Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920-1995)
Japan, 1965
13 March, 1965: Tokyo, Japan
Mozart: Piano Concerto No.20 in D minor, K.466
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No.5 in E-flat major, Op.73 (Emperor)
– Jindrich Rohan / Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra
Prince Takamatsu (1905-1987), also known as Prince Nobuhito of Takamatsu, the younger brother of Emperor Hirohito and the former Italian ambassador (1958-1964) Maurilio Coppini were in the audience for a solo recital (14 March?)
9 April, 1965: Bunka Kaikan, Tokyo, Japan
Liszt: Piano Concerto No.1 in E-flat major, S.124
Ravel: Piano Concerto in G major
– Alexander Rumpf / NHK Symphony Orchestra
Other sources give 2 and 3 April as dates for this.
– Liszt also on Aura 2000-2, where it is marked 1965-04-04 and with the Yomiuri SO under Jindrich Rohan. (Christian Johansson)
When he did play, he traveled with two Steinway concert grands and his personal technician, the sartorial Cesare Augusto Tallone (who was also one of Italy’s leading piano makers.) It was a routine not without danger; during a 1965 tour of Japan one of the pianos was accidentally destroyed, smashed to bits by inattentive handlers on an airport tarmac.
Piero Rattalino (From Clementi to Pollini, 339) has a diferent version - if this is the same occasion: 'Once, it is said, he took his piano to Japan, and the piano - slung and lifted by crame out of the belly of the steamship - fell into the waters of Tokyo harbour due to an unfortunate manoeuvre.'
Michelangeli's personal tuner Cesare Tallone, while preparing the piano in Tokyo, met Yamaha technicians who wished to observe his work. President Kawakami ordered a 3/4 grand piano, then came the request to oversee the construction of a 4/4 concert grand based on Tallone's concepts. In 1966, the grand piano, named Tamaki Miura, was born. This is the summary from newspaper and magazine articles, but let's read Cesare in his book:
"In Tokyo, I went early in the morning to the grand theatre to prepare Benedetti Michelangeli's instrument and already found groups of Yamaha technicians waiting for me, eager to follow my work. Invited by the great Japanese company, I went, encouraged by the Maestro himself, to Hamamatzu. Lovingly welcomed by President Kawakami, I received the order for one of my three-quarter grand pianos. When that instrument was found among the examples of all the top-class brands in the test room, the chief technician, Mr. Matzuyama, confided in me that he considered it the best. Consequently, I was called back to Hamamatzu with the primary task of directing the construction of a four-quarter grand concert piano according to my concepts. With the wealth of resources and above all the prestigious performance of the valiant technicians, the instrument was completed within two months. The new competition took place in the Hamamatzu theater. I was alongside the president and Mr. Matzuyama. On On the stage, grand pianos from the world's leading manufacturers were lined up; the last one on the right was the new model I had designed, bearing the initials "Tamaki Miura." The Japanese pianist in charge performed the same music on all the instruments. Before the rehearsal was even over, the audience rose to their feet and shouted "Banzai Tamaki Miura!" (cit., 1972).
I remember my uncle Cesarino enthusiastically describing the kindness of those ancient people who had reached the height of modernity, the extraordinary industriousness and unity of purpose of all the Yamaha workers, the warm welcome, and the almost devout attention to the teachings they had received. Tallone continued a long collaboration as an artistic consultant, and Japanese concert artists frequented Tallone in Milan and on the Island of San Giulio.
In Marco Mascardi's interview, Yamaha is mentioned, "which makes motorcycles... but also pianos, hundreds a day. Tallone is immediately enchanted by this idea: its secrets will be used to make better instruments, but for a huge number of pianists. He spends a year making a grand piano: here they get through it in a week, when they make the most valuable things. And so, this pact is born between Kawakami and Tallone: the Japanese company will know the right share of secrets but will send, in yearly shifts, some of its best craftsmen: and to them will be revealed the rest, which cannot be adapted to mass production. "Of course, they also gave me money... but I also wanted men to teach, more than my technique, the patience of technique. A grand piano is the result of almost magical geometries, it captures gigantic tensions and forces: if they were all able to be released at once, the instrument would explode like a bomb, a volcano, or something similar. Instead, through a balance to be mastered with infinite patience, energy becomes perfect sound, allowing itself to be guided through the paths, the walls arranged like the banks of a river: against which the water may seem to stop, and instead it is from the invisible impact that it draws new strength to continue its rapid descent towards the sea. In the sound box, all this is instantaneous: to master the sound, you must learn to see it...".
