Carte blanche to Maurizio Pollini
© Cosimo Filippini
- Date
- 21 November 2018 – 8:30pm
- Place
- Auditorium
- Duration
- 1h40
Maurizio Pollini is coming to the Auditorium for a series of three concerts. He has been given carte blanche to create his own programme, and has invited the Hagen Quartet, Caroline Widmann, Matteo Cesari, Otto Katzameier, Christian Dierstein and Salvatore Sciarrino to take part. Along with the maestro himself they will present major works by Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Schoenberg, Berg and Nono.
Pollini’s programme also showcases works by Salvatore Sciarrino including a world premiere for flute, violin, baritone and percussion, commissioned by the Fondation Louis Vuitton.
The artists
Maurizio Pollini
The name of Maurizio Pollini evokes an extremely important career, story of a man and an artist known all over the world, prized by audiences and critics across every latitude and several generations. Protagonist since more than 40 years in all the major European, American and Japanese concert halls and festival, Maurizio Pollini has performed with the most celebrate conductors an orchestras.
He has been awarded many International prizes: the Vienna Philharmonic Ehrenring in 1987, the Goldenes Ehrenzeichen of the Town Salzburg in 1995; the Ernst-von-Siemens Music Prize in Munich in 1996, the “A Life for Music – Artur Rubinstein” Prize in Venice in 1999 and the Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli Prize in Milan in 2000, Artiste Etoile of the Lucerne Festival, 2004. October 2010 Pollini has been awarded the prestigious Prize Imperiale in Tokyo. 2012 the Royal Philharmonic Society Award, 2013 Laurea Honoris Causa of the Complutense University, Madrid.
In 1995 Maurizio Pollini opened the Festival that Tokyo dedicated to Pierre Boulez. In the same year and in 1999 the Salzburg Festival invited him to devise and present an own cycle of concerts, which included in the programmes works of different epochs and styles. Later in the years, between 1999 and 2006, with the same philosophy Maurizio Pollini realized new cycles performed in New York at the Carnegie Hall (in 1999/2000 and 2000/01), in Paris for la Cité de la Musique and in Tokyo (both in 2002), in Rome at the Parco della Musica (March 2003) and Vienna with programmes including both chamber and orchestral performances and mirroring his wide musical tastes from Gesualdo and Monteverdi to the present. New cycles have been devised between 2008 and 2013 at the Lucerne Festival, Accademia di Santa Cecilia Roma, Cité de la Musique Paris, Teatro alla Scala Milano, in Tokyo and in Berlin.
Maurizio Pollini’s repertoire ranges from Bach to contemporary composers (including première performances of Manzoni, Nono and Sciarrino) and includes the complete Beethoven Sonatas, which he has performed in Berlin, Munich, Milan, New York, London, Vienna and Paris.
He has recorded works from the classical, romantic and contemporary repertoire to worldwide critical acclaims. His recordings of the complete works for piano by Schoenberg, and of works by Berg, Webern, Manzoni, Nono, Boulez and Stockhausen are a testament to his great passion for music of the 20th century.
Pollini’s recording of Chopin Nocturnes was received with the greatest enthusiasm by audience and critics alike: in 2007 he was awarded a Grammy for the best Instrumental Soloist Performance and the Disco d’Oro, in 2006 an Echo Award (Germany), Choc de la Musique, Victoires de la Musique and Diapason d’Or de l’Année (France). A CD with the Mozart piano Concertos n.12 KV414 and n.24 KV491 with the Vienna Philharmonic was released in April 2008 followed by the second CD with Concertos n.17 KV453 and n.21 KV467 and by a new recording dedicated to Chopin. Brahms nr 1 with Staatskapelle Dresden and Christian Thielemann has been released both in CD and DVD late fall 2011, Brahms nr 2, always with Dresden and Thielemann spring 2014.
DGG has released three box dedicated to the Art of Maurizio Pollini , a new CD featuring Chopin Préludes and other pieces, Beethoven Sonatas and most recently a CD with Chopin’s late works which has been awarded the ECHO Prize 2017.
Quatuor Hagen
After recitals given by the “four world-class string players from Salzburg”, rapt audiences remain “entranced several minutes with quasi-absolute stillness in their thoughts, well aware that they have experienced something truly exceptional”, as the press has noted. On these occasions, concertgoers share “the wish that the music would never stop.”
For chamber music lovers, the 2018/2019 season thus offers a number of welcome opportunities for utter listening enjoyment – “unforgettable moments of sheer musical magic” (Drehpunkt Kultur). The Hagen Quartet will be focusing on Franz Schubert for this season. In addition, they will also be directing their attention mainly to Shostakovich, but also to Beethoven, Dvořák and Schumann with all their tonal shapes and concentrated musical details.
Once again, in the course of this concert season, the Hagen Quartet’s performance schedule will take them to the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Wigmore Hall London and moreover to Brussels, Hamburg, Cologne and Berlin, to name but a few. They are also guests again at the Salzburg Festival and the Schubertiade Hohenems. In Asia there will be another tour with concerts in Tokyo and Fukushima as well as concerts in China, Macao and Taiwan. The Hagen Quartet will travel to the United States for concerts at Carnegie Hall New York, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Philadelphia.
The Hagen Quartet’s recording featuring the Mozart String Quintets K387 and K458 was awarded the Diapason d'or and the Choc of Classica Magazine (France), as well as the coveted German ECHO Klassik Prize (2016) for the Best Chamber Music Recording of the 17th/18th Centuries.
In 2011, the Hagen Quartet celebrated their 30th anniversary with two recordings for Myrios Classics featuring works by Mozart, Webern, Beethoven, Grieg and the Brahms Clarinet Quintet (with Jörg Widmann). That same year, the Hagen Quartet won the ECHO Klassik Prize as Ensemble of the Year; in 2012, the quartet was named Honorary Member of the Vienna Konzerthaus.
The Hagen Quartet’s unprecedented 3 1/2-decade career began in 1981. Its early years, marked by a series of prizes in chamber music competitions and an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon that was to produce around forty-five CDs over the following twenty years, enabled the group to work its way through the immensely vast repertoire for string quartet in which this ensemble’s distinctive profile has emerged. Collaborations with artistic personalities such as György Kurtág and the late Nikolaus Harnoncourt are as important to the Hagen Quartet as its concert appearances with performers including Maurizio Pollini, Mitsuko Uchida, Sabine Meyer, Krystian Zimerman, Heinrich Schiff, and Jörg Widmann.
The group’s concert repertoire and discography feature attractive and intelligently arranged programmes embracing the entire history of the string quartet genre, from its pre-Haydn beginnings right through to Kurtág. The Hagen Quartet also works closely with composers of its own generation: not only reviving existing works, but also commissioning and premiering new pieces.
Many young string quartets regard the Hagen Quartet as a model in terms of sound quality, stylistic variety, ensemble playing and serious commitment to the works and composers of the genre. As teachers and mentors at the Salzburg Mozarteum and the Hochschule in Basel, as well as in international masterclasses, the quartet’s members pass on their great wealth of experience to younger colleagues.
The Hagen Quartet plays on old Italian master instruments.
“Music that sounds as if it came from another planet...” “The pinnacle of musicality!”
(Drehpunkt Kultur and Die Presse.com)
The programme
- Alban Berg
- String quartet Op.3
- Luigi Nono
- "Sofferte onde serene" for piano and tape
- Ludwig Van Beethoven
- Quatuor n°14 op.131
