Vladimir Horowitz had this to say about Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli: “Interesting pianist, but a little meshugah”! Just a “little”, eh? In the Beethoven Sonata, for example, every phrase is exhaustively worked out to the last hemi-demi-semi-quaver, draining the music of its affirmative, headlong impulses. The results, to be sure, are astonishing as abstract pianism, but who wants a blood-drained Beethoven, dissected to the core, and pickled in formaldehyde? The pianist (mis)casts a monumental and gloomy glare upon three selections from Schumann’s Album for the Young. Behind the ironclad demeanor of Michelangeli’s 1957 BBC Schumann Carnaval, though, lies a fluency and sweep absent from his fussy, perverse 1975 EMI studio traversal. Some may argue that Michelangeli’s reordering of the Paganini Variations destroys the composition’s unity, but few pianists have surmounted Brahms’ daunting demands with the ferocity and stupefying ease heard in this 1948 recording. Noble deliberation characterizes a Chopin Mazurka selection group, and the stark, concentrated Brahms Ballades Op. 10 rate high in Michelangeli’s slender, selective discography. A wistful, charmless Mompou Cancion y danza recorded in 1942 rounds out this uneven yet absorbing collection.