Unpublished documents from Cesare Augusto Tallone's Japanese period were recently acquired; we are awaiting their translation.
Cesare Augusto Tallone, Fede e lavoro, memorie di un accordatore, Milano 1971
アルトゥーロ・ベネデッティ・ミケランジェリは、1965年に初めて日本ツアーを行いました。
彼は2台のスタインウェイのグランドピアノを持参しましたが、そのうち1台は壊れてしまいました！
The Italian Mozart
Michelangeli was back in Europe for Mozart concertos in 2 May in Brescia with Ettore Gracis. Franco Abbiati wrote a rather fanciful review in Corriere della Sera (3.5.65):
'An international piano festival centred around the exclusive name of Mozart and equally distributed across the neighbouring towns of Brescia and Bergamo, with the participation of a prestigious ensemble of leading performers. Why?
'Because, they answer in Brescia, the greatest living Mozartian at the piano is ours, his name is Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. The whole world knows that Brescian Benedetti Michelangeli is unsurpassed in translating the Salzburg maestro's most intimate confessions, and even more so should the city that gave birth to such a great pianist exactly a century and a half after hosting Mozart during his wanderings on this side of the Alps.
There are many evenings of Mozart's piano music scheduled in Brescia and to be transferred to Bergamo as well. The inaugural one, in Brescia this evening, tomorrow in Bergamo, was thrilling for the obvious reason that, against the backdrop of the Gasparo da Salò Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Ettore Gracis, it featured Benedetti Michelangeli in the powerful Concerto [No.25] in C, K. 503, and then in the passionate [No.20] K. 463 in D minor. It was not a new Mozart, of course, that appeared tonight like a fairy's hands, so it's not as if we should be talking about a Benedetti Michelangeli occasionally transformed at the keyboard. No. Benedetti Michelangeli is always the "gazelle" that Alberto Savinio spoke of, an artist incapable of Promethean adventures but impressive in his spacial strides, in his acrobatic and yet impeccable leaps of fear, in his low-flying flights, a melancholic poet who suffers a little from a very gentle anemia, a lover of solitude, somewhat similar in his introverted spirit to Stendhal's character Ottavio, who adored his adolescent cousin but did not know, perhaps did not want "to conclude", therefore consumed his adoration in the exercise of a subdued, whispering angelic happiness.
Octave de Malivert, a taciturn but brilliant young man barely out of the École Polytechnique, is attracted to Armance Zohiloff, in the novel Armance (1827)
Erratic images, Savinio's, yet not out of place. We once made them our own, at La Scala, where Arturo had triumphed with the music of Chopin, Schumann, and Brahms. But with this fallow, airy Mozart, almost a spring breeze to which the flowers of the Po Valley must bow, they become pertinent and illuminating, perhaps more than any critical-aesthetic treatment. Since the antelope is sensitive, with large eyes and hollow lyre-shaped horns, it well translates the ephebic elegance and the emotional, suspicious reserve of those who convert the sounds of the piano into the airiness of the flute, the pearly notes of the harp, the crystalline gleams of mirages on the boundless clearings.
While the Stendhal hero, with his resolute yet elusive psychodynamic reliefs, equally well reflects the luminous yet wavering confessions of Mozart's Brescian interpreter: like his young cousin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, adored like an abandonment that lets the follies blaze and immediately die, lusted after with a tenderness that puts the lingering flames of desire to its satisfaction, recreated and remodeled by a suitor, like Benedetti Michelangeli, who plays the piano in the same way that Stendhal's Ottavio saw himself living in purity,
The success is indescribable, completed by the fervent welcome to the performance of the symphony K. 181 in D and the serenade K. 525 in G, both animated by the decisive and presenseful gesture of the conductor Gracis. At the end of the concert we left a part of the immense audience from Brescia and the surrounding area still persisting in their acclamations for the illustrious Mozart pianist.
