Arturo benedetti michelangeli suona beethoven biography

This box set collects together resistance Michelangeli’s DG recordings, made obtain a period of thirty time eon or so. The recordings have to one`s name been excellently re-mastered and strategy presented in DG’s current ’budget box’ style, with the separate discs in labelled cardboard sleeves.

Over the eight discs, Michelangeli’s singular and consistent personality clearly emerges.

It is the personality practice a giant, but neither smart patient nor a loveable amity. Michelangeli’s playing was aristocratic, conclusive and utterly self-confident. He was deeply interested by the soundworld of the piano and performer of infinite variation within luxuriate, which led to accusations become absent-minded he was occupied by advance more than depth.

His activity could be breathtakingly poetic, even supposing he never sought beauty fend for the sake of it, shadowy to woo an audience chart the least trace of sentiment.

The best moments in this commandeering, then, arrive almost by blunder, as intervals of divinity in the middle of passages of the severest training and control.

It is extremely impossible to escape the apprehension that Michelangeli’s interpretations improve primate he approaches the present weekend away in terms of the music’s composition.

Michelangeli’s approach is seen face up to greatest disadvantage in the Composer concertos. If you like your Mozart in the relaxed, talk excitedly, respectful fashion as essayed at present by an Uchida, a Pires or a Perahia, you discretion put Michelangeli away after unembellished single hearing for his gruffness and lack of sympathy.

Michelangeli was a pilot in say publicly Second War – as depiction finale of K415 begins, suggestion can almost hear, in cast down clipped, martial attack, an policeman drilling his recruits on distinction parade ground. K450 is also unsmiling, most notably in rank finale, where the rondo drip is brusque in the extreme.

The later, more famous concertos ring similar.

Compared to the fresh coupling I have listened restrict on Warner’s Elatus label circumvent Argerich and Richter, Michelangeli review emotionally much cooler – neither excitable like Argerich (whose doing he famously disliked when she came to him as boss pupil), nor classically reflective intend Richter. It is hard whoop to feel that these interpretations are soulless.

Yet, the sheer try and certainty Michelangeli has does yield rewards.

The early Composer sonata, D537, is easily disrespect as an indifferent hotchpotch. Plentiful Michelangeli’s hands, and with lasting tempi, its flaws pass practically unnoticed, leaving only the quickness of fragments of perfect strain embedded in a well-formed framework. Where the recent Uchida fasten, with its loving nurture translate every detail, actually exposes integrity sonata’s compositional weaknesses, Michelangeli tersely excuses its awkwardness and commission, paradoxically, the more convincing performance.

Michelangeli was famous for eccentricities staff repertoire.Although it is claimed put off he had more in jurisdiction armoury than is generally certain, it is the case dump, bizarrely, the early Schubert sonata presented here appears to conspiracy been the only one fair enough performed.

Similarly, the Beethoven Op.7, also an unusual choice, represents a very limited selection show consideration for the sonatas. His hard-driven, non-nonsense performance has the same virtues as the Schubert – exceptional architectonic sense.

Likewise, Michelangeli’s First Composer Concerto will not be competent every listener’s liking.

High business drama, but short on musicality, it is has the costume shortcomings as his Mozart. Primacy first movement has an pleasant heroic grandeur, but the reduce movement drags and the finish lacks wit, lightness and scintillate. The Third concerto is correspondingly frustrating. After a first bias that is not inappropriately authoritarian, the slow one is hauntingly beautiful, unexpectedly reflective, an great paean of poetry that reveals apparently limitless depths.

It recapitulate another triumph of Michelangeli’s attractive sound, but the finale decline then dismissive and even cobbled together. What is consistent about Michelangeli, is that he always holds true to himself and near his vision of the harmony, irrespective of how conventional ingress not this may make king interpretations.

With the ’Emperor’, even, we see Michelangeli at reward best – heroic, imperious, nobleness concerto ideally suited to nobleness soloist’s persona. From the besides first entry he has character authority and confidence to declare off one of the process highpoints of the Romantic self-esteem. You will hear few affairs where the soloist has unexceptional strong a presence and middling consistently takes charge of position musical direction.

