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[Posted on the 5 January, the offical date of ABM's birth, though he once claimed it was in the first hour of the 6th!] I've recently seen that a new book on the pianist, I concerti di Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli by Antonio Armella was published in December 2025. It retails at around 33 Euros/ £28 on Amazon, where the blurb is: "This unique book reconstructs the concert life of one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century, the great Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, thro

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli gave his first performance of Sonata No. 32 in C minor Op.111 on 29 January 1937 in Brescia. Of a later performance, 'we read in the Popolo di Brescia  by critic Antonio Grassi on December 31, 1937: "Certainly Benedetti's interpretation is flawless, especially in the second part where the artist's power of penetration and translation must struggle against the sublime, but Beethoven would have caressed the head of this boy so bold and so talented,

I was very struck by this detail of ABM's high-handed manner. Cord Garben, a conductor and pianist who doubled as Michelangeli’s record producer for Deutsche Grammophon, was part of Michelangeli’s inner circle. "Musically he was rather easy to handle, but all the things besides were more than complicated," says Garben in lightly accented English. "When the honey he needed for his tea was not the right one, he made a small scandal, catapulting it over the table and complaining

'In 1950 ABM moved to the Bolzano Conservatory, where he taught until 1959, also holding a specialisation course in the castle of Appiano. His presence, however, due to his many concerts and also to his restless character, did not have the continuity that regular teaching required. Interviewed for the catalogue of the 1997 Bolzano exhibition, Vea Carpi, director of the Conservatory whose house – as a child – Michelangeli frequented (her father Giannino was a violinist, her mo

Francesco Ermini Polacci wrote in December 2025: Contrary to what has always been repeated, for example, Benedetti Michelangeli had a wide range of musical knowledge, and such as to belie his supposed unavailability for 20th-century music: few know of his studies of Bartok's Sonata for two pianos and percussion, tackled with Dinu Lipatti, his favourite pianist; and few know of his planned performance of Schönberg's Piano Concerto with Bruno Maderna on the podium. Anyone have

In a review of the book by Carlo Maria Dominici - a book which I have not seen- , Cesare Galla [source in Italian ] writes: 'Evidently, the Calabrian-American boy must have impressed the great international concert pianist... His memories are lucid and precise, painting an image of the Brescian pianist that doesn't always coincide with the mannered one, established through the testimonies of friends and relatives, colleagues, and fans. What's striking are his quirks of char

In December 1968, New York Philharmonic, Carlo Maria Giulini: Mozart: Divertimento No. 11 in D major, K.251; Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K.466; Masonic Funeral Music, K.477 / 479a; Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K.550 Irving Kolodin wrote in  Saturday Review  (28 December 1968):  'A different direction began to assert itself early in the D-minor Concerto, performed with fastidious artistry and superior insight by the orchestra as well as the invincibly facile Michelangeli.

​In 1966, after more than fifteen years, Michelangeli embarks on his third North American tour. On 21 January, 1966, he returned to play in Carnegie Hall for the first time in 15 years. A few days earlier [6 January] his performance of Beethoven’s Emperor with William Steinberg and the New York Philharmonic drew rave reviews, and was captured on tape by a musical bootlegger. (John Bell Young) ​I've added this further report to the relevant web-page. In the  Saturday Review

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli: "The piano is my enemy!" This extract is from an Italian newspaper in March 1987, the month when I heard ABM (for the only time). «Queste sono macchine infernali» Words and life in London of this most reclusive and secretive of musicians, who will give his final concert on Saturday. Michelangeli: "The piano is my enemy". He is staying in the English capital in a small apartment with special curtains. He is accompanied by his faithful secretar

A Polish "Kalendar" of 1956 reviewed the Chopin Competition of the previous year, from which this extract is taken. 'Each of these artists [the adjudicators in the competition] is a greatness in their own right, whether Kentner, Oborin, Levy, or others. But among them, the brilliant Italian pianist Benedetti Michelangeli, a true Michelangelo among pianists, shone with extraordinary brilliance.   Polish reviewers simply lacked words to describe the greatness of this artist. Ap