Franco Abbiati [translation needs improvement but you get the gist]
In 1965, with Nicola Filiberto di Matteo and Giuseppe Boccanegra, Benedetti Michelangeli founded the BDM record label in Bologna, for which he recorded Beethoven's Sonata Op. 111 and some sonatas by Scarlatti and Galuppi (later released by Decca). In Berlin, his last concerts with Herbert von Karajan.
Tuesday, 8 June 1965, Royal Festival Hall, London: recital. Bach-Busoni, Chaconne, Beethoven, Sonata in C mahor Op.2/3, Debussy Children's Corner & Images I/II.
Thursday 17 June, 1965: Royal Festival Hall, London
Grieg: Piano Concerto in A minor, Op.16 (also Hindemith's Music for Strings and Brass and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.6 in B minor, Pathétique)
– Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos / New Philharmonia Orchestra
Issued on BBC Legends BBCL 4043-2
'This is a legendary performance of the Grieg. To many of us the best performance ever recorded. It is, without doubt, the version to buy. It stands skyscrapers above its nearest rivals. There are no flaws, no uncertainties just mind-boggling magic. And he makes this concerto into a very very powerful piece contradicting those performances that wallow and drag out sentimentality in nauseating pastel shades.' (David Wright).
Time Magazine, 9 July 1965 (Champs-Elysées recital) reporting on a recital of Tuesday 22 June:
'A perfectionist with a penchant for turtleneck pullovers and gold-tipped Turkish cigarettes, Michelangeli has made only a few recordings because he has “never quite been satisfied with the quality of the sound.” On tour he travels with his own Steinway (“Can you imagine Oistrakh playing with Stern’s violin?”) and personal piano tuner, 71-year-old Cesare Augustus Tallone. With a surgeon’s knowledge of the piano’s inner workings, Michelangeli treats his Steinway like a high-strung child, recently relinquished it to be overhauled, explaining: “It’s still too young and hasn’t been broken in yet.” For the Paris concert, Tallone scoured the city for days to find a substitute piano, then spent 20 hours preparing it for the master’s hands—and feet. “The pedals are like my lungs,” explains Michelangeli. “Three notes with the right pedal work can become another world.”'
Saturday, 7 August, 1965: Mozarteum, Salzburg, Austria; 9:00 pm,
Stiftung Mozarteum – Grosser Saal: third recital (but seems to be his only one there?)
– Salzburg Festival
Johann Sebastian Bach / Ferruccio Busoni: Chaconne in D minor
Ludwig van Beethoven: Sonata No. 3 in C major, Op. 2 No. 3
...
Claude Debussy: Reflets dans l´eau from Images I, L 110 No. 1
Hommage à Rameau from Image I, L 110 No. 2
Mouvement from Images I, L 110 No. 3
Cloches à travers les feuilles from Images II, L 111 No. 1
Et la lune descend sur le temps qui fût from Images II, L 111 No. 2
Poissons d'or from Images II, L 111 No. 3
Fryderyk Chopin
Berceuse in D flat major, Op. 57
Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31
'The release from Orfeo, in their Salzburger Festspieldokumente series, offers the first half of Michelangeli’s sole appearance at the Salzburg Festival. As for the second half - for some reason - the Italian pianist withheld permission for it to be broadcast or recorded.
'The then 45-year-old pianist, who was known for canceling his concerts at short notice or abandoning them due to minor disruptions, was irritated this time by the applause after the first movement of the Beethoven sonata. Among Michelangeli connoisseurs, it is therefore almost a miracle that the "Divino Arturo" continued his performance after a brief pause. However, the perfectionist, who always travelled with his own grand piano and piano tuner, forbade both further broadcasts of the concert and further recordings during the subsequent intermission.' Dirk Wagner, Süddeutsche Zeitung (11.1 2018)
Berlin, November 1965
Der Speigel, 2 November 1965
Bim-bam-bum. A blackbird sat at the window and whistled. Motifs from Beethoven's Sonata Opus 111 in C minor. Its teacher: the Italian pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, 45. The blackbird's art was the result of long listening; for the bird usually flew by when the artist practised the two Beethoven movements (according to Thomas Mann, the most important piano sonata) in his house in Brescia – so Michelangeli recounted. He practised for almost ten years. This week he is playing Opus 111 in front of people. The Beethoven Sonata is the centrepiece of a piano recital at the Berlin Philharmonie, where the Italian will also appear as soloist in two Karajan concerts – Michelangeli's first guest appearance in Germany after the war. (Robert Schumann’s op 54 was the piano concerto Karajan performed most often – 32 times; on Friday/Saturday, 5/6 November 1965 this was with ABM, along with Anton Webern's Five Movements, Op. 5 and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.5 in E minor Op.64.)
