"His concert activities gradually diminished, but his fame had now taken on the proportions of a myth and each time he performed in public it was an event that made the headlines."

​

1975

​

​Angelo Fabbrini, Michelangeli's trusted piano technician, worked with him from 1975 to 1990.

 

In 1975 and 1976 Michelangeli limited his concert performances outside Italy, cancelling most concerts at the last minute and thus being criticised and accused of "snobbery", but Michelangeli had already told the journalist Silvio Bertoldi a few years earlier: "They say I want to be a star, that I don't keep my commitments, but the truth is that I only play when I feel good and there is no contract in the world that could force me to perform. If I don't feel good, I can't give the best of myself that I would really like to: the audience has a right to the best. If I don't play when I'm not feeling good, it's only out of respect for the audience. I'm not made of iron. I suffered years due to inflammation of the nerves in my right hand, which limited me for several years. I suffered from lung attacks, but when I had to, I played even with a fever. I played every day in Milan while my father was dying in Brescia. How can anyone call that “starry mannerisms”?”

 

Since the pianist left Italy, he has escaped the media’s attention and no one knows where he is or how to contact him, as if he refuses to meet anyone. Silvio Bertoldi continues his essay on Michelangeli by quoting some of his sentences: “Playing is not just a profession, but a way of life, for which it is not enough to have willpower and natural talent. Above all, a great spirit of sacrifice is needed. Being a musician does not mean dressing up to dress up as a penguin and present yourself to an applauding audience, but it is something that goes beyond all that and requires continuous effort and monstrous work. Otherwise, one will not become a musician, but a well-inflated bubble for a few applauses that will last only a few seasons, a sparkler that will go out in the dark.”

Corriere della Sera, 20. 8. 1976, Silvio Bertoldi, as recorded by Katia Vendrame

 

Evidence of this artist’s behaviour can be found in the events at a concert in Paris in 1978: at this performance he played Ballades op. 10 by the German composer Johannes Brahms, which accompanied him in almost all concerts in those years, and Beethoven’s third sonata. Then, before he got to Andante spianato and grande Polonaise brillante by Fryderyk Chopin, he left the concert because he was cold.

Corriere della Sera, 13. 11. 1978; Katia Vendrame

​

​

January 1975: Johannes Church, Thun, Switzerland (Studio Recordings | Stereo)

– EMI –

·    Schumann: Carnaval (Scènes Mignonnes sur Quatre Notes), Op.9

➢ ∞ | (1975-01-15to21) | ø | M

– Warner 0 825646 154883

– EMI Italiana 7243 5 67041 2

·    Schumann: Album for the Young, Op.68

o  37. Sailor’s Song

o  38. Wintertime I

o  39. Wintertime II

​

January 1975: Johannes Church, Thun, Switzerland (Studio Recordings | Stereo)

– EMI –

·    Haydn: Piano Concerto No.11 in D major, Hob.XVIII:11

·    Haydn: Piano Concerto No.4 in G major, Hob.XVIII:4

– Edmond de Stoutz / Züricher Kammerorchester

​

Peter Andry, Inside the Recording Studio (2008), fills in some background to the recordings for EMI.  Attolico was ABM's legal adviser in Switzerland.  'For the best part of a day I found myself in a dingy hotel in Lugano with ABM and Attolico, who turned out to be an unpleasant little man.  Michelangeli did all the talking when he was not sucking his teeth.  I kept up as well as I could with my fragile grasp of the Italian language using such expressions as presto, non abiamo, impossibile, spianato, stretto, and minestrone at what I thought to be judicious moments. The discussions went on and on. The discussions went on and on. We haggled over money, royalties, living expenses, rail fares, and other such sordid details. Then there was the question of repertoire. Michelangeli favoured the Haydn concertos, not the most commercial of sales prospects. There seemed to be no end to the problems that confronted us. Whenever we resolved one, Michelangeli managed to bring up another. Finally, late in the afternoon, it all became too much for me. Getting up from my chair in desperation and almost shouting, I declared, "Maestro! Io non posso fare di più!" Astounded at my sudden fluency, he looked up at me. His habitual scowl suddenly cleared from his face. "Va bene," he said, and we shook hands. He signed the contract and I got out of there as quickly as I could. It was the first and last contract I ever managed to negotiate in Italian.

