Search - Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli :: Unpublished Recital

CAN YOU MAKE OUT WHAT THEY ARE SAYING?

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 03/03/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This pair of discs is slightly pricy ... but it contains something I had never thought to hear -- a half-hour of live rehearsal by Michelangeli with some asociates. Goodness, for 20 years he recorded next to nothing, he gave all of one interview that I know of, he cancelled about as many concerts as he gave, and here he is allowing this intimate close-up! ....



The first half of the concert is Schumann, Faschingsschwank and Carnaval. Faschingsschwank seems to me to suit him rather better than Carnaval, but let me make it clear to other disappointed owners of M's studio recording of Carnaval that this performance resembles that roughly as Snowhite resembles Carabosse -- it is n times livelier and more attractive, even if I still doubt that M is really a natural Schumann player as Horowitz so conspicuously was. And natural or not he is still a great player and this Reconnaissance is haunting and special beyond the ordinary. Faschingsschwank is the last thing he rehearses, and what struck me most was how on the night M turned up the power and volume in the popular tune 5 minutes or so into the first movement -- a really amazing collectors' piece for connoisseurs of his special tone-production. In general he seems more comfortable with it than with Carnaval and parts of it are as near to joyous as anything I have ever heard from this ultra-serious artist. The rest is Chopin Debussy and Mompou (the Mompou being the Cancion that M used to trot out now and again).

The Debussy Images are not terribly different from his studio recording, and music-lovers new to M's Debussy should not expect anything in the manner of Gieseking or Richter. This Debussy is big in tone, highly coloured, individual certainly but memorable in the extreme. Of Chopin we have the Fminor Fantasy, the G minor

Ballade and a waltz that I'm not sure I have ever heard before --it's not in my sets of the waltzes by Rubinstein and Lipatti. M's

playing of the waltz is simply wonderful, his G minor Ballade is not likely to be contentious -- rhapsodic and romantic but basically mainstream and I can't recall liking any other interpreter so well in this piece. I feel the same way about M's F minor Fantasy but I know that this is probably much more a personal view. The opening march is decidedly fast, the big tune is very inflected and there is a great deal of rubato. I swallow it whole, but some may well disagree. What is surely beyond disagreement is the whole feel of an utterly special occasion that marks this recital."

Michelangeli searches for the Unknown

scarecrow | Chicago, Illinois United States | 10/09/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The Schumann Carnaval is gloriously rendered as the distubed genius, listening to the entire work is an exercise, a voyage in another realm.It is music we know Vivos,Waltzes,textures,butterflys,yet not really. This work can be painfully tedious,Schumann's voicings of chords and gestures can come to hover around a one-dimensionality,and Michelangeli knows this, he is with Schumann's disturbed out-of-place world, a world of fantasy perhaps. The frivolity, the lightness of this music is only a surface phenomenon,there are "wrong" notes throw in with sforzando emphasis,that halts the ongoing momentum,and mars the texture.Our thinking is halted as well,gaity is postponed. The hommage to Chopin for instance in A-flat major,rolling broken chords, is not Chopin at all,the real Chopin comes a few pieces after, like Chopin was placed on hold to hover someplace in the future. Schumann's melodic sense of the Chopin's use of the dissonant tones he loves to land on, in the Waltzes and Nocturnes in particular is not part of Schumann's melodic conceptual world,like an E-natural in A-flat major.So Schumann forces the musical argument,making these wrongful moments indeed even uglier.There is nothing festive in Schumann's Waltz time,it is a denial of the contentment of the world. This is not a pleasant situation. Michelangeli brings this demonic spirit to the Carnaval and makes this deeply compelling music,you forever sense his conviction to this music.The Debussy as well searches for the phantasmagorical,the poetry in Debussy, Michelangeli,like Cortot I imagine, looked for the oddness,the un-normal,the trancendent aspects of the music. Which is why he plays Scarlatti so beautifully and clean and pristine for there was not the un-normal there,or it was hidden under the simplicity of direct contrapuntal releifs. Like sculptural cathedral objects hauntingly emitting themselves eternally from the safe confines of the granite block.This is the music which confirms all the myths which had surrounded Michelangeli's career,his overgrown conceit,and mysteries,this disc confirms all the unbelievers to be wrong, Michelangeli searches for the unknown in this music."

Wouldn't want to be without it!

SwissDave | Switzerland | 11/13/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Recently someone asked me what my favourite live piano recitals are. Rattling away I reached four before I had to start thinking: Rubinstein in Moscow in 1964. Horowitz's 1965 and Bolet's 1974 Carnegie recitals. Michelangeli in London in 1957 (this one). Of course there are many more, including more recent ones (all is not lost) such as Sokolov in Paris in 2002 and Shukov in Munich in 1993. There's a number on BBC Legends worth looking at. Even so, I found it telling which came to my mind immediately.



Also, one cannot emphasize it enough: what you get here isn't only some of the finest Schumann (I am undecided which 1957 Faschingsschwank I like better, this or the BBC radio broadcast on DG, but together they're the finest I know, and I mean including Richter's and Arrau's) and especially Debussy playing you'll ever hear, but know it is in very well-recorded, full-bodied mono that needs absolutely no apology. Michelangeli at his best in great quality sound is, as his fans know all too well, exceedingly rare.



Greetings from Switzerland, David."