No more imperious or mesmeric pianist has ever existed than Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. His psychological complexity is evident at every turn, his austere, third degree intensity can burn a hole in his listeners' consciousness, switching in a trice from a chill and intimidating perfection to a flickering romantic susceptibility. Above all, this is the playing of a unique master, making the booklet-note writer's claim that this performance of Schumann's Carnaval is 'along the same lines' as Rubinstein or Arrau doubly blurred and offensive. At no point could you ever mistake Michelangeli for another pianist. That this provides a two-edged sword is part of the mystery and fascination. In what sense is Michelangeli's neutral and inhibited, if pianistically ultra-precise, Beethoven Op 7 Sonata Allegro molto e con brio ? True, he conjures a near mystical stillness in the second movement Largo but his freeze-dried pianism in the final Rondo is the reverse of grazioso.
On the other hand he is hypnotic in the wintry declamation of his selection from Schumann's Album for the Young while in Carnaval his pianism is of a calibre that, even when heartless, holds his listeners in a vice-like grip. 'Arlequin' struts and spins with an incomparably teasing elegance and finesse, and even when you are offered wildly trumpeting Papillons or a refusal to indulge the piano and forte jocular contrasts of 'Pierrot', you recall breathlessly surging and agitato (as marked) 'Chopin' and a piquancy and drollery throughout, startling to those who consider Michelangeli's 'egotistical sublime' above such characterisation. Again, you may find that from Michelangeli the poco espressivo of Var 13, Book 2 from Brahms's Paganini Variations is very poco indeed or that the molto dolce of Var 12, Book 1 is coldly compromised, but oh, the overall mastery is adamantine and phenomenal. The glissandos of Var 13 in Book 1 become part of a wild stamping dance that makes a mockery of so many other more effortful alternatives.
Michelangeli is crystalline and compelling in Brahms's Fourth Ballade in a manner far removed from gentler and more romantic received wisdom and in his selection of Chopin Mazurkas he strips away all decorative surface gestures, penetrating to their very essence, confiding their shifts of mood with the rarest sense of vision and darkness. Try Op 33 No 4 in B minor, which Michelangeli so often played as an encore, and you will be reminded of a patrician refinement that has remained unequalled. The transfers are excellent and the notes discuss Michelangeli's perverse juggling with the order of Brahms's Paganini Variations (he never played the finale of Book 2) as well as charting the zigzag course of his career, its bewildering hiatuses, its obsessive attachment to particular works and incomprehensible indifference to others.'