​

Some weeks later in London, on my return from a business trip to New York, I was astonished to learn that Michelangeli had just signed a contract with the American record company CBS supposedly involving composer and conductor Pierre Boulez. I exploded and rang Karajan's lawyer in Zurich, with whom I had become quite friendly. He was a suave, extremely adroit Swiss practitioner, as one might expect, and knew all the tricks of his trade. I related to him the whole story. “Leave it to me,” he said. He called me within twenty-four hours. He explained that Michelangeli was living in Switzerland illegally and that he had warned Michelangeli that unless he tore up his new contract with our competitors, he would be chucked out pronto. Michelangeli backed down, honoured our contract and duly recorded the Haydn concertos, which proved quite successful, and a solo Schumann recital including Carnaval, but that was all he delivered.

​

The real problem was that Michelangeli simply did not like making records and found the whole process a bore. He was the kind of musician who would let the bills accumulate on the spike until he had to make a few records to pay them off. Musically, of course, he was a genius who was blessed with all God's gifts, including an enviable elegance, but he had no intention of letting the mundane requirements of standard business practice interfere with his chosen lifestyle. 

 

Peter Andry (1927-2010) was born in Hamburg, but brought up in Australia; he read music at Melbourne University.  'Affable, conscientious and hard-working, he used his patrician charm to cultivate distinguished, high-maintenance, frequently tyrannical artists, creating in the process one of the finest catalogues in recording history.' 

Barry Millington, The Guardian

​

March 17, 1975: Bern, Switzerland (Radio Broadcast | AAC192)
 

·    Beethoven: Piano Sonata No.12 in A-flat major, Op.26

·    Schubert: Piano Sonata No.4 in A minor, D.537 (Op.164)
 

·    Debussy: Hommage à Rameau (Images, Book I No.2)

·    Debussy: Reflets dans l’eau (Images, Book I No.1)

·    Debussy: Cloches à travers les feuilles (Images, Book II No.1)

​​

 The Recording That Never Was 

Michelangeli & Kleiber - 'this nitroglycerin mixture', about to record the "Emperor" by "the Dutch Composer', as AMB called him, referring to Beethoven's ancestry [Cord Garben, who reports almost unbelievable shenanigans about one piano, a Bechstein: 'The distances between the ebony sections were too narrow for the Maestro's strong fingers to find room', and he required all the black keys be sanded laterally to create more space between them for the his fingers. This actually happened the following night, and even before the average citizen had gone to get his breakfast rolls, the Maestro's instrument
was transported to the private broadcaster "Freies Berlin" for the recording, due to begin began at 10 a.m.  Which it didn't!... See p.53ff.]

 

Since 1973, months and months of work had gone on to connect Kleiber and ABM for a recording of Beethoven's Emperor with the Berlin Radio SO.  The work took place in Sender Fries Berlin, Haus des Rundfunks, Masurenallee.   On 16 December 1975, Michelangeli joined the orchestra for a 2-5pm session; the final session ran from 2-5 in the 17th.  All rehearsals were recorded (producer Cord Garben), as was the piano test and the first movement with piano.  The team stayed at Berlin's Hotel Schweizer Hof. Late on the night before the recording was due to take place, Kleiber summoned Garben.  He made an astonishing demand: he wanted the contents of his pocket score, replete with red marking - towards an adventuresome, refreshing and new performance of the work - , to be entered in the players' parts overnight before 10:00am.  Garben was appalled but managed to get a team together.  When Michelangeli saw the score in the morning, his face darkened: this was nothing like what they had done two years earlier.  Very quickly there was no communication between the two.  AMB began consulting directly with the concertmasters Koji Toyoda and Hans Maile and principal cellist Georg Donderer.  This went on all day.  Ettore Gracis had once told Kleiber that there was nothing conspiratorial, this was just how Michelangeli worked. The second day finished miserably and then next morning. Garben learned that the conductor had checked out of his hotel overnight.  Two decades later, Kleiber admitted to Garben that rethink might have been at fault.​

Charles Barber, Corresponding with Carlos: a biography of Carlos Kleiber
 

Perio Rattalino mentions that there is also a recording of the performance fo Cesar Franck's Symphonic Vsriations made on 13 May, 1975, in Zurich under Erich Leinsdorf: 'This recording, made without the consent of the heirs, cannot be released for another fifty years.'

