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

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