top of page
Search

Michelangeli's "Southern" Mozart

Jan 2
1 min read

In December 1968, New York Philharmonic, Carlo Maria Giulini:

Mozart: Divertimento No. 11 in D major, K.251; Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K.466; Masonic Funeral Music, K.477 / 479a; Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K.550


Irving Kolodin wrote in Saturday Review (28 December 1968): 

'A different direction began to assert itself early in the D-minor Concerto, performed with fastidious artistry and superior insight by the orchestra as well as the invincibly facile Michelangeli. It was, in no small part, related to Giulini’s gravitation to another kind of Mozart, taking in the soul state that Cole Porter mused on in “how strange the change, from major to minor.” From the Concerto on, the works were the minor-major Mozart, embracing not only the Symphony No. 40, a major work in a minor (G) key, but also the Masonic Funeral Music, in C minor.​


'Michelangeli had a great, and deserved, success with the audience, which responded to the sparkle, brilliance, and, withal, penetration of his playing as audiences inevitably will to sparkle, brilliance, and penetration. It was, in a way, the Southern view of Mozart (somewhat akin to Iturbi’s), in which many intense things happened, not always with quite the relationship that the more thoroughgoing German (or Austrian) mind searches out and delights in conveying. This is meant in no sense as a disparagement, but merely to grant Michelangeli his area of cultivation, while reserving to others—such as Lili Kraus—theirs. I suppose the only thing they would have in common would be a preference for the Beethoven cadenzas.'

Recent Posts

See All
New website address

As this website on Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli was originally created on Wix as an adjunct to my main site about Cuban-American pianist Jorge Bolet, the fact that there are two names of pianists see

 
 
 
The Italian Repertoire

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli's Italian repertoire. I've compiling a list of most of the Italian pieces which ABM played, especially in his earlier years (using as a guide Antonio Armella, I concerti

 
 
 
New book on Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli

[Posted on the 5 January, the offical date of ABM's birth, though he once claimed it was in the first hour of the 6th!] I've recently seen that a new book on the pianist, I concerti di Arturo Benedett

 
 
 

Comments

bottom of page