 

Thursday 29 May, 1975, Municipal House – Smetana Hall, Prague

Josef Boháč: Fragment for a large symphony orchestra
Robert Schumann: Concerto in A minor for piano and orchestra, Op. 54
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Concerto in B flat major for piano and orchestra, Ks 450
Leoš Janáček: Symfonietta

​

Excitement in Vienna

​

Saturday, 31 May 1975, Rudolfinum – Dvořák Hall, Prague

Ludwig van Beethoven: Sonata in A flat major, Op. 26
Franz Schubert: Sonata in A minor, Op. 164
Fryderyk Chopin: Sonata in B flat minor, Op. 35
Maurice Ravel: Gaspard de la nuit (Kašpar noci)

​​

11 June, 1975: Konzerthaus (Lothringerstraße 20), Vienna, Austria

– Vienna Festival –

·    Schumann: Piano Concerto in A minor, Op.54

– Moshe Atzmon / Vienna Symphony Orchestra (Wiener Symphoniker)

The concert began with Johann Strauss II, "Accelerationen", Walzer op. 234 and ended with Prokofiev's "Romeo und Julia", Suite Nr. 2 op. 64b and Ravel's "La Valse".

​

Saturday, 14 June, 1975, Kozerthaus, Vienna Festival: Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 15 in B-flat, K 450.

Vienna Symphony Orchestra/ Moshe Atzmon

Also Beethoven, Symphonie Nr. 4 B-Dur op. 60 (in the first half) and after the concerto, Johann Strauss II, "Bei uns z'Haus", Walzer op. 361

​

Gianni Gori was there for Il Piccolo di Trieste (18 June): 

Beneath the stately "Jugendstil" atmosphere of the Konzerthaus's main hall, the temperature of anticipation and success skyrocketed. Aficionados recalled that over the past twenty years, Michelangeli had given only recitals in Vienna, and that his participation in a symphony concert was therefore eagerly anticipated. Some too much, some not at all! We think of the last time Michelangeli played in Italy, and how often we will have the opportunity to hear him again, with or without an orchestra. Meanwhile, anyone who wants to hear the pianist from Brescia must chase him abroad, along the most famous musical routes.

​

Of course, the golden and enigmatic idol of the evening was Arturo Benedetto Michelangeli. The applause that greeted his appearance was so insistent that it forced him to smile. And that says it all! But here they know him and know that drawing a slight curl of his lips, little more than a benevolent grimace under the curtain of hair and in that imperturbable mask, or at most expressive of a great desire to be left alone, they know it's an exceptional success.

​

To say that success corresponded to a model interpretation would be too much; but I confess that seeing Michelangeli's hands on the keyboard again, those wax fingers that seem immobile and "thinking," like the offshoots of so many ideas materialised in sound, is always a thrill. In Schumann's Concerto in A minor, Op. 54, his approach to the initial "Allegro," more submissive or resentful than "affectionate," can also disappoint (... but) for him, imagination and form are welded together in the reflective progression of the concerto, reaching their peak in the "Allegro vivace." Here we find the superior "clarity" of the great interpreter, exalted by a diaphanous sound that is still one of the most beautiful in the world - the overwhelming sound that caused the crowd to hold him on the podium in the great hall for a long time. When they were already in despair, evacuating for the interval, Michelangeli stopped everyone in their tracks with a pearly unscheduled encore.

 

Mozart composed the concerto for performance at a series of concerts at the Vienna venues of the Trattnerhof and the Burgtheater in the first quarter of 1784, where he was himself the soloist in March 1784. In a letter to his father Leopold, Mozart compared this concerto with the 16th concerto in D: "I consider them both to be concertos which make one sweat; but the B flat one beats the one in D for difficulty."

Alexander Arsov has written enthusiastically on YouTube: 'ABM just about owned that concerto. Nobody, absolutely nobody else has ever brought to that work the same combination of dazzling virtuosity and trenchant but stylish musicianship.'

