1942

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On 20 September, in the Church of San Vitale, Franciacorta, he married Giuliana Linda Guidetti, from whom he was to be legally separated, by deed of the Court of Brescia, on 10 March 1970, after 28 years of marriage.

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​​​At the end of January 1942, at the height of the second World War, ABM was enlisted in the Third Medical Subdivision in Baggio, near Milan. [*See the top of this page]

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On Saturday 10 January 1942, at 4:30pm, 'this talented young man' played a programme of music by Paisiello, Beethoven Chopin and Ravel at the Teatro del Popolo in Milan.

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​Franco Abbiati writes in Corriere della Sera, 11 January 1942:

'A number of unforeseen circumstances, including a temporary stay in Marmaris [south-east of Bodrum, Turkey] and the Balkans [whose stay? ABM? Abbiati?], have prevented us from following the progressive stages of the pianist Arturo Michelangeli - Benedetti - over the last two years. Today, after a relatively short time, we find him literally magnified. What uncertain aspects we knew about him have disappeared in the face of his current overwhelming mastery of technical means. What we suspected of being arbitrary in his works was reduced to a few legitimate liberties: those poetic liberties, of an exquisitely musical nature, which are willingly granted to those who have acquired the right to do so with the seriousness, sovereignty, and class of an indisputably exceptional art.

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'Yesterday, Benedetti-Michelangeli played at the Teatro del Popolo before a huge audience. Beethoven, Chopin, Ravel, and Debussy emerged from his thinking and sensibility, wonderfully recreated in the clear clarity of his discourse and the seductive, even exuberant variety of colours. The programme was missing Italian music. The young artist filled the gap with two Scarlatti sonatas, included in the brilliant encore sequence. It was a triumphant success.'

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Ernesta Rota Rinaldi, mother of composer Nino Rota, wrote on 19 January, 1942:
'What a parade of concerts these days! Each one more beautiful than the last. I should refrain from them, given my disheveled house, but I'm just steps from the Conservatory, and the temptation is great: sitting there feels like being in church. My head is freed from the nagging of a thousand thoughts, and my spirit soars. (…)

'I must admit that there are artists who make us jump out of our seats and make it difficult to sleep. Soloists, in general, send crowds into raptures, and so do conductors, like Toscanini and De Sabata, who themselves act as star soloists of the first magnitude.
Benedetti Michelangeli has an exaggerated influence on the public. Perhaps his twenty-two years, combined with such mastery and talent, weigh heavily on the scale. He is certainly brilliant, shrewd, and immediate. At the terrifying request for an encore, he advances with a long, sporty stride, a wry smile, and sits down immediately, without any theatricality, and cheerfully delivers multiple encores: Chopin, Albéniz. In Albéniz, he plucks like a guitar and sings with a capriciousness and abandon that he rarely does. A magnificent pianist.

— Ernesta Rota Rinaldi, Diaries, manuscript. Venice, Cini Foundation, Nino Rota Collection.​​

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In February 1942 in Bolzano, Italy, the magazine Atesia Augusta announced the "establishment of a 'Concert Society'. In a very short time, the Society has in fact gathered over five hundred members, and while waiting for the concert hall to be built in the new Conservatory building, it holds its events in the hall of the Camerata del Littorio." The latter was a large room located in Piazza Walther (then Piazza Vittorio Emanuele III) and which had originally belonged to the Hotel Schgraffer.  In February 1942, ABM performed there.  Atesia Augusta wrote :“The start of the season could not have been better, as the Bolzano audience had the privilege of admiring the truly unforgettable art of that brilliant pianist, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli from Brescia. In the art of this performer of ours, who in his early twenties has victoriously imposed himself on the attention of the most demanding European audiences, there is much more than what we are commonly given to admire even in the greatest pianists: in him, in fact, is revived that pathos that, in history, has been the rare privilege of a select few (in lui si ravviva infatti quel pathos che, nella storia, è stato raro privilegio di pochi eletti.)  If we were to say that Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli is a perfect technician and a profoundly mature interpreter in a musical experience that, compared to his twenty years or so, makes one think of a miracle; if we were to stop to quibble over the mastery of his touch or the astute use of the pedal, certainly the fruit of a spectacular union between expressive intelligence and a privileged intuition, we would only be underlining extremely singular gifts that are anything but common even in many famous pianists.

