Section II

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The genius born a hundred years ago eluded, lied, and denied himself, even to himself. He had simply taken at his word a maxim of the Desert Fathers: "One must always flee, always remain silent, and in many cases play the fool."

The documentary La montagna di Ciro (2019, 85 mins), by Andrea Andreotti, tells the life story of Arturo Bendetti Michelangeli, legendary pianist and undisputed master of oddities.
Abm's life was a mixture of silence and pursuits. He avoided the public, whom he loved, and cultivated a contemplative dimension that didn't prevent him from admiring the thrill of driving at breakneck speeds.
A hundred years after his birth, no one has yet fully grasped the personality of a genius who told a lot of lies. He claimed to be a descendant of Jacopone da Todi and to have run the Mille Miglia several times.

Bruno Giurato, Domani (12 November 2020)

 

A 1973 article headed ‘The elusive maestro plays at last’ noted that since he won the Geneva Competition in 1939 his London appearances could be counted on one’s fingers, and that the last three announced had all been cancelled, the last because his piano had been exposed to the elements at Hamburg docks. The article fuelled the Michelangeli myth and mystique by stating that he was said to be descended from St Francis of Assisi and had spent a year in a Franciscan monastery, and by repeating the fact that he was a pilot, racing car driver and skier, that he could build a grand piano and had his own recording studio.

Joanathan Summers

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According to the testimony of Japanese piano technician Teruhisa Murakami , the piano in Michelangeli's home was out of tune, but he continued to practise without worrying. (I've often thought this might be the case!)

Conductor Serge Celibidache, known for his sharp tongue toward other musicians , was almost the only one who consistently called him a "genius." These two unique musicians had excellent chemistry and performed together frequently, but following the uproar that followed their 1980 visit to Japan, Michelangeli developed a grudge against Japan and demanded that the three Japanese musicians then enrolled in the Munich Philharmonic be removed from the concert lineup. Celibidache refused, triggering a temporary hiatus between the two. Their relationship was restored in 1992, when the pair performed Ravel and Schumann concertos together. At Celibidache's urging, Michelangeli returned to Japan, but in an interview just before the tour, Celibidache revealed a small detail about Michelangeli's personal life, enraging Michelangeli. The two performed together for the last time when they performed Schumann's Piano Concerto during their Japan tour. [Japanese Wikipedia unsourced; but backed up by Klaus Umbach's biography of the conductor]

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In 1966, deeply moved by an Arturo Michelangeli concert in Tokyo, the Yamaha tuner was granted a long leave of absence to live for a while in Italy. There he met the famous pianist, who entrusted him with the six instruments he owned and, fascinated by his fingering, made him work. In 1967, the magician of the Orient, as the Italian press already nicknamed him, was appointed official tuner of the Menton Festival.

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'I joined Yamaha (then known as Nippon Musical Instrument Manufacturing Co., Ltd.) in 1948. My first posting as a piano tuner was in Hokkaido. The tuners who were older than me were all much older and had a prewar background, so they took me under their wing, saying, "It's been a while since we've had a young person here." I traveled all over Hokkaido, from Obihiro to Sapporo.  After five years in Hokkaido, I was transferred to Tokyo.   In 1965, Michelangeli was coming to Japan for the first time, so I lined up all night to get tickets to his recital. I was blown away. His private concert grand piano was airlifted to Japan, accompanied by his personal tuner, Tarone. The first Scarlatti piece he played and the next Beethoven piece produced completely different tones, as if they'd been swapped. I was simply amazed. 

 

'In 1966, I went to Italy and began my life there, staying with Tarone. Speaking of language, Italian was close to the Roman alphabet, which was helpful. I could write what Italians said in Roman letters on the palm of my hand and later look it up in a dictionary.
　Fortunately, I soon had the opportunity to meet Michelangeli, who asked me to tune the piano at his villa. Then, as soon as I returned, he asked me to accompany him to a concert in Lisbon. I left with just one bag, and he said, "That's all you've got? You're on a concert tour!" (laughs) From then on, I spent my days traveling all over the world. What was supposed to be a three-month business trip turned into a year, and before I knew it, four years had passed.' 