​

Massive publicity, followed by massive cancellations, preceded a scheduled tour of North America in 1977, where he was to play in New York, Chicago, Toronto, Miami, Montreal, Dallas, Cleveland, Washington and Los Angeles. Though by then his duties to Michelangeli were already history, Leiser had no regrets. "He changed managers like he changed shirts. In spite of the obstacles I was faced with as his agent, it was a great experience and a privilege to have known him. He could be the devil incarnate at times, but he was also an angel: soft spoken, charming and generous. But it was always drama with him…" (John Bell Young)

​

in Karl Aage Rasmussen's biography of Sviatoslav Richter, he reports that when Pollini cancelled his Grange de Meslay Festival, Tours (France) recital, Richter managed to engage the young Hungarian Zoltán Kocsis.  Kocsis performed a few days afetr Michelangeli, and Richetr remarked to the Hungarian poet János Pilinszky: "Michelangeli is certainly the best pianist of our time,but kocsis is already a greater artist.' 

​​

1976

​ 

'To our great surprise, after just a few weeks [after the "Emperor' fiasco], the telexes came alive, transmitting the latest repertoire proposals and the contractual terms. They did not come from Lugano, but from distant Rome, where ABM's lawyer, Giuseppe Attolico, was resident. Until the battle for the signing of a new contract entered the final phase,
only the President of the DG, Roland Kommerell, communicated with the lawyer.
 

ABM was seriously intending to record a series of Beethoven's first and last sonatas.
Regrettably, the Sonata Op. 111, for which I had personally placed great hopes, had already been promised to Maurizio Pollini.  Another project included Franz Schubert's Sonata in G major and the two posthumous Sonatas in A minor and B-flat major.'  [Cord Garben]

​

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli was to return to the stage: 'He will give a recital on 12 August [1976] in Menton as part of the twenty-seventh International Chamber Music Festival, which opened on July 25th by another celebrated pianist, the American Byron Janis, and will conclude on the 28th of next month. During the official festival, thirteen concerts will be held in the churchyard of the Church of San Michele, just under two kilometres from the border with Ventimiglia.

​

(Menton/Mentone is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region on the French Riviera, close to the Italian border)

​

(Corriere 30 July 1976) But on 11 August, the newspaper announced: 'Disappointment awaits fans of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli who were preparing to applaud him at a recital scheduled in Menton for the evening of Thursday, August 12, as part of the traditional "International Chamber Music Festival," which began at the end of July. The festival's directors announced that the illustrious Italian pianist has withdrawn due to illness. In anticipation of Benedetti Michelangeli's performance, all available seats around the churchyard of San Michele, the festival's venue, had been booked for several days. Dezso Ranki, who performed in Menton at the 1972 edition of the festival, will perform in his place. Ticket prices have been halved compared to those for the Italian pianist's concert.'

​

Silvio Bertoldi (Corriere della Sera, 20. 8. 1976): They'd been waiting for him for years, who knows if he's really indisposed, or if he's having an existential crisis?  He has family homes in Bornato and Calino near Brescia. It's useless to look for him at those addresses. It's useless to look for him even in Lugano where he had retired years ago. They say he lives in Germany. There was a time when to get in touch with him, you had to call a certain secretary-administrator, a German woman from Zürich and she would've passed the request on. I think she said nothing. He remained untraceable, especially for journalists. Three years ago, he certainly went to see a specialist, the director of the orthopaedic and thrombosis clinic at the University Varona, but he didn't speak to anyone about it. A friend hosted him so that he wouldn't have to stay in a hotel, and his presence be noted in the city. It was a supposition that he had pain in his hand, because there were rumours of a car accident, with fractures to his fingers.

​

'Then came the thousands of concerts, the thirty-one years dedicated to teaching without earning a penny, the travels around the world with his famous leather bag where he stashed everything: scores, shirts, money, the old tailcoat he had worn since time immemorial and whose lining he insisted on periodically changing. Poor health, discouragement, the burden of his profession, the bitterness, even the anger of the misunderstood, the secret furies of revenge: perhaps all this nourishes and fuels his existential crisis today. And yet the mystery of the great artist who isolated himself in a sterile legend continues. The mystery of the man also continues.

