Pianist Maurizio Pollini's mastery is beyond reproach, but playing has little spontaneity

Love him or hate him, Maurizio Pollini has been one of the defining -- and most polarizing -- pianists of the last 50 years. His razor-sharp technique and modern, cooly intellectual approach to music have won legions of admirers, while his detractors hear austerity and a sort of bloodless, clinical detachment. But Pollini's mastery of the keyboard is beyond reproach, and it was little wonder that the Music Center at Strathmore was packed Sunday afternoon for a program of Chopin and Debussy that ...