Brahms : Concerto pour piano n° 2. Pollini, Thielemann.

Piano International (Jul, 2014)
The sole survivor of a once-proud trio of Italian friends that included composer Luigi Nono and conductor Claudio Abbado, pianist Maurizio Pollini is in the sere and yellow leaf of his career. Born in 1942, Pollini is not among those elderly pianists who seem to frolic in eternal adolescence, such as Arthur Rubinstein did. Instead, Pollini, whose most significant recording of the Brahms Second Piano Concerto was with Karl Bohm in the 1970s, is raging against the dying of the light in this adamant performance.

King Lear on the heath is one valid approach to this long and majestic work, but the pianist requires a more supple, pliant accompanist than the …