​

'I think those who knew him remember him as if he were in his happiest years. Moon-like face, thin mustache, he seemed the embodiment of the blue skeptic. Barilli splendidly defined his "face of silence."

He had dark blond hair, strong, slightly stubby hands, so different from what romantic girls once called pianist's hands, imagining them thin and diaphanous. He was a sum of contradictions: he didn't play tennis for fear of accidents and raced at two hundred miles an hour in his Ferrari; he didn't read the newspapers, yet he knew everything about football, about footballers; he was a bear, he seemed grumpy, and you discovered that he really liked Sophia Loren, that he did the housework, that he was a refined gourmet.

​

La scarsa salute, lo scoramento, il peso del mestiere, le amarezze, anche l'ira dell' incompreso, i segreti furori della vendetta: forse tutto questo nutre e alimenta la sua crisi esistenziale d'oggi. E tuttavia il mistero del grande artista che si è isolato in una sterile leggenda continua. Continua anche il mistero dell' uomo.

Penso che chi lo ha conosciuto lo ricordi come se fosse nei suoi anni felici. Viso lunare, baffi sottili, sembrava l'incarnazione dello scettico blu. Barilli, splendidamente, aveva definito la sua «faccia del silenzio». 

​

'He has no friends, he is a restless uprooted person. He has left distant, in his memory, episodes of logical vitality, of an exuberance that made him similar to other men: nocturnal forays through New York in search of a sauce for a special dish, pranks on the faithful tuner Tallone, a grotesquely prophetic phrase he hurled at a swindling innkeeper over a hefty bill: "Tomorrow everything here will burn" (and the next day, fatefully, the place went up in flames), the outbursts of joy with his wife Giuliana. Different times. Back then, people saw him; he wasn't a mysterious ectoplasm. He wore a black turtleneck like Strehler, he was thin, his motionless face seemed made of marble, the adoring young music lovers said he looked like an angel.  Now, what will it be like?'

​

On Christmas Eve, 1976, the South African newspaper had an article on AMB which included this curious statement:

Daar is mense wat vertel dat Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli sy groot vernuf as pianis van die duiwel self ontvang het.

„Jy laat my musiek soveel mooier klink," het Maurice Ravel een keer gesê nadat hy na Michelangeli geluister het. Die pianis was toe maar vyftien jaar oud."

 

There are those who say that Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli received his great talent as a pianist from the devil himself.

"You make my music sound so much more beautiful," Maurice Ravel once said after listening to Michelangeli. The pianist was only fifteen years old at the time."

As Ravel died in 1937, this would have been in 1935 if true.

​​

1977  Sala Nervi, Vatican

​

In 1977, after eleven years of silence in Italy, Michelangeli finally appeared in the Vatican, where he played a concert for the Red Cross. During his stay in the Vatican, he did not agree to any photoshoots or interviews, nor to recordings for the Italian media, exactly as he had decided in 1969. In the papal residence, in the Auditorium Pierluigi Nervi from 1971 (after the first acoustic tests in the hall he declared: "I have never found a hall that is so large and yet has good acoustics"), on a Steinway piano that he brought from Switzerland, Michelangeli played for seven thousand people, among others, Sonata No. 2 by Chopin and Ballade op. 10 by Brahms and the first book of Preludes by Debussy. 

Corriere della Sera, 29. 4. 1977.  [See also box below]

​

April 29, 1977: Aula Nervi, Vatican City State (Radio Broadcast )
 

·    Brahms: Four Ballades, Op.10

·    Chopin: Piano Sonata No.2 in B-flat minor, Op.35
 

·    Debussy: 12 Preludes (Book I)

​

Deutsche Grammophon

 

At the invitation of Deutsche Grammophon, Michelangeli returned to the recording studio in the late ‘70s. The project comprised a series of albums devoted to his core repertoire: music by Debussy, Chopin, Schubert, Beethoven and Brahms. His producer Cord Garben recalls with amusement the session for the Debussy Preludes. "He played the whole program and then asked for the corrections, which he made immediately. That was all! Preparation time in the studio took about three days, especially for mechanical adjustments on his two instruments. He could never decide which one to use. He had no interest in the editing procedure and authorized me to make the edits wherever I wanted them. Once he accepted the hall, he accepted the advice of his engineer." (John Bell Young)

​

When recording Michelangeli was a stickler for privacy. Not only was the studio itself off limits to non-essential personnel, but so was the entire building. With the exception of his producer, an engineer, a technician, a personal assistant and a single record company representative, he refused to allow anyone to get near him. "Even attendance by DG’s chief executives was strictly forbidden," notes Garben.

