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Reviews: Pollini has a nightmare in London

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norman lebrecht

June 24, 2023

We are hearing from several readers that Maurizio Pollini’s recital at the Royal Festival hall fell far short of his immaculate standards expectations. Here’s one acute observer:

The first piece on Pollini’s programme, the Schumann Arabesque, was played beautifully from memory but next, rather than the advertised Schumann Fantasie, he started to play (I think) the Chopin Mazurka which should have been in the second half.

He seemed to lose his way quickly (or possibly remember he was playing the wrong piece) and suddenly stopped and went off stage for a few minutes. He came back on with a score for the Schumann Fantasie and started playing but kept flicking, seemingly at random, through the pages as he was playing. Some of the pages were loose and kept falling down, so he got in a real muddle, often pausing and completely ruining any sense of flow in the music.

After the first part of the Fantasie he went off to get the score for the rest and carried on playing. He still had trouble turning the pages but the performance seemed to settle at little towards the end of the piece, though it was still very uncomfortable to watch.

For the second half of the concert a page turner was present and the playing was much more like what we have experienced with him in recent years; certainly some beautiful playing but also many smudged notes and muddled passages. Of course he got a huge standing ovation but unusually (though not surprisingly) no encores were offered. It’s sad to see a great artist in such an undignified and shambolic state for part of the recital and I guess the experience may well have rattled him too. Will we will ever see Maurizio Pollini in London again?

UPDATE: Here’s another account from Tim Parry on his Facebook page:

Last night I witnessed probably the saddest concert I’ve ever been to. It’s not my first instinct to write about it here, but – especially having read adulatory comments elsewhere that give no indication that anything was wrong – I feel I should make some sort of record of the event, even if only for myself.

In his prime, Maurizio Pollini was a great pianist, a giant of the last century. Some people liked his playing more than others, but that’s not relevant here. His poise and technical finish were of a rare order. At the Royal Festival Hall he played a familiar programme – Schumann’s Arabesque and C major Fantasy, and a very short second half of a Chopin mazurka, Barcarolle and First Scherzo.

Pollini is 81 and frail. He shuffled on to the stage, briefly acknowledged the applause, and began the Arabesque. The playing had limitations but was essentially fine. This is a short and relatively undemanding piece. Pollini then left the stage, which surprised me, returning before the applause had died away to play the C major Fantasy. But instead we got something else – an improvisation, stop-start, going nowhere. At one point he put his head in his hands, and then resumed. And then he stopped, got up and left the stage without acknowledging the ripples of slightly confused applause. This time he was gone for longer. There was uneasy chatter. I seriously doubted that he’d return. But he did, to rapturous applause, this time with music. But no page turner. He arranged the music on the piano, which seemed a surprisingly complicated task, with loose-leaved sheets that he struggled to put in the right order. Eventually he sat down and launched into the work, the score open somewhere seemingly random. He paused frequently, pedal down, trying to turn pages with his left hand, or leafing through the music trying to find the right bit, until – feeling he’d extended the phrase as long as he could – he pressed on, the music not in the right place either on the stand or under his fingers. He made it to the end, but to say what he played was an approximation understates the unsettling nature of the experience.

At the end of the first movement Pollini got up and left the stage, returning with more music to play the second and third movements. These we heard more or less intact. The fact that Pollini’s technique is simply nowhere near up to the demands of this repertoire had become a secondary concern.

The second half was short – no more than 25 minutes. This time there was a page turner, and things went more smoothly. Technically and musically the playing did not stand up to the slightest scrutiny, but at least Pollini seemed to know where he was. Lots of cheering, and a standing ovation. No encore.

I doubt we’ll see Pollini play in London again. He should not have played this concert. There are clearly health issues – I don’t know precisely what they are, although one could guess, but someone does. Why is he being allowed or encouraged to continue playing under these circumstances? The audience’s enthusiasm only made matters worse.

And further confirmation from Peter Reed on Colin’s Column:

… things went badly awry. He just couldn’t find his way into Schumann’s Fantasie, and after two attempts he went off-stage to get his score. There followed a muddle with a technician trying to fix up the piano’s copy holder, with Pollini then trying to keep the show on the road, but fumbled page-turns, losing his way, long silences, going off-stage again, applause in the wrong places, all took their toll. And inevitably the vital, secure link between performer and audience was broken. Spectators were supportive and affectionate, but you wondered how he would recover.

There was a page-turner for the second half, yet there was something too dogged and unyielding about the way Pollini negotiated the technical demands and big gestures of Scherzo No.1. Growth, attack, tone and definition stayed stubbornly at the same level, and the way Chopin transfigures the progress of the Barcarolle from a brief journey in a gondola into an emblem of life’s passage struggled to register. Clouds of pedal and missed notes didn’t help. The short recital ended around nine o’clock, and despite a rapturous reception and heartfelt standing ovation, there were no encores. I was standing near the stage when Pollini emerged through the door and briefly stood there for his fourth curtain call. He looked like a ghost.