The miracle of his art, in fact, begins precisely where those gifts end, and where the work of true magic has its reign (...). To the dynasty of Liszt, Paderewsky, Busoni, our country today adds the name of the twenty-year-old Benedetti Michelangeli, and for this we cannot but rejoice wholeheartedly. (...)”. The review is by Guglielmo Barblan, a Conservatory teacher and musicologist, who can truly be said to have been a good prophet. On the other hand, it must be recognized that, although very young, Benedetti Michelangeli was by no means unknown.

 

The Provincia di Bolzano wrote on 24 February, 1942, on that same occasion: “His admirable art has already shaken the most demanding audiences in Europe and it is certainly already a great fortune for our city to host him in its concert series”. The newspaper then proceeds to describe the environment in which the concert took place: “Last night, when hundreds of people unexpectedly crowded not only the chairs and sofas, but every hidden corner, even in the rooms adjacent to the Camerata del Littorio, there was an unusual feeling of anxious anticipation in the air. There was a faint sense of a ritual about to take place: nerves were tense to accommodate as much as possible, everyone's desire was pushed to the limit. How such phenomena occur can only be said by those who give artists a breath of the highest life: the reporter is allowed no more than to note the fact.”

 

Two curiosities: the concert had to be postponed because the pianist had been called to arms on January 24th (3rd Health Company in Milan); furthermore, the event was scheduled to begin at 8:15 pm with the commitment that the hall had to close without fail by 10 pm, in accordance with the wartime regulations (saving electricity, air raid warnings, etc.).

 

Benedetti Michelangeli's next concert took place in Bolzano in 1949, concluding the second season of the Concert Society in the hall of the rebuilt Conservatory of Music. Professor Giuliano Tonini writes in "150 Years of Music in Bolzano": "The event took place in the Conservatory's new concert hall, inaugurated in early May 1949 with the unveiling, at the entrance, of a plaque commemorating Maestro Mario Mascagni [the Conservatory's director, who had recently passed away, editor's note]. The new hall's artistic dedication occurred a few days later, on Saturday, May 7, with the closing concert of the 1948/1949 season of the Concert Society/Konzertverein, given by pianist A. Benedetti Michelangeli, who performed music by F. Chopin on the centenary of his death."

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Source of the above (edited)

 

Sunday 26 April, 1942, Teatro Adriano, Rome; 5pm

Orchestra of the Royal Academy of Santa Cecilia
conductor: Francesco Molinari Pradelli
Mozart Die Entführung aus dem Serail: overture
Tchaikovsky The Nutcracker Suite from the Ballet Op. 71a
Rocca In terra di leggenda: Corteo funebre e Corsa alla preda
Weber Euryanthe: overture
Beethoven Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 73, "Emperor"

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Wednesday 29 April 1942, Teatro Adriano, Rome; 5pm [see programme in the box below]

Pellegrino Tomeoni [born Lucca, 1729] , Allegro
Beethoven, Variations in G major on the duet "Nel cor più non mi sento" from the opera La molinara by Paisiello, for piano, WoO 70
Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 3 in C major, Op. 2 No. 3
Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2 "Moonlight"
Chopin, Berceuse in D flat major for piano, Op. 57
Chopin, Ballade No. 1 in G minor for piano, Op. 23
Ravel, Jeux d'eau
Debussy, L'isle joyeuse

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Ildebrando Pizzetti

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A letter (dated 22 June 1942 and sent from Via Panama 62, Rome) from Ildebrando Pizzetti [1880-1968] to the publisher Ricordi: 

Vi interesserà sapere, credo, che anche il pianista Benedetti Michelangeli intende studiare ed eseguire i Canti della Stagione Alta. Per lui scriverò due nuove «cadenze».

'You will be interested to know, I believe, that pianist Benedetti Michelangeli also intends to study and perform the Canti della Stagione Alta (1930). I will write two new "cadenzas" for him.'

