At one point he put his head in his hands, and then resumed. But instead we got something else – an improvisation, stop-start, going nowhere. Pollini then left the stage, which surprised me, returning before the applause had died away to play the C major Fantasy. This is a short and relatively undemanding piece. The playing had limitations but was essentially fine. He shuffled on to the stage, briefly acknowledged the applause, and began the Arabesque. UPDATE: Here’s another account from Tim Parry on his Facebook page: Will we will ever see Maurizio Pollini in London again? 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. Of course he got a huge standing ovation but unusually (though not surprisingly) no encores were offered. 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.įor 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. 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.Īfter the first part of the Fantasie he went off to get the score for the rest and carried on playing. 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. 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. 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. We are hearing from several readers that Maurizio Pollini’s recital at the Royal Festival hall fell far short of his immaculate standards expectations.
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