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Angelo Fabbrini was Michelangeli's trusted piano technician, working with him from 1975 to 1990, according to Gramophone. 

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The Boston Musical Intelligencer (28 April 2010): 

Maurizio Pollini’s touring Hamburg Steinway-Fabbrini concert grand exhibits  exceptionally ravishing tonal and technical characteristics. The fact that this is a piano well outside our modern norm begs a number of questions, among which is, “Why don’t we regularly hear instruments of this subtlety and beauty?”

But first, what goes into the production of a Hamburg Steinway-Fabbrini concert grand? Italian piano technician and entrepreneur Angelo Fabbrini, from Pescara, Abruzzo, purchases new Steinways from that firm’s celebrated Hamburg atelier and subjects them to minute technical fine-tuning, replaces or substantially rebuilds numerous crucial action components, and reworks the interaction between strings, bridges, and soundboard. The sound of the rebuilt instruments reminds one of the finest surviving pre-1912 Blüthner concert grands (from Leipzig) and of 19th-century concert instruments by Mason & Hamlin, the 19th-century Boston firm whose pianos were, by a comfortable margin, the highest-priced in this country.

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Angelo Fabbrini, Pietro Marincola
La valigetta dell’accordatore
La ricerca del suono perduto
Biblioteca Passigli

2022, pp 160​

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From Italian literary culture, he often mentioned, according to the testimony of his students, Dante (1265-1321) and D’Annunzio (1863-1938): two “sacred” figures of literature.

From the Italian musical culture, Michelangeli was close to composers of the past, such as Scarlatti, Tomeoni, Galuppi, whose compositions were often part of his concert programs. He also devoted himself to the interpretation of compositions by contemporary Italian composers, especially at the beginning of his career: in the 1940s and 1950s he played, for example, compositions by Peragalli, Ghedini or Respighi at concerts.
However, Michelangeli cannot be considered part of any tradition of the Italian piano school: his study in Brescia or Milan was only short-lived and a long-term relationship or inspiration from an Italian pianist probably did not exist.

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We know ABM had a playful side. He certainly did. Camilla Cederna recounts that during the advanced training courses in which he taught, he often challenged the students to arm wrestling in the evenings (always winning) and played pranks on the newcomers, dressing up as a ghost. I was told that—in Bergamo for a seminar—he had been assigned a small monastic room with a single bed. And, after spending the whole day with the students, at night he would wander around all the taverns in upper Bergamo, drinking wine and chatting with the patrons.

(Bruno Guirato)

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«Sembra che abbia lasciato in giro solo vedove. Vedove maschi e vedove femmine. Non è mai definito in modo laico da chi lo ha conosciuto, ma sempre con lacrime e sospiri»

 

"It seems he left only widows lying around. Male widows and female widows. He's never described in a secular way by those who knew him, but always with tears and sighs," says Pier Carlo Orizio, artistic director of the Brescia and Bergamo International Piano Festival. Pier Carlo is the son of Agostino, conductor, founder of the Festival, and the city's musical soul, and only glimpsed Benedetti Michelangeli as a child; he remembers his Lamborghini Miura parked in the streets near the Teatro Grande. Apparently, the traffic police once fined him, provoking anger and the cancellation of the concert. Someone went to pay the fine secretly and then told the maestro that the police, having learned it was him, had cancelled the fine. The concert was rescheduled.

(Bruno Guirato)

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After the most ferocious arguments about the tuning and action of the piano, Fabbrini, reduced to exasperation, would say, "I'm leaving." Then Michelangeli would sit at the piano, play a piece—Fabbrini doesn't know what it was—and stop him at the door. A snake charmer.

(Bruno Guirato)

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Paolo Mettel recounts that he once showed up at the pianist's house in Pura, 10 minutes late for perfectly cooked spaghetti. Mettel found himself alone at the dining table, eating the "wasted" spaghetti, while the Maestro had gone downstairs to play. After half an hour of punishment, Michelangeli returned and sat down next to Mettel, nibbling on a slice of Parmesan cheese. Mettel pardoned.