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The concerto was dedicated to Giuseppe De Robertis, with whom he was associated in the circle around the Florence periodical La voce, with the composer and critic Giovanni Bastianelli and the essayist and controversial pamphleteer Giovanni Papini. During the 1940s the great Italian pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli showed some interest in the work—Pizzetti wrote a cadenza especially for him (not included on this recording)—but, in the end, never played the piece.  Written only two years after the Concerto dell’estate (Naxos 8.572013), Canti della stagione alta may likewise be seen in the context of Pizzetti’s ‘naturism’, aptly depicted by the composer’s biographer, Guido M. Gatti, as ‘[conjuring] up a version of life in the open air, among open-hearted people who can interpret and understand nature because they love it and feel it not as something extraneous but as a living and beneficent creative power’.' [NAXOS CD notes]

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Composed in the Dolomites during the summer of 1930, Ildebrando Pizzetti’s Canti della stagione alta (“Songs of the High Season”) is a large-scale piano concerto in all but name.
Sumptuously scored and powerfully evocative of the region, it’s an intensely lyrical outpouring with long-breathed, modally inflected melodic lines which frequently hint at hymnody (the second subject of the central Adagio a case in point), full of pantheistic wonder and imbued with a very real sense of widescreen spectacle (like his countryman and contemporary Respighi, Pizzetti handles the orchestra with aplomb).

(Andrew Achenbach)

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September 6, 1942.
Last night, Nino came home with Michelangeli Benedetti, his secretary, and Antonio Pedrotti. A pleasant surprise. They're in Milan for a few days to record some Telefunken records: Grieg's Piano Concerto and Schumann's Piano Concerto. Pedrotti conducts. We begin by looking at each other warily. Benedetti is defensive at first. His gaze is clouded and his expression fleeting: it's clear he's often annoyed by the music world and feels uncomfortable moving around it. He clings to ping pong like a lifeline, and he and his secretary, Ariosto (look at that name), play the game earnestly. Benedetti keeps his left hand at his side as he swings his racket with an elegant and confident gesture. He's passionate about the game and often hits the balls. Pedrotti, naturally lazy, stretches out on the terrace and asks Nino for music. Nino improvises at the piano, pondering what he should play. When he lets his hands wander haphazardly, without realising he's playing, music flows through his fingers in rivulets: as if talking to himself, harmonies flow seamlessly, motifs modulated in a flowing, undulating discourse. Pedrotti approaches the piano and Nino casually launches into the first phrase of the Schumann Concerto that Benedetti had just heard at the recording rehearsal. He's quite brave. Pedrotti finds Bach's Brandenburg Concertos on the piano, sits down next to Nino, and they play the first Concerto four-handed. Benedetti stops playing ping-pong and steps behind Nino, attentive. The Brandenburg reduction is by Reger: dense, tangled, without sparing a single note, making it a web of seven-part counterpoint bristling with thirds, fourths, and sixths, enough to dazzle both the eye and the fingers. Benedetti sits in Pedrotti's seat, but Pedrotti can't keep up, and he and Nino follow, reeling off the notes with precision and clarity. Pedrotti follows attentively and interestedly because he has to conduct this Bach at an upcoming concert. Nino enjoys sharing music with someone who knows a thing or two. They focus on Beethoven's quartets; the late ones, which are performed very rarely and sound excellent even on piano alone. Benedetti is an avid reader, but he doesn't have the maturity of Agosti, who knows all of Beethoven by heart and has thoroughly analyzed the most abstruse quartets. Benedetti is having a great time. He's sweating dangerously. I throw a sweater over his shoulders so he doesn't catch a cold. The evening flies by.

— Ernesta Rota Rinaldi, Diaries, manuscript. Venice, Cini Foundation, Nino Rota Collection.

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1942 was also the year of the beginning of the collaboration between the conductor Sergio Celibidache and Benedetti Michelangeli: a collaboration that lasted the longest for the pianist, based on great mutual respect and friendship. In Milan, the two artists played Ravel's Concerto in G major together.

Katia Vendrame (Brno 2022)

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A correspondent Diana (Siberia) has written to me (August 2025): 'This is a very strange statement, because the first meeting of Celibidache and ABM took place in 1943 in Berlin. Perhaps there is a typo in the date? Regarding the first joint work - my information refers to October 21 and 22, 1966 in Bologna (it did not take place in Rome in December 1961) with Mozart's concerto K 466. Perhaps I am wrong.