26 February 1957.  In  The Musical Times (April 1957), the gracious music critic and biographer of Schumann Joan Chissell wrote:  ' When Michelangeli failed to turn up for his B.B.C. recital towards the end of February, there was wide-spread anxiety that his two appearances with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Sir Malcolm Sargent in the Festival Hall might also be cancelled. In the event, he called off his Schumann performance in the second of the two concerts, but made the

In an interview (2021) with Joe Sabia, Alan Walker, Emeritus Professor of Music at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and author of two important and authoritative biographies (of Liszt and of Chopin), said this: "The longer you live and the longer you look back, the more likely it is that you’ll have favourites that the modern generation don’t like or never heard of; so it becomes a generational thing as well. Whenever I’m giving public talks I often point out that fo

Two snippets from an interview with Howard Klein for The New York Times, 16 January 1966 Contempt Michelangeli's repertory is basically romantic, but he has played all the piano music of Schoenberg and Webern's Variations. But for music after the 1950s he has contempt. He suavely mimed an avant-garde pianist at work: the left elbow gracefully smashed into the bass of an imaginary keyboard, followed by the right, then the right index finger twanged a string. This was amplifie

A letter (dated 22 June 1942) from Ildebrando Pizzetti [1880-1968] to the publisher Ricordi:  Vi interesserà sapere, credo, che anche il pianista Benedetti Michelangeli intende studiare ed eseguire i Canti della Stagione Alta. Per lui scriverò due nuove «cadenze». 'You will be interested to know, I believe, that pianist Benedetti Michelangeli also intends to study and perform the Canti della Stagione Alta  (1930). I will write two new "cadenzas" for him.' ​ The concerto was d

Olaszországban feltünt az "uj Liszt Ferenc" Pesti Hírlap 1 September 1940 'The "new Liszt Ferenc" appeared in Italy. At the beginning of the summer, a report appeared in the Pesti Hirlap about the musical events of the festive games in Florence. The writer of the report, Countess Ceruttiné Paulay Erzsi (gróf Ceruttiné Paulay Erzsi, a Hugrarian actress married to Italian ambassador Count Vittorio Cerrutti ) dedicated extremely warm lines to the praise of an 18-year-old Itali

Una cosa che fece andare in visibilio il nostro gruppo fu quando Benedetti Michelangeli fece il pianista nella Fedora di Giordano al Teatro Grande: l'avevano tutto truccato, era bellissimo, ed era bravo, usciva in palcoscenico e suonava divinamente. A me sembrava il giovane Werther.   'One thing that made our group go wild was when Benedetti Michelangeli played the pianist in Giordano's Fedora at the Teatro Grande: they had him all made up, he was beautiful, and he was good

On this day, the birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven [16/17 December], I've found yet another YouTube video upload purporting to be the pianist's performance in Belgrade in 1974 with conductor Zivojin Zdravkovic of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major Op.58. I repeat what Noël [no surname] added to the Slipped Disc website: " It is Maria Tipo. This was a concert from the Belgrade Festival. Also on the programme was Debussy La Mer and Sofoson 1 by the Serbian composer, Br

I came across this passage in Musica (an online Italian music journal), August 27, 2025 'Villa Togni (in Gussago), formerly known as Villa Averoldi, dates back to the late 14th century and remains one of the most significant historic residences in Northern Italy, from its role in the 1426 Conspiracy to conquer Brescia and the Venetian Republic to the years of the Second World War, when the family of composer Camillo Togni hosted the celebrated pianist Arturo Benedetti Michel

Musicologist Piero Rattalino once mentioned that there exists a recording by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli of a performance of César Franck's Symphonic Variations  which was made on 13 May, 1975, in Zürich under conductor Erich Leinsdorf.  "This recording, made without the consent of the heirs, cannot be released for another fifty years." Fifty years are now up. Has anyone heard any news? Who are the heirs? If true, why was this recording embargoed? Curiouser and curiouse

David Hurwitz in December 2024 on Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli's recording of Ravel and Rachmaninoff. He makes an interesting comparison with Carlos Kleiber. ABM recorded Ravel's Concerto in G and Rachmaninoff's Concerto No. 4 for His Master's Voice, with the London Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Ettore Gracis. 7-8 & 10 March, 1957 in London (Abbey Road Studios - Studio No. 1). Peter Andry, Inside the Recording Studio (2008), gives an account of the recording process.