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Michelangeli Big Boxes Part 1: The Complete Warner Recordings · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

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  This is Jed Dissler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano recordings.
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  I've had some requests, believe it or not, from listeners who've been writing to me via YouTube
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  in the comments section, and I've been asked if I could cover some of the box sets devoted to the
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  great and enigmatic Italian pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, who I've talked about
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  on this podcast before. So I thought that's a really good idea, and there are three big boxes
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  that I will be talking about. The first one was released by Warner Classics. It contains 14 CDs.
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  It's called Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, The Complete Warner Recordings. This 14 CD set
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  purports to contain the complete quote unquote Warner Recordings of Michelangeli, which it does,
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  but then it's not quite complete, and I will get to that point in a little bit. But before I talk
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  about the music and the contents, I should do a little bit of housekeeping just to let you know
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  what we have here. And by the way, this box set is still available, at least for the moment.
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  Discs numbers one through five do contain each and every Michelangeli release that came out on
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  EMI, Angel, British HMV 78s, and Italian HMV 78s. Plus, there is a previously unpublished 1972
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  recording of three movements from Schumann's Faschingschwanke aus Wien. I don't know why only
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  three movements were recorded, but they are here. On CDs numbers six and seven, we have the March
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  4th, 1957 Royal Festival Hall recital, complete with the rehearsal and sound check that was all
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  issued in 1996 by Testament, and these recordings originally were made by EMI, but they were not
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  issued until Testament brought them out in 1996. Then discs eight and nine bring together all of
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  Michelangeli's 1942 and 43 recordings for German Telefunken. Now with discs 11 through 14, we get
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  into some murky territory. Everything on these discs stemmed from Italian radio broadcasts,
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  and all of these were issued in the past by Warner Music Italia, either on LP or CD. However,
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  there is other Michelangeli Italian radio material issued by Warner-owned labels that is missing
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  from this collection, such as the December 15th, 1951 All Mozart Concerto program with Carlo
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  Maria Giuliani conducting, and the March 13th, 1955 Warsaw recital that also came out on a
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  Warner-owned label is not here for some reason. And also missing are the List First Concerto,
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  the Vivaldi B-minor Concerto, Third Movement, and a fragment of the Beethoven Emperor Concerto
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  conducted by Ernest Ancermé. And these came out on a Warner Fonete CD with the catalog number 3984-26902-2.
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  I'm sorry I'm being so compulsive about that, but you know, I'm just doing some house cleaning here.
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  Now you can find this material on various bootlegs, but that's not really the point.
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  The point is that this quote-unquote complete Michelangeli Warner collection is only complete
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  insofar as the EMIHMV and the Telefunken Michelangeli back catalogs are concerned.
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  Also, I should tell you that not everything was remastered especially for this collection.
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  You do get EMI's excellent sounding 2004 transfer of the famous 1957 Ravel G major
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  concerto and Rachmaninoff fourth concerto coupling, which by the way has never been
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  out of the catalog since its initial release, as far as I know. However, for the Telefunken material,
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  we are stuck in this box with really lousy and heavily filtered transfers that came out on a 1994 Teldex CD.
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  The best transfers of any of the Telefunken material I've heard remain those that were done by David Contini
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  for the Pearl label, and those came out on a two-disc set called the early recordings of
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  Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and Carlo Zecchi. It's a wonderful set that was produced by my late
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  friend Alan Evans, and it's long been out of print, and I don't think it's easy to source.
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  But that Pearl release does not include the Telefunken Schumann concerto for whatever reason.
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  So to get the Schumann and another transfer than the Warner transfer in this set, you kind of have
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  to hunt around the internet, and there was an LP transfer that was on Telefunken in their document
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  series that was really quite good. I've seen this LP selling for something like $300 on Amazon,
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  like I'm really going to buy it, right? Oy vey, I think we've had enough housekeeping,
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  don't you think? I'm kind of geeking out on that. But let's talk about the music, finally.
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  The first two compact discs, as I mentioned earlier, contain all of Michelangeli's early HMV 78s.
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  You have 78s made for the Italian branch of the label that were made in 1939, 1941, and 1942,
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  and this was when Michelangeli was barely out of his teens. The main works are Beethoven's
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  Sonata No. 3 in C major, Opus 2 No. 3, and the Chopin's Second Scherzo. And there are also
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  short pieces by Chopin, Grieg, Granados, Montpoux, Mariscotti, Gallupi, and Scarlatti.
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  And you already hear that even at such a young age, Michelangeli was already Michelangeli.
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  These recordings reveal a pianist who had extraordinary finesse and control, superhumanly
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  even passage work, and also refined gradations of touch and tone that were already in place.
