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Bartok? Benedetti Michelangeli? Really?

  • Douglas Cairns
  • 6 days ago
  • 1 min read

Francesco Ermini Polacci wrote in December 2025:


Contrary to what has always been repeated, for example, Benedetti Michelangeli had a wide range of musical knowledge, and such as to belie his supposed unavailability for 20th-century music: few know of his studies of Bartok's Sonata for two pianos and percussion, tackled with Dinu Lipatti, his favourite pianist; and few know of his planned performance of Schönberg's Piano Concerto with Bruno Maderna on the podium.


Anyone have any. more information on the above?


Benedetti Michelangeli and Giulini recorded all of Beethoven's Five Concertos, but Concertos No. 2 and No. 4 were never released. It seems that Benedetti Michelangeli, notoriously wary of recording media (incapable, in his view, of reproducing the often delicate balance of the performance), never gave the go-ahead for their publication.


Is this so?

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