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During this period he also began to make recordings; his first 78 rpm, for “La Voce del Padrone”, came out in 1941 (see SUCCESS page). He was to continue his recording activity with His Master’s Voice and Telefunken until the late Fifties. When the war was over, he went back to teaching – he was assigned the chair of pianoforte at the Conservatory in Venice - and contributed decisively towards the revival of music in his city as Chairman of the “S. Cecilia“ Brescian Symphony Concert Society. He held the office until September 1947, when he was forced to resign due to the increasing concert engagements which took him to all four corners of the world: in 1946 he performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London, in 1948-49 he made the first of his numerous tours in the United States (the following tours were in 50, 67, 68, 70 and 71), in 1949 he played in South America and in 1951 in South Africa.

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Curentul, 21 January 1942 announces:

'The following week, a series of concerts will begin in Arad with the renowned pianist Arturo Michelangeli Benedetti, who will then perform in Sibiu, Bucharest and Timișoara.' Déli Hirlap (12.4.1942): 'His career has been on the rise ever since and today he shines like a unique star. This young, great pianist will also visit Timișoara (Temesvár) and the music-loving public will be able to attend his concert later this month.'

 

Wednesday, January 28, 1942 at 8:00 p.m., the great pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli will give a concert in the "Hermania" music hall on Traian Moșoiu Street, under the auspices of the Institute of  Italian Culture in Romania, Sibiu.  The Sibiu audience will have this unique opportunity to taste the greatness of the art of Michelangeli, who will perform a varied and interesting program of contemporary Italian music, Bach, etc. Tickets are on sale at the Krafft - Drotleff bookstore. (Țara, 23 January 1942)

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But no reviews....

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Sunday 22 at 5pm and Wednesday 25 February, 1942, Teatro La Fenice, Venice with Alceo Galliera: Liszt Danse MAcabre (Totentanz) and Grieg concerto respectively.  The Sunday evening concert featured Ildebrando Pizzetti's Concerto dell'estate.

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Un pianista di natura titanica

17 March 1942, Teatro Verdi, Trieste, Italy:  Grieg Concerto with Alceo Galliera.  "La deliziosa introduzione al «Segreto di Susanna» di Wolff-Ferrari, le smaglianti «Fontane di Roma» di Respighi, Io stupendo «Concerto per pianoforte» in la minore di Grieg; la maestosa Seconda Sinfonia di Brahms."

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'The evening, thus passed with the utmost approval, then had a further rise in tone, reaching the clarion call of triumph [lo squillo del trionfo], at the centre of the programme, where the pianist Michelangeli performed Grieg's Piano Concerto and a whole series of unprogrammed pieces, including, alongside Scarlatti and Chopin's Etude on the Black Keys (Op.10/6), some Iberian dances by modern composers.  Michelangell is today the favourite son of glory. The older generations love him, because they find in him the art of some unsurpassed master of times gone by; the young idolize him because he expresses the contemporary conquests of the art of the piano, for which he will certainly hold the Italian primacy in the world tomorrow. For he is a pianist of titanic nature. All the nervous energy of this young man converges on the keyboard. The two hands are now two steel levers that seem almost to cancel each other out, unleashing formidable sonorities, now a touch that passes to the string almost without the physical intermediary of percussion. A mixture of the refined and the wild is in his pianistic nature, and these two aspects alternate with each other, according to the inner musical needs perhaps the two poles of music itself, which to be truly inspired must possess the primitive ingenuity of creative inspiration and the knowing subtlety that enhances it. He played Grieg's Concerto with great poetry, much warmth, exquisite abandon, but he never allowed himself to be carried away by virtuosity, which, moreover, is not excessive in the composition and even less so for a performer of his strength. An essential factor of his charm is naturally his uplifting touch, which sings with a lightness that almost seems like a breath, or with a vigor that sounds like a metallic crack. Grieg is full of these antitheses in his Concerto, and Michelangelo knows how to rock delightfully on this swing of dynamism.'