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  Also in these early recordings, you will notice Michelangeli's tendency toward fussy details and
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  larger structures, and also his penchant for desynchronizing his hands, almost to the point
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  of mannerism. In the Beethoven Opus 2 No. 3 Sonata, for example, Michelangeli sacrifices
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  lightness and brio for unruffled technical perfection. While the Chopin's Scherzo No. 2
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  kind of moves and fits and starts, you get a lot of detail, but very little big picture. And
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  for my ears, the end result is like brilliantly sculpted fragments. However, the Bach-Busoni
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  Chaconne that Michelangeli recorded for British HMV in 1948 not only coheres really seriously,
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  but it's a model of the kind of austere ambience and precise tonal application for which Michelangeli
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  was celebrated. Also, his Brahms Paganini variations basically raised the bar technically for this
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  piece among pianists. However, as some of you piano mavens already know, Michelangeli devises his
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  own ordering of the variations. He doesn't play it the way Brahms set it out in the score.
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  Michelangeli does not play books one or two straight through as normal people do. Actually,
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  if you can play the Paganini variations, you're not normal by definition. You're superhuman.
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  But this is what Michelangeli does. He plays book one's theme, and then he plays variations
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  one through eight. He skips number nine, and then he plays variations 10, 11, and 12. Then he jumps
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  ahead to book two. He doesn't reinstate the theme, but in book two, he plays variations one, two,
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  five, six, seven, and eight. Then again, he drops number nine. I think he had a superstition about
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  the number nine. Who knows? Anyway, from number eight in book two, he goes to numbers 10, 11,
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  and 12 in book two. Then he backpedals to play book two's variations three and four. Then he goes
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  back to book one to play the 13th variation and an abridged fourth variation. And by the way,
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  Yu-Ju Wang recorded Michelangeli's ordering of variations, but without making any cuts or omissions.
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  You know, it's interesting that when Michelangeli brought back the Paganini variations into his
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  repertoire for his recital in Braganes in 1988 that has been on disc, he actually played them
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  straight in Brahms' order. But by then, Michelangeli was way past his best. But that's
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  another discussion. CD number three is devoted to Mozart concertos. There are three Mozart
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  concertos. Number 15 in B flat, Kershaw 450, which was recorded in 1951 and issued the following year.
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  Concertos number 14 in C major, Kershaw 415, and concerto number 23 in A major, Kershaw 488,
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  were recorded in Naples in 1953, but they were only issued officially by EMI in 1985.
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  And in all of these performances, I think Michelangeli's elegance and his refinements of
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  touch and tone stand in great contrast with the rather substandard orchestral playing that you
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  hear on this disc. The fourth and fifth CDs, as I said before, give us the March 4th Royal Festival
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  Hall recital. And this is Michelangeli on prime form throughout the Schumann Carnival and the
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  Faschenschwang aus Wien. And he also plays four of the six Debussy Images. He plays the Chopin
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  F minor fantasy and the G minor ballade. Technically, the Chopin selections are really
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  brilliant, although he does tend to sectionalize and fragment the music. He plays the Cancion of
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  Montpoux as an encore, and that's very, very beautiful. And then his other encore is this
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  really charmless performance of a Chopin waltz in E flat. That's the posthumously published waltz,
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  not the better known opus 18 waltz. And then there is 33 minutes worth of rehearsal and sound
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  checking. And this allows us to eavesdrop on how Michelangeli goes over phrases over and over again,
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  or how we make sure that the action and the tuning are regulated to perfection.
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  It's a remarkable document, and we wouldn't get anything comparable on this level.
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  It's a wonderful, published publicly until when Sony BMG released that box set of Vladimir Horowitz
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  rehearsals at Carnegie Hall. Remember when that came out, documenting all the rehearsals
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  leading up to his historic return in 1965? CD number six gives us the classic Ravel G major
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  and Rachmaninoff fourth concerto that I talked about earlier with Ettore Gracious conducting
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  the Philharmonia Orchestra. What is there to say? These recordings went to the top of the list when
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  they were first issued in 1957, and they've remained at the top of the list for 67 so years.
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  I don't need to talk about what makes these performances special, except maybe I should talk
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  about how Michelangeli's long chains of trills when the second theme returns in the Ravel's
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  first movement, how they replicate a musical saw just seamlessly. There are no bumps in the chain,
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  so to speak. I don't think I've heard another pianist who has really matched Michelangeli's
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  trills. Maybe, I'm sure there's some others, but it's really a very magical effect with Michelangeli.
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  Oh, there's this really cool story about the Ravel concerto recording. The great jazz pianist
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  and my personal mentor, Bill Evans, owned this record. I think he bought it when it first came
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  out. When he was with Miles Davis in 1958, the story goes that he brought the record over to
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  Miles Davis' house, and they listened to the slow movement together. Miles Davis made a really
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  profound and astute comment. He said something to the effect of,
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  Michelangeli plays this music as if he's never going to play it again.
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  Wow. I wish I could have said that. But when it came to talking about music,
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  Miles Davis always nailed it. Discs seven and eight contained two albums that appeared almost
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  at the same time when Michelangeli temporarily decamped from Deutsche Grammophon to EMI.