For once, the pianist is not performing on his own grand piano, which he usually travels with on tour (Michelangeli: "Nobody asks Oistrakh to play Isaac Stern's violin"); however, he has his alternative, the Steinway, tuned by his confidant, Cesare Augustus Tallone, who has travelled to Berlin especially for the occasion.
The fact that Benedetti Michelangeli, highly regarded in professional circles as a performing genius, has rarely appeared in concert halls over the past 15 years is explained by him, at times, by a mysterious illness, at others, by a lack of motivation, or by his constant practice on Beethoven's Opus 111. But despite his stated intention to avoid the "detestable world of managers, journalists, and the public," the arrogantly individualistic instrumentalist, always dressed in a turtleneck sweater, repeatedly announced concert tours. When all the tickets were sold, he cancelled again. "He is," wrote Time after a cancelled American guest appearance, "like a big fish you sometimes see, but never catch."
When a concert agent, such as the Parisian celebrity impresario Jacques Leiser, finally makes the catch and presents a relaxed Michelangeli to the audience, "then he is unsurpassed by any pianist in the world; he is even more powerful and younger than Arthur Rubinstein, even more noble and stylistically assured than Claudio Arrau, even more rhythmically intelligent than Friedrich Gulda, and certainly as technically perfect as Vladimir Horowitz," as piano critic Joachim Kaiser wrote after a Michelangeli concert during the 1965 Salzburg Festival.
The dazzling Italian's performances are marred, however, when the master plays in a winter coat or sports jacket or, in order to arrive on time for a rendezvous, thunders through a programme of Beethoven, Schumann, and Brahms at a forced tempo – works he has meticulously rehearsed and mastered for years.
Unlike his easily learned competitors Sviatoslav Richter and Claudio Arrau, who have almost the entire piano repertoire in their heads and fingers, Michelangeli is content with a selection of Ravel, Brahms, Chopin, Schumann, Beethoven, Mozart, and Scarlatti. "One can only rave about his Scarlatti sonatas," wrote the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Michelangeli once immersed himself in playing Scarlatti, which is difficult for most other pianists, in a cell. He had entered the Franciscan monastery of La Verna, south of Florence, when his father wanted to push him out of his pianist apprenticeship and into a diplomatic career. After a year of monastic abstinence, he climbed from the choir stalls
into the seat of a Lancia sports car and drove back into the secular world at 220 kilometres per hour. A Ferrari racing car, there Michelangeli, he once reached a top speed of "really 297 km per hour."
Between car races, he played the organ in churches, often for a fee. Only when the athletic artist returned home from military service – he piloted an airplane and climbed as an Alpine climber – did he overcome his last inhibitions about the piano. Michelangeli: "For a long time, it was too much of a bam-bam-bum for me." His career began.
The record industry, however, was not allowed to hold Michelangeli's rise to power. The artist, dissatisfied with the playback quality of his recordings and disappointed with the fees, recorded only four LPs* in the last 20 years. Michelangeli: "In the future, I'll only go into the studio after payment."
Ferrara
Sunday 14 November 1965, Teatro Comunale, Ferrara, 9:15pm. Orchestra of Gasparo da Salò and Ettore Gracis. A Steinway model D, N387500 had been purchased by the Municipality of Ferrara in 1964 and "it heard on its keys, and never forgot it, the touch of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. The grand piano still remembers the 'stage fright' of that November 14, 1965 ( after all, it was its debut … ) . What an evening that was: all Mozart's music making every string vibrate through the maestro's hands … '" (Sixty years on, the piano was restored by the PianoTeam Italia consortium and played by Leonora Armellini in April 2025)
D. Kern Holoman notes that Michelangeli was the first to be paid 10,000 francs by the Société des Concerts, Paris for his concert of 5 December 1965. (Is this date correct, or does the fee refer to the Janaury 1965 recital?)