Chopin Recital : Novaes > Reviews > Michelangeli or the search of perfection

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(Rewrite on 09/07/2001)
Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (great italian "virtuoso") spent his life to search a kind of perfection during interpretations.

He knew this perfection to be impossible but, for him, "perfection" was union between composer and player.
Then,this perfection isn't impossible...

Glenn Gould tryed the same sound by his pianos: in this way he was very careful to music structure: beauty of musical phrases, to give a geometrical "presence" to music a.s.o.
Of course his Bach interpretations (but Beethoven and Mozart also), even if on a piano and not on a harpsichord or "fortepiano" , are excellent.

Michelangeli is on the other side of the moon...

His Chopin is mysterious, full of shadows and, in some compositions, unknowable.
But, how does Michelangeli obtain this wonderful result?
To answer it is simple and very difficult in the same time.
I try to do it:

1) He make a full immersion in historycal background of Chopin;
2) He loved to study hand-written Chopin's music;
3) Like he said, he stopped to learn a work when "sounds flow in my blood".
4) An intelligent control by means of mind and heart.

He plays Chopin's Nocturnes suspended in "time": night is not only darkness, mystery or passions; night in Chopin is without time also...

This Arturo understood and now we can hear a strange dimension of time.
Of course, there are passions, loves, cryes but these are nothing...in front of a world without time.

Often Nocturnes seem lullabyes: it is true!
But they send to sleep the death not the listeners!
Then, these musics are a victory on the death!

Other pianists have played these Chopin's works: Horowitz, Schnabel, Pollini, Richter...

Some years ago I listened to an old recording of Ravel! Excellent, but he wasn't as fascinating as Michelangeli.

Maybe a pianist only could play Nocturnes with the Michelangeli's intensity of feelings: Dinu Lipatti. But he died very young and you don't easly find its Long Playings.

It's a shame we cannot hear him...