Vladimir Horowitz, another pianist extraordinaire and renowned himself for idiosyncrasies, called Michelangeli “the great meshuganah,” Yiddish for “crazy one.”

 

A man of many talents, he distinguished himself as a car racer, a champion- class skier, and an aeroplane pilot. (Philip Fowke, Independet obituary, 12 June 1995)

 

‘I’m a pilot above all,’ he declared mischievously. ‘A pilot, then a doctor, and only then, maybe, a suonatore.’ (Player). 

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Michelangeli, throughout his career, was notorious for cancelling concerts at the last minute. There's a story about an audience member asking a lady seated in front of him to remove her hat - her response: 'Not 'til he's actually on stage!'

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Lidia Kozubek, a Polish pianist and student of Michelangeli from 1958 to 1963:

"He disliked the word ‘artist’, which he considered dilettante," says Kozubek. "He preferred the word ‘executant’, or ‘player’ [suonatore]. ‘I teach only logic, not talent’ he would say. ‘Logic is the relation, the declamation, between the notes!’"

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Aristocratic and almost Lisztian in appearance, Michelangeli would come on to the platform looking cadaverous and sepulchral.  (Philip Fowke)

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It was however, in Debussy and Ravel that he was supreme; he had an ability to evoke a colour world in which he achieved astonishing effects, combining sustained sound with a pearly clarity. He could mould the texture like melted wax into the subtlest shapes. "It has always been my world," Michelangeli once said of Debussy's works. "This music has always been my music from the very start." (Philip Fowke)

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'His repertoire was small, yet as exquisitely fahsioned as something by Fabergé.'

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Like the princess distracted by the small pea buried under 14 mattresses, Michelangeli’s hypersensitive fingers and exacting ears could ascertain the tiniest imperfections in a piano’s action, tuning, or voicing. ‘No piano in the world,’ he supposedly claimed, ‘is good enough for Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit.’ In later years he travelled with his own Steinway Models C and D, sometimes using both pianos in the same recital. His friend and frequent collaborator, conductor Sergiu Celibidache, witnessed four technicians ‘trying for a whole day to make his instrument playable for his ear, and his consciousness’. (Jed DIstler, 2013)

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Offstage he was a heavy smoker, and favored the pungent tobaccos of Turkish cigarettes or Russian papirosi, which drooped languidly from one corner of his mouth. (John Bell Young)

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His pupils tell us that he played virtually the gamut of the pianist’s oeuvre; his first wife assured us that he had achieved this by the age of twenty. Yet he chose to offer to the world only a condensed repertoire: five or six concerti and only three recital programmes which he globetrotted like an economy washing machine on repeat cycle. This is true distillation of genius perhaps. 

[Sandspout Bookstore blog, Gwynedd, Wales]

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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 that his tea was spoiled…" (during a meeting with DG officials)

(John Bell Young)

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His love of Agatha Christie mystery novels and the works of Pirandello notwithstanding, it was his life long fascination with one work of fiction in particular that ignited his musical imagination and did much to inspire, by his own admission, his interpretation of Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit.

The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov’s Soviet era, anti-fascist fantasy, and Michelangeli’s favourite novel. (John Bell Young)

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A recording of Gaspard from the 1960 Prague Spring Festival (Music & Arts CD 817, and Multi-Sonic CD 310193) reveals him at his most diabolical. In this reading Michelangeli transforms music into metaphor, codifying the enchantments of Aloysius Bertrand’s poem with disarming elan. With hands like wands, he conjures the moist and moonswept spray that shrouds Ondine’s siren song in a thousand sorrows. Lurking behind Scarbo is the ensorcelled cosmos of the pianist’s favorite novel; in his hands its arid harmonies and darting rhythms shimmer, sauté and grimace as demonically as the Bulgakov’s Behemoth, Satan’s sadistic feline familiar in The Master and Margarita. "Again the Devil…in the affairs of virtuosity one always returns to the Devil," writes Vladimir Jankelevitch. "Such is the shameful connivance of virtuosity and devilry."(John Bell Young)

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Musorgsky he loved; it has been reported (but not confirmed) that he played Pictures at an Exhibition with spectacular success.

"I have played a great deal of Reger," he told Fono Forum, "including the Bach Variations and the Telemann Variations…I even once suggested to a Festival presenter that I play Reger in the middle of a Beethoven program, but he turned me down." 

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Musical miniatures, like Viennese chocolates, dot Michelangeli’s discography. Sonatas of Scarlatti, Galuppi and Tomeoni, together with tone poems by Grieg, Mompou, Albeniz and Granados give us a glimpse of his "salon" sensibility. From the effete refinements of the Italian baroque (from which Russia drew its early musical culture) to the discreet charms of the Catalonian colorists, his choice of repertoire, though hardly vast on disc, is hardly dull. EMI has released a charming souvenir that includes a particularly engaging performance, from 1939, of Granados’s Andaluza (EMI Classics CD H7644902)

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 For much of his life, Michelangeli dressed funereally and wore his hair, naturally red, eventually dyed coal-black, at shoulder length.

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The Baltimore Sun writes of Michelangeli’s musical intensity: “He performed Ravel’s ghoulish Gaspard de la Nuit with the glee of Count Dracula at liberty in the blood bank….” 

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"ABM programmed the Tchaikovsky a few times but regularly it replaced it with another piece." [Paulo Pesenti]

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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 practice 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; need to check]

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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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​Há um conto de Henry James que serviria bem de comentário à carreira de Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. Neste conto ("The Coxon Fund'', nunca traduzido), a personagem central é um filósofo, baseado no poeta romântico Coleridge, que, embora reconhecido por seus amigos como o maior gênio da era, jamais comparece às palestras que deve dar, e só raramente chega a escrever suas idéias no papel.

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There is a short story by Henry James that would serve well as a commentary on the career of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. In this short story ("The Coxon Fund," never translated into Portuguese), the central character is a philosopher, based on the Romantic poet Coleridge, who, although recognized by his friends as the greatest genius of the age, never attends the lectures he is supposed to give and only rarely writes his ideas down.  Michelangeli, who died last week at the age of 75, was a pianist of canceled concerts and infrequent recordings.

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Arthur Nestrovksy, Folha, 26 June 1995

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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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Chopin's Piano Concerto No.1 in E minor Op.11: 1949 was the centenary of the birth of Fryderyk Chopin. In Michelangeli's life, this year is characterized by concerts with Chopin's compositions in the programs, such as his Concerto No. 1.  No recording exists.

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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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Bibliography

Chronicle of the concerts by Harry Chin and Carlo Palese which accompanies the book (not yet seen)

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. Il Grembo del Suono (Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. The Womb of Sound), Milan, Skira, 1996. (not yet seen)

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An invaluable source is this (I've had to use Google Translate for the Czech) :

Katia Vendrame. Intepretive profile of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli/ Interpretační profil Artura Benedettiho Michelangeliho (Brno, 2022). LINK​​​​