Pollin biography

Maurizio Pollini (5 January – 23 March )

For more than 60 years Maurizio Pollini was a towering presence on the musical scene: the pianist who, at the age of 18, astounded jurors at the Sixth International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, and went on to become a byword not just for technical excellence but for a kind of profound artistic engagement entirely focused on the music, and not on the trappings of the great performer.

Pollin biography

Supreme in Beethoven and Chopin, an advocate for the music of his contemporaries, and a man of strongly-held political ideals, Pollini was a musician apart. That much was evident from the outset, when rather than plunging into a solo career after victory at the Chopin Competition, he instead took time to develop his musical interests and repertoire before re-emerging on to the musical scene with debuts in London and Berlin.

Born in Milan in January into an artistic family – his father was the modernist architect Gino Pollini, his mother the sister