to this “informed” discussion on SD remember: Pollini’s 80th b’day recital at the RFH last year? Fabulous (and well received by some of the same “well meaning” commentariat…)
His serious indisposition during that year’s Salzburg Festival – a victim, like Barenboim (possibly), of who knows what “medical intervention” (possibly…)
The master deserves respect for his stellar career! “No monument was ever erected for a critic.”
Just a general comment about performers and aging:
I remember hearing a live performance by the cellist Pierre Fournier during the mid-1980s, when he was nearly 80 years old. Whereas earlier recordings demonstrate impeccable taste and full control, this late performance, sadly, was out of tune, with a wobbly vibrato. I remember thinking he really should have called it quits earlier. This is quite in contrast to a concert by Arthur Rubinstein during the early ’70s. He was even older at the time , but somehow he was able to communicate an elegant musical line, despite occasional clunkers. Dementia is a cruel condition, and part of the tragedy is that the person experiencing it is often not fully aware of its extent until it’s too late.