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Michelangeli’s Brahms

Posted: Sunday | 11.20.11

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli

I am a great fan of the music of Brahms. I am thrilled by his orchestral music, his chamber music, his works for chorus, and his compositions for violin and piano solo. His German Requiem is also one of my great loves.

In this recording we hear the Brahms Ballades, Op. 10, performed by the great interpreter, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli

Michelangeli was known for his note-perfect performances. The music critic Harold Schonberg wrote of him:

“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…The puzzling part about Michelangeli is that in many pieces of the romantic repertoire he seems unsure of himself emotionally, and his otherwise direct playing is then laden with expressive devices that disturb the musical flow.”

Here is Michelangeli, in the Brahms Ballade Op.10 No 4 in B major