Pollini gives Paris a black night
NewsThe Italian pianist has cancelled next Monday’s recital, too late for the organisers to arrange an alternative programme.
Pollini, 81, is in poor health.
Vous avez réservé une ou plusieurs place(s) pour le récital de Maurizio Pollini programmé le lundi 16 octobre à 20h en Grande salle Pierre Boulez – Philharmonie.
Pour des raisons de santé, Maurizio Pollini est contraint de renoncer à son concert, nous avons le regret de vous annoncer que celui-ci est annulé.
Again, another example of refusal to lower the curtain, kicking or screaming. Who grants these people the right to move around to do as they please even when they can no longer factually deliver to standard?
Heifetz and Brendel retired before the age of 80.
Very wise.
I realy hope to don’t see that with Rudy Buchbinder who is in very good shape and at the top of his carrer today. He’s my favorit male pianist. I’am sure that Zimmerman will avoid the problem in few years.
Buchbinder is the best at knitting notes and playing everything indistinctively. I am not fan of Zimmerman eternal quest of perfection but they don’t play in the same league.
Very easy to write bad things about Buchbinder I suppose you never saw him in concert.
More tham that-they retired while still in the pick of their high standarts. Their last recordings still show them at their very best.
Sometimes they don’t know when game is up
Would someone please alert Maestro Domingo?
He’s not a conductor, so please don’t call him ‘maestro’.
Pavarotti was called this way and it was normal.
Still wrong.
Well, one has to call him something, given that he is (no longer) a tenor, a baritone, a conductor, a stage director. . .
Maurizio Pollini has conducted opera at La Scala in the 80’s, and Mozart concertos. mostky with the Wiener Phil but also in London (in this case with himself as soloist).
Important to don’t forget the great artist he was for the ones like me who saw him in concert few years the ago.
I actually think it’s sad. You see this in many public iterations, be it radio announcers, actors (Judy Dench; she’s become embarrassing), sporting commentators; not just conductors or musicians.
Often it signals not much else going on in the private sphere!! Not saying this is the case with Pollini, but it’s strongly suggestive of an emptiness outside work.
That alarm bell has been ringing loudly for a long time. Clearly, he isn’t listening.
You are too kind to say “Maestro” Domingo…
Classical could be like boxing in the 70’s and the 80’s
One recalls Claudio Arrau, whose playing steadily declined after 1977, yet sadly he continued to perform for years afterwards. How painful it must be to acknowledge that your superhuman abilities have abandoned you – but eventually they usually do.
I love Arrau, but have to admit that those late Philips recordings (the 1985 Liszt, and “The Final Sessions” series) didn’t do his legacy any good – they were downright embarrassing.
Claudio Arrau was not playing bad in his late years, he was just studying the Third Piano Sonata of Boulez (unfortunately he did not play this work in concert), and it has unfluenced his Liszt et al.
Evidently you didn’t suffer through his late Carnegie Hall recitals, when he flubbed his way through his programs with memory slips galore and shoddy finger work.
No, I didn’t. Boulez + old age may have an undesireble, very negative, synergistic effect.
🙂 Pff
Not sadly at all. He remained just as compelling an artist-admittedly not quite flawless in the way he was previously but still absolutely viable.
These decisions are entirely in the hands of the paying audience. After all, France arguably has the best musical critique in the world, and they cannot pretend they haven’t been told.
The best in the world? You mean like the cringeworthy
prose of Andre Tubeuf?
Tubeuf died a couple of years ago, and not every French critic has his style or opinions. I refer to the existence of a healthy body of criticism with many generations represented, at least two trustworthy reviews, La tribune des critiques de disques at France Musique etc.
This is absurd. There are so many ways elderly musicians could remain involved in music. Release performances on YouTube where you have a chance to record when you are feeling well. Teach young musicians. Make chamber music with your musician friends. Play concerts in modest venues that would welcome a chance to hear even a past his prime virtuoso.
For the love of God man – just stop.
I ceased attending his recitals years ago after two consecutive annual failures in London. Give the future to the young.
I attended a Pollini recital at the Festival Hall in June. I left at interval with a mixture of embarrassment and sympathy. Artists should realise when it is time to quit. I suspect that their promotors just want to squeeze the last drop out of them.
An example of a person trying to do what he loves to do, to the very end of time. One can only admire his passion. I hope the negative commenters on this thread will be granted the same grace……assuming negative comments aren’t all you love to do.
This place really goes overboard to look like a congregation of unempathetic jerks. No one has even asked what’s Pollini health issue , busy as they were to bury him, at least artistically