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In the 1980s, while dining at a restaurant deep in the mountains of Switzerland, he decided to demand a fish dish at all costs. Someone had to travel 200 kilometres to get a sole in Zurich, which, it's unknown, was ultimately consumed.

(Bruno Guirato)

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This was also a constant worry of Michelangeli. Given his very subtle sense of harmony – which led him to passionately harmonize the so-called SAT (cori di montagna, mountain choirs) although he had not conducted composition studies [Facchinetti 2008, 14] – he was constantly trying to soften the timbre of the struck strings through peculiar tuning techniques and preparation of the mechanics [Passadori 2005]. The pianist also resorted to ‘external’ expedients such as the one adopted when recording the first book of Debussy’s Preludes: positioning his piano next to a second piano, open and with the strings lowered, in order to achieve an ‘aeolian harp’ effect [Garben 2004, 77-78]. 

(Carlo Bianchi)

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Chaconne 

Il pezzo è` in realtà quanto mai problematico, e la sua scomparsa dal repertorio va anche messa in relazione, credo, con una mancata definizione stilistica che sia servita da modello. La soluzione di Benedetti Michelangeli e ` impostata sulla distinzione di due zone di sonorità, una piena, risonante, che ricorda un’orchestra di fiati (o l’organo), e una
velata e piatta, che ricorda un’orchestra d’archi con sordina.
Le soluzioni sono poi molteplici, ma questo carattere stilistico di fondo viene mantenuto ed è facilmente riconoscibile. La contrapposizione radicale di due colori è sicuramente un’idea felice. Tuttavia l’espressione perde talora la gravità di danza antica e scivola verso morbidezze e languori sensuali. Ricompaiono allora, specie nelle variazioni in arpeggio, quelle atmosfere spagnole in cui, come abbiamo visto, Benedetti Michelangeli si era mosso da maestro. Si potrebbe anche dire che in fondo la Ciaccona è una danza di
origine iberica, forse persino messicana, ma a me non sembra he questa spiegazione taglierebbe la testa al toro...

[Rattalino, p.48f.]

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In my opinion, and not only in my opinion, Ravel was the composer with whom Benedetti Michelangeli identified completely. Not, however, to the point of tackling his work Mirrors., richest in inventions and problems.

[Piero Rattalino, p.68]

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It seems very likely to me that the Sonata op. 111, like the Sonata op. 2 no. 3 I have
already mentioned, was studied based on Alfredo Casella's revision, which, after all, was a leading figure in Italy in the 1930s. And in the performances of the 1960s—which were also superbly dramatic—one can still see some traces of Casella's interventions on the text, which in truth—but I say this recalling a performance in Bregenz on January 15, 1988, which I heard—never completely disappeared. [Rattalino 88, who elsewhere adds - 'Of course, one can speak of Benedetti Michelangeli's narcissism, of his indifference to cultural problems, one can be irritated by his mania for retouching texts (those cursed octave doublings in the bass, the E flat in bar 115 of the first movement of Beethoven's Sonata op. 111, which cries out for vengeance)...' 

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"Gli avrò parlato tre o quattro volte. Non era dotato di una comunicazione incoraggiante. Ma di un'artisticità formidabile, questo sì. Il suo problema credo che sia stato crescere, durante il fascismo, in un ambiente di provincia. Se ne rese conto andando all'estero. Provò ad acculturarsi." 

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"I must have spoken to him three or four times. He wasn't gifted with encouraging communication skills. But he was formidable in his artistic abilities, that's for sure. I think his problem was growing up, during Fascism, in a provincial environment. He realised this when he went abroad.  He tried to educate himself."

