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From
May 4th to June 12th, at the Teatro Grande of Brescia and the Donizetti
Theatre of Bergamo, it is hold the XXXVII International Piano Festival
named after Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (Brescia 1920-Lugano 1995).
It's a favourable chance to remember an artist that became a legend
when he was still alive: a sublime artist, strange, lonesome, ill-tempered,
maniacal, and, as a pianist, maybe the greatest of the whole nineteenth
century. The Michelangeli's legend started immediately, in July 1939,
when he participated to the International Competition in Geneva and
won. “It was born a new Liszt”, proclaimed Alfred Cortot
(1877-1962), that was deemed by those times the greater interpret alive
of Chopin. A Swiss critic talked about the new star by saying “an
out of common value, we dare to say miraculous “, placing him
impetuously above all the contemporaneous masters. In order to not influence
the jury with their, often histrionic, attitudes, contenders used to
play behind a drop-curtain that make them invisible. Even more unrestrained,
the reporter followed on this way: “Just when the boy's fingers
brushes again the keyboard a thrill passed throughout the big hall and
everybody, for a sort of sudden revelation, from the chorus to the hero,
had the certainty the miracle was becoming true. It burst a raving yell
at the end of the performance. It was the triumph, the final seal of
the prodigious pianist. Pale, with half-opened eyes, while the ovation
was leading him to an abyss of sweet vertigo, the young Benedetti Michelangeli
thought about his mother, that in that moment was at Brescia and was
looking to the sky from the opened window: the sole way to pray for
his son”. Since this far day in 1939 the Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli's
career became a patrimony of the whole music world, without excluding
any country or continent. But here, in this “Almanac”, I
would like to talk about the less known aspects of the pianist and tell
about an episode I personally remember. It is required a foreword: Michelangeli
was real fond of fast cars and he owned a two-seaters Ferrari by which
he moved from a town to town, travelling at an average speed of 200
kilometre per hour and even more. We were at the beginning of the fifty
and it happened to him to cross a village of the Low Veronese at this
speed. A policeman noted his number plate and it started off a report
that leaded to little trial. I was born around here, in a little village
where once a month, it worked a decentred section of the magistrate's
court of Legnago. The trial was just in my village. Michelangeli appeared
before the court regularly, black-dressed, according to his habit. In
the hall, public was scarce. I was with a friend just graduated in law
and who attended trials in order to make apprenticeship. We heard the
following dialogue. Magistrate: “Your personal particulars, please.”
Defendant: “Benedetti Michelangeli Arturo, born at Brescia in
1920 and resident there.” Magistrate: “Profession?”
Defendant: “Strolling musician.” This point, the magistrate
had a start and along with him, my friend and I, enough informed and
fan of music. The reporters published very seldom musicians' pictures:
we knew about Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, but we did not know his
looks. The very moved Magistrate immediately adjourned the hearing,
held out his hand to the pianist and then passed judgment: a fine, accompanied
by the promise to hold a concert soon at Legnago. Michelangeli was of
word, and not only once. The concerts were held in the gymnasium of
the former seat of the fascist young organizations. In this gymnasium
I spent my physical education hours when I was a student at the humanities
secondary school at Legnano. The very exigent Michelangeli beard that
the acoustics of that huge room was absolutely perfect, better than
the La Scala Theatre one or other well-know auditoriums. Benedetti Michelangeli
sensed all the contradictions of the instrument and decided that he
could overcome them only by reaching perfection. Hence the very few
concerts, the very reduced repertory, the steady and ascetic research
of a purification of style. When it came out the long playing along
with the “First Cahier of the Preludes “ of Debussy, the
poet Giovanni Testori wrote this unforgettable words: “The hands
of Benedetti Michelangeli, unique, inseparable with keys, lead directly
to the womb of sound, as if the pianist were the shepherd, the only
one I know, able to lead the numberless notes and senses of music to
their hut, toward its birth and rest fold, and at break of the rose
or golden dawn, sending off...”. I don't know a highest eulogium
for those hands that on the keyboard passed from the moonlight to God,
from the cooing of doves to rumble of the thunde
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