Edition (12 CD set plus bonus CD)

Celebrating his 60th birthday (5 January 2002) and a 30-year artistic collaboration with Deutsche Grammophon, the maurizio pollini edition presents a wide-ranging series of our exclusive artist's classic recordings, personally selected and approved by the Maestro himself.

The Edition comprises 12 single CDs, plus a sensational bonus CD. Almost all the compilations are new, and cover all aspects of Pollini's recording career. There are three CDs of Classical and Romantic concertos, 5 CDs are devoted to the masters of Romantic solo music, and 4 CDs given over to modern repertoire, a central component of Pollini's artistic credo.

French photographer Philippe Gontier has contributed to the Edition with a new photo-shoot of the Maestro.

Rare and unpublished photographs, many from Pollini's family archive, illustrate each CD in the Edition. The bonus CD, which also includes a time-line biography, is a photo album of his life and art, featuring him alongside close friends and collaborators from the music world.

What is on the bonus CD? There are two concerto recordings released for the first time internationally. The first is Chopin's First Piano Concerto, taped live at the final concert of the 1960 International Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1960, where Pollini was the sensational winner at the age of 18. The second is the Schumann Piano Concerto, recorded live at the Salzburg Festival in 1974 with the Vienna Philharmonic under Herbert von Karajan.

Maurizio Pollini was born in 1942 in Milan. He studied the piano with Carlo Lonati and composition and conducting at the Milan Conservatory. By 1957, when he performed the Chopin Etudes in Milan, the press had already begun to take notice of him. His prizewinning performance at the 1960 Warsaw Chopin Competition was followed by a further period of study.

Since the mid-1960s, Maurizio Pollini has given recitals and appeared with major orchestras in Europe, the USA and the Far East. He made his USA debut in 1968, undertook his first tour of Japan in 1974, and today still performs regularly at the world's great international music festivals. He has also developed a great interest in contemporary works and was one of the first pianists to champion their cause. His frequent ventures into chamber music (Brahms's Piano Quintet with the Quartetto Italiano) and occasional appearances as a conductor (at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro) testify to his interest in every aspect of music. In 1995, the year in which he celebrated his 25th anniversary at the Salzburg Festival, he devised the program for a series of five concerts in which he also participated as pianist. His "Progetto" included compositions by Gesualdo, Nono, Schoenberg, Webern, Sciarrino, Beethoven, Brahms and Hindemith and constituted a highlight of the summer festival. The second "Progetto Pollini" takes place at the 1999 Salzburg Festival, where works by Ockeghem, Beethoven, Després, Schoenberg, Schumann, Machaut, Debussy, Nono, Mozart, Palestrina, and Monteverdi will be performed. In addition, new compositions - commissioned from Manzoni, Donatoni, Guarnieri and Berio by Maurizio Pollini and the Salzburg Festival - receive their premiere performances. Pollini's overwhelming success at the 1993 Berliner Festwochen with a performance of the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas induced him to play the cycle in Munich, Milan and New York. In 1996 and 1997 he performed the cycle in Paris, Vienna and London.

Maurizio Pollini was presented with the Wiener Philharmoniker's HONORARY RING in 1987; he was awarded the GOLDENE EHRENZEICHEN in Salzburg in 1995, and in 1996 he received the ERNST VON SIEMENS MUSIC PRIZE.

Maurizio Pollini has recorded exclusively for DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON since 1971.