He championed works by contemporary composers, including Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Benjamin, Roberto Carnevale, Gianluca Cascioli and Bruno Maderna.

Several compositions were written for him, including Luigi Nono's ... sofferte onde serene ..., Giacomo Manzoni's Masse: omaggio a Edgard Varèse, and Salvatore Sciarrino's Fifth Sonata.

[10] He selected among the most formidable of the possible etudes the "Octave", "Winter Wind", and "Waterfall", which Piero Rattalino [it] assessed as qualifying Pollini for "the madhouse or victory".

[20] Some expressed concern that Michelangeli's influence led to Pollini's style becoming "mannered and cold"[17] or "drier, more cerebral".

[21] John Rockwell summarized Pollini's "hard‐edged and modern" style as one of "coolness, intensity and virtuosity", noting his tonal control and "sheer dexterity".

... at the mere sound of the word 'Vietnam', the audience exploded in a kind of collective delirium, which made it impossible to continue my recital.

Beginning in the mid-1960s, Pollini gave recitals[24] and appeared with orchestras in Europe, the United States, and the Far East.

[27] Once wary of becoming pigeonholed as a specialist, especially of Chopin,[13] he had "clearly avoided that tag" by the 1970s, Rockwell noted while surveying Pollini's discography in its then range from Mozart to Nono.

[30] He performed with Abbado at La Scala in Milan in concerts for students and workers, aiming to build a public among them in the spirit that art should be for everybody.

[31] At least one of Pollini's recitals was concluded upon audience unrest and police intervention when he attempted to make a statement about the Vietnam War.

They worked together for three days in the recording studio at Radio Milano with audio engineer Marino Zuccheri.

[34] The work remained in Pollini's repertoire; he later played it in London at the Southbank Centre's "Fragments of Venice" festival (2007) and in Salzburg (2019).

[32] He played a "defining role" in the Rossini Opera Festival at Pesaro, conducting La donna del lago from a new critical edition in 1981.

But he was criticized for his inflexible literalism and quick tempi, which drove Martine Dupuy [fr] to tears.

Scholars cited historical evidence and showed him autograph manuscripts to persuade him to allow more ornamentation and rubato, bel canto hallmarks, particularly in the elaborate fioritura of cadential passages.

He relented only in the final rondò, "Tanti affetti in tal momento", for which Rossini prepared three ossia for particular singers.

[38] He tempered this approach somewhat in a 1983 reprise featuring Katia Ricciarelli (Elena), Lucia Valentini Terrani (Malcolm), and Samuel Ramey (Duglas) with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, which Sony recorded.

[40] Among those celebrating Webern's 1983 birth centenary in New York and at the Venice Festival of Contemporary Music, Pollini played the Piano Variations.

[42] In 1987, he received the Vienna Philharmonic's Honorary Ring while playing Beethoven's piano concertos with them in New York conducted by Abbado.

[32] On Mozart's 250th birth centenary at the 2006 Salzburg Festival, he changed the second half of the program to Webern's Piano Variations and Boulez's Second Sonata.

[55] Pollini's first recordings for Deutsche Grammophon (DG) in 1971 included Stravinsky's Trois mouvements de Petrouchka and Prokofiev's Seventh Sonata.

In 2007, Pollini received the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without orchestra) for his Deutsche Grammophon recording of Chopin's Nocturnes.