Pollini: Capriccio, Sonate, Variazioni e Toccata

Born in Ljubljana on 26 March 1762, Francesco Giuseppe Pollini trained first in Vienna with W.A.
Mozart, and, after transferring to Milan in 1790, with Nicola Zingarelli, who resided in the Lombard city for a brief period.
Pollini was multifaceted, working as an actor, singer, composer, violinist and pianist.
As a singer, he may be identified as Barone Pulini, co-dedicatee of Mozart’s arias “Spiegarti non poss’io” (KV 489) and “Non temer, amato bene” (KV 490), on texts by Giambattista Varesco.
The first mention of Pollini as a composer dates to 1803, as documented by certain articles which appeared in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung.
In 1811 his Metodo per Clavicembalo was published.
One of the most important aspects dealt with in this Method is the theorization of the pianistic touch.
Pollini clearly distinguishes between a generic manner of addressing the keyboard, which he subdivides into Piano and Forte, and a more specific approach which he calls ”Tocco del tasto” (“touch of the key”), whose aim is “to express and color the various characters of the music”, listed as Sciolto, Staccato and Legato.
In his Method, each of these is defined physiologically and assigned to the variously characterized compositions.
For example: “The Sciolto touch must vibrate, and that is obtained by raising the finger somewhat, without however lengthening it, and having it fall back perpendicularly over the key, abandoning that key only when moving on to bring forth the sound of another, and this is the manner applicable to the compositions characterized by the denominations Con fuoco, Con Brio, Maestoso and similar phrases.”