Michelangeli: Barbican, June 1985

There were two recitals at the Barbican, London in June.  Andrew Clements commented in The New Statesman (7.6.85) that the pianist had last appeared in London in 1982 with Celibidache in Ravel - 'a demonstration of keyboard control and range of colour that only one or two other living pianists could approach'.   'There is no doubting Michelangeli's absolute authority in Debussy, that aquatints and pastel portraits of the Preludes (book 2) suit him perfectly.  There is more robustness to be discovered in some of the pieces than he allows... But his fastidious selection of colours and textures, his restrained use of rubato and overt "expressivity" are spellbinding; one could not hope to hear more perfectly poised accounts of movements such as Bruyères and Ondine... more fluent virtuosity in Feux d'Artifice.  The lack of broad humour in General Lavine and Homage to S.Pickwick seemed to me the only possible criticism one could be justified in making of such pureness playing.'  Of Chopin's B flat minor Scherzo, Clements noted 'the tingling accuracy in the passage work that accrued tension on its own account'.  The G minor Ballade was 'cool, short on dramatic tension and contained the only technical lapses of the evening'. 'There seems to be an aristocratic disdain for becoming personally involved with the music making.  A strange coarsening of tone cropped up both in the Ballade and in the Mazurka which he supplied as an encore, when the crystalline purity deserted him and was replaced by rough shallow sound, as if striving for a rhetorical effect he felt unwilling to make by gestures alone.  But there always remains the simple fact that no one else can make such a thing of beauty out of the Chopin Andante Spianato as he did, decorating it with quite extraordinary delicacy and tact.'