Piero Rattalino, La Reppublica 29 May 2016

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'Before receiving your reporter [i.e. me], Benedetti Michelangeli carefully read his pieces for six months and finally agreed. Paolo Andrea Mettel, who assisted him in many matters, was the witness of these unforgettable meetings. Some of them have been transcribed, but most are still in notes. Michelangeli was the last master of music in a world where this art is now well frequented by businessmen, communicators, improvisers, bunglers, and even worse. His enemies, those before whom he never bowed, resembled the wealthy Lopakhin in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. (Il Giardino dei Ciliegi)  Vulgar souls, even if equipped with full purses. For them, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli refused to play. For this we thank him again with one last round of applause.'

Enrico Girari, Corriere della Sera, 24 October 2011

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The faithful and faithful Mettel thus indulges in a series of "private" anecdotes about Benedetti Michelangeli, already adding in the first paragraph a string of double-speak that would make the spokesman of some Central African dictator pale. Mettel confesses to us that upon the pianist's death, he painfully realized that he had to "come to terms with reality," without Benedetti Michelangeli's presence, without "being able to hear his strong, beautiful voice, his cheerful, savory irony, without the curls of smoke from his Tuscan cigar, without the walks in the woods," without—and I continue by summarizing—the innocent jokes, the wonderful hands, the magical keyboard, and so on. Thanks to Mettel, we learn that the Maestro was "kind and affable with the gardener" (goodness of him!), that he got angry if his guest arrived a few minutes late for his spaghetti dinner (spaghetti which, needless to say, although "lukewarm and compromised, tasted exquisite"!), that he savored a sliver of parmesan under his mustache, that he delighted in expertly dressing salads at the Steinway headquarters, that there were a bevy of anxious people ready to dismantle the piano just to find a clock that was actually in the dressing room, that he happily enjoyed Japanese cuisine in his suite, and so on...

Enrico Bettinello, GdM 21 June 2010

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An obituary in the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant  Michelangeli was one of the greatest pianists of his time, and one of the most notorious cancelers of his time. Michelangeli , a reclusive musician who rarely broke his silence and declined eight honorary doctorates, has now definitively canceled.

A recital at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw [October 1979?] was cancelled some twenty years ago (in retrospect, it would probably have been his last) because he had spilled coffee on the contract at home.

Applause and welcome applause left him indifferent. His bond with an audience was strictly temporary; reduced to the essence of making music and listening. He could refuse an encore if someone had coughed.

Roland de Beer

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Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, for example, is a regular customer of ours: now he's waiting for a new car. The first time he asked me, with a slight embarrassment, for a used Mille Miglia berlinetta, declaring himself not rich enough to buy a new one. Then he remained faithful to us, and every now and then he comes here, silent, almost diaphanous, with his cold courtesy, his disconcerting expression. A strange gentleman having breakfast in the clouds."  ("Uno strano signore a colazione tra le nuvole".) Among the thousand biographies of one of the world's greatest pianists, have you ever managed to find a better description than this one by Enzo Ferrari? 

Repubblicauto.com

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In his cult novel "The Ruin Builder," Herbert Rosendorfer created a surrealist monument to him, disguised as the eccentric cellist Sant'Angeli, whom no one has ever heard play.

 

Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 1992 (Klaus Bennert), Schumann Concerto with Celibidache:

Was the master out of sorts? He quickly dismissed the orchestra musicians from the stage and, with a skeptical expression, acknowledged the audience's ovation one last time—but then signalled a gesture that silences even the most ardent admirer: Enough for today, no more applause, please. Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli refused further homage.

A male diva's whim? Not at all. If any musician of our century, notorious for being eccentric, has earned an objective right to his occasionally bizarre attitudes, it is Benedetti Michelangeli. For his claim to perfection, which must also be seen as humility before the work of art, cannot tolerate any half-measures: As admirers of his art (and this reviewer confesses to counting many a Michelangeli concert among the finest moments of his life), one has become accustomed to and resigned to the fact that the great "ABM" would rather cancel shortly before the concert begins than settle for a hint of inadequacy. And years ago in Munich, one could once witness how agonizingly long Michelangeli endured a botched final chord, as if he wanted to punish himself and the audience for this obsession with perfection...