​

In 1975 he refused to give Deutsche Grammophon permission to issue his recording, with Carlos Kleiber, of the Emperor Concerto. Here Guilini fared better. "The approval of the Emperor [with Giulini]" says Garben, "took place in his jeep while driving over the mountains of Lugano."  Evidently this offered Michelangeli one way of speeding things up. "And he approved the Beethoven 3rd in his home on a cheap radio recorder," protests Garben, "while his expensive equipment stood only five meters away."

​

Mr. J. BISTRITZKY
THE ARTHUR RUBINSTEIN
INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION
SHALOM TOWER, TEL AVIL, ISRAEL

Thank you very much for your phone call of September 19th.
As promised, I officially confirm that Maestro Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli has accepted with great pleasure to serve on the Jury of the Arthur Rubinstein Competition to be held in April 1977.
It is understood that the Maestro will only participate in the last two rounds (10th and 11th, 13th and 14th). We would like to arrive on April 7th and depart on Saturday, April 16th.
I am delighted that you can make a piano available to the Maestro during his stay in Tel Aviv, in a room at the Conservatory or elsewhere, if you prefer. You mentioned a new piano at the Conservatory, and is that correct? I have a great favor to ask of you: Could you reserve for us a gold medal bearing the likeness of Maestro Rubinstein,
similar to the one he gave to Maestro Michelangeli. We will pay you for it when we come. The reason is very simple: there was a robbery in our house in Lugano, and among the stolen items was this medal, and the Maestro is very sad not to have it anymore. Thank you in advance.  (Marie-José Gros Dubois, 21 September 1976)

​

Members of the international jury for April 1977 included: Arthur Rubinstein, Guido Agosti (Italy), Jan Ekier (Poland), Jacques Fevrier (France), Rudolf Firkusny (U.S.A.), Akiko Iguchi (Japan), Nikita Magaloff (Switzerland).  The winner was German pianist Gerhard Oppitz (born 5 February 1953, Frauenau). 

​​

14 June, 1977, Zurich

The concert (Grosser Tonhallesaal) began with a serious affront to the audience: the doors to the hall, even those to the foyer, remained closed until after the official concert opening; the audience had to wait, crowded into the dressing room foyer—an imposition, not least for older concertgoers who found no seating. The concert began about half an hour late; by the time it ended, it was nearly 11:00. We heard Beethoven's C minor Sonata, Op. 111, and, in a modification of the original programme (Beethoven, Sonata, No.28 in A major Op. 101), Brahms's Four Ballades, Op. 10, which Emil Gilels had already played a week earlier, and after the interval, Debussy's Preludes I. The accompanying incidents were soon forgotten: Benedetti Michelangeli has a unique way of reassuring his audience! He plays Beethoven, and especially this difficult, concentrated, spiritualized Opus 111, which invites so many interpretive misunderstandings (even to the point of a "second "Pathetique""), quite unobtrusively, but with absolute precision: observing every performance mark, weighing dynamic markings against each other, masterfully commanding his excellent pianistic craft. Hardly ever has it become clearer to us than in this rhythmically precisely crafted and finely animated interpretation why, in the Arietta between the fourth and fifth variations, Beethoven writes l'istesso tempo, but distinguishes between 6 /ie and wsz in a kind of secret diminution that leads to an extremely charming, almost inner, rhythmic animation.

Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 16 June 1977

 

19 June 1977 was supposed to be a concert in Vienna (after a long absence) with Leif Segerstam: Tchaikovsk'ys first piano concerto (Corriere della Sera, 21 April 1977)​​​​​​