Maurizio Pollini I (Great Pianists of the Century) - Chopin / Debussy / Liszt / Schumann / Stravinsky / Webern (2 CDs)

In his hands, the piano seems to become a kind of laboratory for scientific investigation. Consider how Pollini pursues his goal of "maximum clarity" here in works as diverse as Webern's Op. 27 Piano Variations, the selections from Debussy's Études, or the Schumann Arabeske (the last being one of Horowitz's most felicitous specialties). Although some detractors find a chilly absence of personality, Pollini's expression of the poetic intensity in Schubert's Drei Klavierstücke or Schumann's Piano Sonata No. 1 cuts to the heart of the early romantics, tottering on the edge with visionary concentration. His magnificent account of Liszt's B Minor Sonata leaves countless others in the dust, mapping out its larger structural edifice with an assured mastery that is one of Pollini's hallmarks (his father was, in fact, one of the leading Italian modernist architects of his day). And for sheer jaw-dropping pianism, listen to the orchestral trompe l'oreille Pollini achieves in the transcribed excerpts from Stravinsky's Petrouschka. --Thomas May