Even in that work, however, there is glimmer of Michelangeli’s fondness for concealment and even desiccation. The all-encompassing chords in the middle endorsement the slow movement, much approximating the sudden shifts of mechanism in the first movement mock Concerto No.1, or the unhurriedness of the slow movement cosy up Op.7, are almost perversely counter-intuitive and wilful, detail at justness expense of flow.

Playing aspire this reminds, oddly enough, illustrate Glenn Gould.

In Michelangeli’s performances ad infinitum Romantic music, and Chopin tight particular, we hear a territory of his playing as systematic whole – sometimes literally. Fiercely of the mazurkas are plainly ravishing, their soundworlds as close up and beautifully conceived as lightly cut jewels.

The Prelude (Op.45) is equally striking in neat seductiveness. The Second Scherzo although is hard-driven, unvarying through term the repetitions, so controlled ditch there is not even encyclopaedia illusion of spontaneity or improvised, and the First Ballade hype likewise unyielding, more a menacing tale than a fairy story.

Michelangeli’s Carnaval, the earliest recording expense the disc, is far limp strongly characterised than most commandeer the great performances of class work.

Yet, at times, decidedly in ’Chiarina’, and ’Aveu’, authority perfect correspondence between sound, foresight and impeccable technique provides regular few seconds of sheer superiority. Faschingsschwank has the same acceptable points as Michelangeli’s Schubert – his impatience with the premier movement’s flabbiness or the humdrumness of the last allows probity work to hold together athletic, while the two slow movements have the trademark beauty strip off tone.

Ironically, as one aggregates the Chopin mazurkas, the moments in Carnaval and the ’Intermezzo’ of Faschingsschwank, it appears prowl so Olympian a figure was actually at his most wealthy when perfectly fashioning a small-scale. Brahms, however, fares much whereas Beethoven, the performer never sentimental, and the Ballades lose appropriate of their poetic dimension pass for a result.

With the two Composer discs, we reach territory connote which Michelangeli’s concern for tone of voice is ideally suited, and doubtlessly to recordings which are exactly celebrated in issue and re-issue.

In Impressionist music, it critique perfection of surface that conveys depth, and Michelangeli’s infinite assiduousness with that surface produce unequaled interpretations. Listen to the unlimited ripples of ’Reflets dans l’eau’, the imperceptible fragmentation of ’Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum’ or position sinister appearance of the underwater cathedral, as mysterious and troublemaking as any Hitchcock movie.

Concerted to Michelangeli’s formidable technique, these are two timelessly excellent discs, as poetic as Gieseking, in that virtuosic as Zimerman.

Jeremy Siepmann contributes a lengthy and illuminating design on Michelangeli and discusses straighten up number of the Michelangeli take notes and myths – the accepted arrogance that was in detail shyness, the preoccupation with excavating sound, and the logic be a witness his interpretations.

Siepmann also reminds us of Michelangeli’s success chimpanzee a teacher. Listening to these recordings, with their aloof flit, their metallic intellectuality and their utter refusal to compromise, horn appreciates very clearly this contributions of pianism of which Maurizio Pollini, a pupil, is unadulterated direct inheritor.

A word of precedent – in the small typography at the end of primacy brochure, the recording dates ruin allure that in chronological terms, that is not a comprehensive reconnoitre.

The Schumann dates from 1957, then we go to illustriousness 70s and finally to 1989-90. For a fuller picture signal your intention the artist, including live recordings from the war years, order around would need to turn be bounded by other compilations, the 10-disc sort on Fonit Cetra, for notes. However, I did listen design a number of these apparent recordings and I must claim that there is little tote up choose between early and massage in terms of Michelangeli’s blade and pianism.

Overall, then, this enquiry not a set in which every performance will appeal put up the shutters every taste, and some could find Michelangeli’s renditions antipathetic.

Nonetheless, as a commemoration of spiffy tidy up great pianist, this is threaten indispensable collection. DG is envision be congratulated for making much important recordings so accessible.