He joined the Italian Communist Party at the starting of the so-called Years of lead, a period of political violence and social unrest in Italy. He justified this decision with the party’s condemnation of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, which allowed him to reconcile doctrine with democracy. He was escorted away from one of his recitals for protesting against the American bombing of Hanoi and friendly composer Luigi Nono, with whom he collaborated on such works as “Like a wave of strength and lightweight”, dedicated to the memory of Chilean activist Luciano Cruz.
Convinced that music was everyone’s right, Mr. Pollini gave concerts for staff and students with the conductor Claudio Abbado, a longtime collaborator, and abandoned the conventions that separated new from old music by recording piano works Schoenberg as strikingly as the late sonatas Beethoven. His enthusiasm waned in the Eighties. “It was something of a disappointment,” he later said he said era – nevertheless, he retained socialism and idealistic faith in the power of art.
“Art itself, if it is actually great, has a progressive aspect that’s needed for society, even when it seems completely useless from a strictly practical point of view” – Mr. Pollini he said The Guardian in 2011 “In a way, art is a bit like society’s dreams. They seem to make a small contribution, but sleep and dreams are extremely important because man could not live without them, just as society cannot live without art.
Mr. Pollini followed contemporary art, read Shakespeare’s complete works repeatedly in English and Italian, and studied scores well beyond those written for piano. However, he carefully chose what he performed, engaging only with songs that he knew he would never tire of and that contributed to what he considered the evolution of music.
Still, Mr. Pollini was a modest modernist. Rarely seen without a jacket, tie and cigarettes, he spoke of his appreciation for musicians with opposing beliefs, from the arch-romanticism of the pianist Alfred Cortot to the regal greatness of the conductor Karl Böhm, with whom he made outstanding recordings Mozart, Beethoven AND Brahms concerts. Unusually for a modernist, he even admitted to listening to Rachmaninoff from time to time.
Pollini’s survivors include his wife Maria Elisabetta, commonly known as Marilisa, whom he married in 1968, and their son Daniele. Both his wife and son play the piano.
“We have the most beautiful repertoire ever written for any given instrument,” Mr. Pollini said of the pianists in an interview with The Times in 2006. “We have all this wealth at our disposal. And then we are dealing with an instrument that has absolutely extraordinary possibilities. There are no limits to what you can do on the piano.”