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  He recorded two Haydn concertos, the D major and the G major, with Edmund Distauts conducting the
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  Zurich Chamber Orchestra. Most pundits thought that these performances were ice cold and totally
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  charmless. And I understand that point of view. Although purely in terms of workmanship and polish,
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  I can appreciate Michelangeli's contributions. It's kind of an abstract perfection that one has
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  to take on its own terms. But are these my favorite Haydn piano concerto recordings? Not on your life.
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  And I have spoken before about the Schumann Carnival. This is the most contrived, hyper
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  detailed, fussy, charmless, emotionally aloof and seemingly interminable Schumann Carnival
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  in the history of recordings. It's from 1975. And I cannot get through three or four movements
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  of this recording without starting to tear my hair out. And if you think this Carnival is bad,
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  you haven't reckoned with the three unreleased movements from the Faschisch-Fankhauswien recorded
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  in 1972. Gosh, this playing is also charmless and totally dead on arrival. CD9 has the 1942 Schumann
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  and Grieg concertos, with Alcio Galliera conducting the La Scala Orchestra. These originally were
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  released on telefunken on 78s. The transfers here are not really the best that you can get, but still
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  this is the young Michelangeli, totally poised, precise, and polished, I guess the three Ps.
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  CD number 10 has the telefunken solo sides, all from 1942 and 1943. And I talked about the transfers
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  earlier. Again, this is pianism with ravishing tonal refinement that's best displayed, I think,
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  in the slow movement of Bach's Italian concerto. The outer movements are less interesting by
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  comparison. Also, the Chopin-Bersouz and the B minor mazurka, Op. 33, No. 4, have wonderful things in
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  them. And in the mazurka, Michelangeli really stretches out that B major section to magical
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  effect. And as he got older, as he kept playing this piece throughout his career, his robatos got
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  more and more pronounced and exaggerated and mannered as he got older. Just to give you an
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  example, this 1943 recording of the mazurka lasts a little more than five minutes. And when
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  Michelangeli played this same mazurka in his final London recital in 1990 that was released by the
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  Aura label, it times out to almost eight minutes, and that's not counting applause. CD number 11
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  has a pretty strong Beethoven emperor concerto from 1960, and it's an Italian radio transmission
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  with Massimo Freccia conducting. And there's a Haydn D major concerto recorded live in Torino
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  with the RAI Orchestra under Mario Rossi from 1959. This is infinitely better and more animated
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  than the EMI studio recording. CD 12 has Michelangeli on top form in the Schumann concerto
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  in a 1962 RAI Rome transmission conducted by Gian Andrea Gavazzani. And there's an excellent
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  and exciting Liszt concerto, number one with Raphael Kubelich conducting the RAI Torino orchestra
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  from 1961. This transmission also included the Liszt totentans in a really good performance.
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  But why wasn't the totentans included in this box set? Very strange. The final two CDs, numbers
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  13 and 14, are soundtracks that stem mostly but not exclusively from Italian television broadcasts
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  that you can find on DVD. But they did come out on various Warner-owned labels in audio format in
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  the past. And what we have here is all top-flight Michelangeli and familiar repertoire, the Debussy
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  Images books one and two, and the Children's Corner Suite plus two preludes from book two.
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  I prefer the Deutsche Grammophon recordings of the Images and Children's Corner for sonic reasons,
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  but it's still good to have these performances. And like I said earlier, this Debussy recital from
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  Turin in 1963 is actually the soundtrack to a televised studio concert that you can find on DVD.
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  Also from Turin in 1963, we have the Chopin Fantasy plus three waltzes and three mazurkas.
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  And then from Treviso in 1963, we have the Scherzo No. 2 and the first Ballade. And these are
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  typically fussed over and sectionalized interpretations in the bigger pieces, as you
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  would expect from Michelangeli. I do prefer the second Scherzo in Michelangeli's early 1970s
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  studio Deutsche Grammophon recording, which is similarly contrived, but it has a demonic
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  deliberation about it that I think is much more convincing. And I think it's even more convincing
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  than the version on Italian HMV 78s that I talked about earlier. So on the whole, the Warner Classics
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  Michelangeli edition has a lot going for it, even though one can regret the omission of certain
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  broadcast items that logically should have been here. And also the fact that not everything has
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  been ideally remastered. This is Jed Disler, and you've been listening to the Piano Maven,
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  your friendly podcast guide to piano recordings. And I hope that this talk about the Michelangeli
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  Warner edition has been of some use. And if I got a little too geeky with details, kind of sounding
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  like how the late great Phil Schaap sounded when he would talk about catalog numbers and take
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  numbers when he talked about Charlie Parker recordings. I guess you can forgive my obsessive
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  discographical rant in this talk, but I usually don't get into those kind of details. But,
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  you know, with this Michelangeli box, you really had to get into chapter and verse, I suppose.
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  Anyway, it is still available. And if you're interested, you know where to go for it. I look
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  forward to you and I being together for the next episode of the Piano Maven. Take good care.