[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

I've added a few more details to the relevant webpage. In 1939 (the year of its foundation) Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli won first prize in the Concours de Genève/Geneva International Music Competition, where he was acclaimed as "a new Liszt" by pianist Alfred Cortot, a member of the judging panel, which was presided over by Ignacy Jan Paderewski.  (Martha Argerich would win in 1957.) The young man from Brescia was awarded 1000 Swiss francs, and an anonymous donor, bowled ov

13 May, 1990: Barbican Hall, London Beethoven: Piano Sonata No.11 in B-flat major, Op.22,  No.32 in C minor, Op.111 Chopin: Scherzo No.1 in B minor, Op.20, Mazurka in B minor, Op.33 No.4, Andante Spianato & Grande Polonaise Brillante, Op.22 ​ David Murray in the Financial Times  (14 March) talked of TWO Michelangelis. 'His Beethoven starter was the mild, piano-friendly little op. 22 Sonata in B-flat,not often heard in public, and scarcely ever like this.  Within a few bars it

Of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli's 1965 tour of Japan (March/April), Antonio Armella dryly observes that "Benedetti Michelangeli- naturally - did nothing to ingratiate himself with his Japanese sponsors/ per ingraziarsi i suoi sponsor giapponesi "! There was big reception at the Italian Embassy in Tokyo, to which Michelangeli had accepted an invitation.  Jacques Leiser, trusted and loyal tuner CesareTallone and ABM were staying at the Hilton Hotel in Tokyo, which was located

Students recall Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli during the Chopin Competition Echo Krakowskie , 26 March 1955 Participants of the Chopin Competition in Kraków Now we begin our journey through the castle, the oldest in Wawel [Royal Castle], the Rotunda of Felix and Adauctus, through a labyrinth of halls and cloisters, all the way to the Throne Room. The guides, who explain everything in Russian, French, German, and English, can't keep up with the dozens of questions. From the ca

'Tall, slim, slightly stooped. He steps onto the stage with a slow, as if weary gait, mopping his damp forehead with his ever-present handkerchief. In 1953, he interrupted his concert work due to a serious illness; his current concerts in Warsaw and Kraków were his first after recovery, each one cost him a great deal of effort, each one was tiring... 'If Benedetti had lived in Paganini's time, he would have been accused of conspiring with Satan. Perhaps burned at the stake, e

A mesmerising moment from Brahms, Ballade No. 4 Op. 10 in B major, Andante con moto: Lugano 1981.  The pianist's hands - feather-like in delicacy - seem barely to press down the keys, while the vibrating inner melody is brought to the fore, Michelangeli all the while savouring the delicious, glinting clashes of harmony.

Hamburg 2021

Financial Times 8 July 2011 Michelangeli confined himself to the G major concerto. How did he influence her during the 18 months she spent with him? “I don’t know. He was around most of the time but he wasn’t interested in us [pupils]. He only gave me four lessons. Later he told an interviewer: ‘I did a lot for that girl.’ When asked what he had done for me, he replied: ‘I taught her the music of silence’.” This is a joke, and we both laugh. She says Michelangeli was generou

Mr Armella's massive book (c.490 pages) on the chronology of ABM has just arrived. Details on my other website on Jorge Bolet (the ABM site is a free one so I cannot upload a photo of one page as a sample, as I'm at my data limit) Jorge Bolet website

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