Pianist Maurizio Pollini has achieved elder statesman status. “Now in his mid-sixties, he is no less conspicuous for his championship of such tricky manifestations of the avant-garde as Pierre Boulez’s Sonata No 2 and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Klavierstück X. His stance has consistently been that contemporary music should form part of the normal repertoire, rather than being hived off into a specialist ghetto.”