SCHUMANN: Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54; DEBUSSY: Four Images – Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, piano/ Orchestre de Paris/Daniel Barenboim – DGG

by | Nov 12, 2009 | Classical Reissue Reviews | 0 comments

SCHUMANN: Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54; DEBUSSY: Four Images – Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, piano/ Orchestre de Paris/Daniel Barenboim

DGG 477 8569,  54:16 ****:


This disc brings forth a previously unissued October 1984 rendition of the Schumann Piano Concerto by the great Italian pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920-1995), who commanded perhaps the most complete keyboard mechanism of any 20th Century artist.


The rapport with Michelangeli ushers forth at the outset, with the pianist particularly keen to project the “affetuoso” required by the composer. Michelangeli manages a non-legato hybrid, a parlando style that communicates nuanced expressivity, often achieving a sense of that “soaring” effect we want from Schumann’s “Aufschwung.” By the time we enter the cadenza, having heard every phrase repeated twice, Michelangeli’s long association (fifty years, 1942-1992) with the concerto allows him all kinds of rhetorical modifications, even adjusting the relative weight of chromatic chords. The studied momentum that takes us to the final peroration of the first movement leaves with a monumental sense of aesthetic closure.

The F Major Andantino grazioso glides between nostalgic musing and skittish dalliance, the tempo adjusted to maintain a singing sense of Schumann’s ardent style. An evolving dialogue ensues, dreamy and wistful, the harmonies not far from Wagner’s Tristan. The transition to the last A Major movement bursts upon us as had the opening movement, the ¾ signature allowing Michelangeli an assortment of metric shifts so that mazurka, waltz, and contradanse each merge into another with seamless finesse. The piano’s response to the woodwinds is an exact duplicate of every phrase, differing only in the ringing quality of Michelangeli’s steely timbre. The orchestral tissue swells with each repetition, an effect that made the ancient Arrau/de Sabata performance so convincing. The scherzando passages whisk by, their metronomic accuracy invisible. Do we hear hints of Carnaval at the conclusion, a tender waltz amidst the flurry of bravura? An absolutely hushed audience explodes in joyous recognition  of the Master.

The four Debussy Images derive from Michelangeli’s appearance in Paris, at Studio Buttes-Chaumont in March 1982. Michelangeli claimed that Debussy’s sound world was always his own, a spatial as well as temporal universe. Despite the differences in sonority and their relative approach to Debussy, much of Michelangeli’s concept of the liquid paused phrases in Reflets dans l’eau hearkens to Walter Gieseking’s guiding spirit, the pedal a constant source of breath. Like the conductor-colorist Celibidache, a fermata from Michelangeli can last forever. Something antique, something harmonically modern suffuses Hommage a Rameau, a kind of plainchant applied to parlando progressions. Both dry and resonant, the phrases lull us with their sensuous droplets of time, the melted images from Dali suddenly blooming with color and willful energy. Cloches a travers les feuilles provides the perfect vehicle for Michelangeli’s variegated palette, wind and water in alchemical union in every bar. A melancholy mist sweeps past us, leaving us purified but emotionally denuded of those comforting illusions by which we maintain a semblance of order. Poissons d’or brings us rhythmic agitation and sudden colors from lacquer portraits, a Mallarme moment made exquisitely erotic. If one posited that bells, bubbles, and butterflies deserve mention in this swirling assemblage of stunning evocative tones, I would not argue.  

— Gary Lemco

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