Il Piccolo di Trieste, 18.3.1942

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15 April 1942

'Pianist Benedetti Michelangeli at Pro Cultura.  Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli returned to Turin last night, for the fourth time in just over two years. And our fourth report is no different from the others, just as the interest, pleasure, and success of the new hearing were no different or less. Following step by step the evolution of a pianist who debuts with such a wealth of technique and sensitivity will be, in addition to a renewed enjoyment, the opportunity for important observations, not only for his biography, but also for questions of interpretation. He played the third of the three sonatas that Beethoven dedicated to Haydn [=Op. 2/3 in C major]. 

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Among the variations Beethoven delighted in inventing on themes from Paisello's "Bella molinara,"[Six Variations on Molinara by Paisiello WoO70] the concert pianist chose not the witty, simple, and almost obvious ones from the Quartet, but the others on the languid phrase of the love-hungry young woman. These are exemplary in retaining eighteenth-century taste throughout and admitting a few livelier, more moving accents, for example, in the fourth variation. And even in fairness, Benedetti Michelangeli's interpretation was clear, measured, and entirely in keeping with the spirit of the pieces.

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Fra le variazioni che Beethoven si compiacque di inventare su temi della Bella molinara di Paislello il concertista scelso non quelle argute del Quartetto, semplicette e quasi ovvie, ma le altre sulla languida frase della donnetta vogliosa d'amore, le quali son esemplari nel ritenere in ogni loro parte il gusto settecentesco e dell'ammettere un qualche più vivo accento toccante, per esemplo nella quarta variazione. E anche in onesto caso la lezione del Benedetti Michelangeli fu chiara, misurata, tutta adeguata allo spirito delle pagine.

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'And we could also mention, if space permitted, the admirable performances of Chopin (of the Berceuse, exquisitely sung and paced, of the first Ballade in G minor, where the technical difficulties were brilliantly overcome, and the impetuosity, the burst of the "Presto con fuoco" rendered with just relation to the preceding passionate conclusion), of Ravel (jeux d'eau), of Debussy (L'ile joueuse), splendid in the rich palette, in the sparkle and in the opacity, in the suggestiveness of the harmony...'

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A Romanian newspaper Rampa, 5 April 1942: Vom avea prilejul să auzim pe acest mare concertist la Ateneu 15 Aprilie, impresariatul „Orfeu” făcând mari sacrificii ca să aducă pe acest celebru pianist.  (We will have the opportunity to hear this great concertist at the Athenaeum 15 April, the impresario "Orfeu" making great sacrifices to bring this famous pianist [to Bucharest])

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29 April 1942, Teatro Adriano, Rome: Allegro by Tomeoni; Beethoven's Variations on a theme by Paisiello, the Sonata op. 2 no. 3 and the Sonata op. 27 no. 2 Beethoven's ''Moonlight''; the Berceuse op. 57 and the Ballade n. 1 op. 23 by Chopin; Jeux d'eau by Ravel and L'Isle joyeuse by Debussy.   A touching and beautiful appreciation of the twenty-two-year-old artist by Ludwig Curtius, an archaeologist who ran the German Geological Institute in Rome is quote by Cord Garben: 'I want to shout to him: "Oh, how I wish God would suspend you at your twenty-two years so you never grow old, and that this springtime music of a young man's dream would never ripen in your soul and never transform into summer and autumn!"  I feel pride rising in him that Italy once again possesses a pianist who can compete alongside those Germans.'

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Saturday, 16 May 1942, La Scala, Milan with conductor Willy Ferrero.  The concert began with one of the most sublime works, Concerto dall'estro armonico  No. 11 d minor  RV 565.  Arturo played Beethoven 5. 

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The concert was held on 12th or 13th April 1942 at the Teatro Grande, Brescia, with the “S. Cecilia” orchestra conducted by maestro Ferruccio Francesconi. The programme included Beethoven, Concerto op. 73; Grieg, Concerto op. 16, whilst the Maestro added an additional Scarlatti, Sonata; Chopin, Étude and Waltz; De Falla, Ritual Fire dance; Mompou, Cançion y Danza; Albéniz, Malagueña; Chopin, Mazurca.

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9 June 1942, Teatro Comunale di Bologna: 

Bach-Busoni, Ciaccona; Beethoven, Sonata op. 27 n. 2; Ravel, Giochi d’acqua; Debussy, L’isola gioiosa; Chopin, Mazurka, Ballata in sol minore; Liszt, Rapsodia n. 12​​​​​