Maurizio Pollini’s hard-hitting approach works best in the First Concerto, where the Chicago players circle the pianist like a street gang bent on trouble and the first movement’s breathless scamper is extraordinarily exciting. The percussive valse macabre (my term, not Bartok’s) that sits at the heart of the second movement is less hypnotic than, say, Donohoe’s under Rattle, but the finale holds its tension for the duration. The sound is still fairly spectacular, with a consistently secure piano image and audible clicking among the woodwinds.
The Second Concerto is, for me, slightly more problematic – both in this recording and in the two concert performances that I heard Pollini give under Sir Simon Rattle. No one could question Pollini’s stamina or solid command of the notes, but I miss an element of play, a sense of athletic joyousness – virtues that Anda and Fricsay offer in abundance. Pollini and Abbado are too consistently uptight, even relentless, and if you pan back to fragments of a performance that Bartok himself gave under Ansermet’s direction (on Hungaroton) the benefits of flexible phrasing are confirmed.
Pollini is one of my favourite living pianists and I certainly wouldn’t want to miss out on the many impressive aspects of his performance, not least his unbelievably deft delivery of the second movement’s central Presto. The recording partnership with Abbado only ran to the first two concertos, and although Shlomo Mintz is sweetness and light in the First Portrait and Abbado makes a thrilling case for the Second (a bitchy transformation of the First’s dreamy love theme), all three of my chosen comparisons include the Third Concerto. Anda is still my first choice, Zoltan Kocsis with Ivan Fischer my second, with Peter Donohoe and Andras Schiff as viable alternatives (Schiff’s ‘softer option’ Second Concerto is the diametric opposite of Pollini’s).
These performances are pianistically magnificent, but when the physical thrills start to wear off and you listen out for some fun behind the notes, I doubt that you will find much – especially in the Second Concerto.'