I'm not alone, I imagine, in having mixed reactions to Michelangeli's Beethoven, and after listening to these three CDs I find him a more perplexing artist than ever. Perplexing because he likes to keep his musical personality well hidden—or at any rate mysterious—behind the armour-plated magnificence of his playing; disconcerting too because it is hard to arrive at a reasoned assessment of readings of classical music by someone who is evidently not a man of balance. To be such a man I take it, in Thomas Mann's sense, is not Michelangeli's ideal. Indeed, to interpret texts of the classical masters in a way which will give them the most vivid life does not seem to be his principal concern. There is an intellectual froideur about his playing of Beethoven which verges on the disdainful and which is sometimes more than off-putting: it is hateful. It is as if we were asked to contemplate the jewelled machinery of his piano playing as the offer of sufficient pleasure in itself. No legato scales could be more perfectly even than these, no chords more sonorous at all dynamic levels or more perfectly attacked; no part-playing clearer, no texture better balanced or presented with more refinement of touch and tone. Yet where, I ask myself—when Michelangeli is at his most inscrutable—is the emotional commitment and the current of feeling that should make a performance of a Beethoven concerto a series of connected events and a touching musical experience?
All three concertos were recorded in 1979 in Vienna at public performances in the Musikverein; the C minor has not been issued before. There is applause after each and also before the C minor and the E flat, but not before the C major. When the C major first appeared, on LP, Richard Osborne was stirred by it and provoked to the reaction that, if Beethoven's contemporaries found the composer's playing brilliant and stirring—''truculent even, rather than delicate''—then the character of Michelangeli's performance could well be in order. Two years later, however, he admitted that it hadn't worn well. Except in the tuttis, the contributions of the orchestra are blotted out, as if nothing the orchestra had to play in counterpoint or dialogue with the piano was of interest. The balance engineer has tried to help the wind through, but even in the duet with the piano towards the close of the slow movement the first clarinet stands no chance. The character of this largo is rarely in focus at all, let alone filled out. What RO described as the chiselled splendour of Michelangeli's tone is everywhere apparent, and I do not discount the fine moments—in the big first-movement cadenza, notably, and in the finale where the rondo theme is a model of precise articulation—but this can never be a version of the C major Concerto that I warm to. It is carved in marble, most of it, and with feeling so externalized and frozen that the effect is chilling. And the slow movement is really pretty awful.
I respond rather more positively to the C minor. The Vienna Symphony is not a great orchestra but Giulini makes them give of their best. The solo contributions from the wind may not be distinguished, and in chorus the wind achieve no better than a rustic blend at times, but Giulini insists on proper phrasing and punctuation and that is much- and in the first tutti he lays down a frame for a performance of the first movement that Michelangeli can fill out with relish. The finale is also good; if you can admire not only the clarity of the piano playing but its wonderful rhythmic strength, you may not miss a measure of warmth. The slow movement is another matter. There is beauty of a kind but it is marmorial, once again, not plastic, not even when Beethoven asks for his extended cadential decorations, in the coda, to be shaped by the soloist sempre con gran' espressione. The mask does not slip and a literal treatment of the passage is deemed to be enough.
Unexpectedly, the Emperor, which I hadn't heard before, quickly fires me to a steadier enthusiasm. Perhaps this is a work which Michelangeli has always done particularly well. He drives the opening flourishes hard, which I like, and thereafter responds keenly to Giulini's exposition grand but always moving forward, matching it with a purpose that seems to derive from just that long-range musical thinking which I so often miss in his accounts of the other concertos. There is spaciousness, and time for everything, and always that rock-like strength of rhythm. The detailing could hardly be bettered but isn't allowed to deflect attention from our perception of the form. Who said that form is harmony writ large? The shifting perspectives, the returns, the moves from region to region, the grandeur of the vistas, reveal themselves with ease as the music unfolds. The security of the technique is enough to make most other pianists attempting an Olympian view of the concerto seem clumsy; but it does not draw attention to itself. And although Michelangeli still isn't very willing to provide an obbligato rather than a solo—the second horn has a hard time of it in the coda of the first movement—I do at last feel, throughout the work, that he is in his element. One aspect of his recording I particularly like: the depth of his sonority is perfectly matched to the orchestra's. That makes for some especially exciting listening in the finale.
Great playing, then, by an important pianist, though hardly great Beethoven interpretation on two of the three discs. As for the Emperor, I'm not so sure.'