Michelangeli in BEETHOVEN’s Emperor Concerto (1967)
Program: BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 73 “Emperor” Performers: Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, piano/Danish National Symphony Orchestra/Jan Krenz
Studio: VAI DVD 4449
Video: 4:3, Black & White
Audio: PCM Mono
Length: 39 minutes
Rating: ****
Taped in 1967, this glowing performance of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto features the eternally amazing musicianship of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920-1995) in his only commercially recorded concerto collaboration. Jan Krenz leads the Danish National Symphony, confirming his authority in the classics and our regret that his singular talent has had little documentation other than an occasional record with a distinguished soloist.
From the first bars of the Emperor, we bear witness to the aristocracy of Michelangeli’s demeanor at the keyboard, his utter facility with chords, runs, non-legato, and sforzato effects, his stop-on-a-dime adjustments to dynamics, contour, and varied phrase lengths.
The plasticity of ensemble communicates as well to Krenz and his responsive orchestra, making the tuttis effective without trying to overwhelm the massive sonority Michelangeli can project from the keyboard without sacrificing the smooth elasticity of his line. The camerawork follows the interplay between soloist, conductor, and orchestra, revealing Krenz’s economy of means, barely involving his left hand except for a dynamic adjustment or using both hands to swing upward or in a circular manner when invoking one of Beethoven’s avalanches of sound. We know Michelangeli will shine in the broken chord passages, especially when he traverses the range of the keyboard in that series of scales that caused George Bernard Shaw to remark, “I did with my ears what I do with my eyes when I stare.” For the cadenza, Michelangeli invokes that superb mechanism to effect a perfect music box sonority, which the French horn then joins as they cascade to the final, first movement peroration.
The second movement, Adagio un poco mosso, Michelangeli plays as an extended nocturne, sensual, brilliantly colored, breathing in fine-spun arches as his pungent trills ascend or descend over string pizzicati or woodwinds, as required. We do miss the camera’s giving us a view of the bassoon’s descent from B to B-flat, as we segue to the tempestuous Rondo that proceeds with silken abandon. Micheleangeli proejcts a feeling of easy improvisation as the character of the ritornello and its subsidiaries varies with each repetition. When the camera pulls back for a long shot of the pianist, conductor, and orchestra, we sense the complete homogeneity of vision that has moved this realization from first to last. Among the least demonstrative of performing artists at the keyboard, Michelangeli barely allows a nod or a forced smile from the left corner of his mouth to indicate his ingrained passion for this music. But at the last run to the orchestra’s coda, He is already rising to embrace Krenz warmly, their having collaborated in a virtually perfect balance of forces, musical, emotional, and architectural. The Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache always saw in Michelangeli a colleague, and not merely another competent pianist: “Michelangeli makes colors; he is a conductor.”
–Gary Lemco
