Michelangeli Plays Beethoven

His fingers can no more hit a wrong note or smudge a passage than a bullet can be veered off course once it has been fired . So wrote New York Times music critic Harold Schoenberg in a review of a recital by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. His observation on the pianist’s technical perfection was echoed by other critics during the course of Michelangeli’s extraordinary career and it is very much in evidence in this superb performance of Beethoven’s greatest concerto. But to focus simply on Michelangeli’s technical gifts is to shortchange his innate musicality, and the sheer beauty of his sound. On this, the only commercially available video of Michelangeli in a concerto performance, all of the qualities that distinguished Michelangeli as the greatest of Italian pianists since Busoni are readily apparent. The support given him by the excellent Danish National Symphony Orchestra under Maestro Jan Krenz adds significantly to this major historic release.