Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and films

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 amplified with the comment that "Modern composers are really agents for piano companies—after one concert, you can throw the plano away."

Was there time for theatre or opera? The gruff answer was a simple no. (A previous attempt to get his correct birthdate - January 5 is given in Thompson's Encyclopaedia - was met with, "It is not important, but it happens to be January 6.") What about movies? Surely a compatriot of Fellini and Visconti had time for films? Michelangeli said that not only had he never been to a film in his life, but that he despised movies, and that this was probably a "grave errore." The translator concluded: "Maestro says he has no need of an artificial dream world."