Famous Pianists: Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli

May 4, 2011 Jennifer Boster

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I am excited to feature another famous pianist on The Teaching Studio today! I am so enjoying learning a little more about the great pianists, and so grateful for YouTube and all of the wonderful historical recordings there that are available to watch. 🙂 My sources for this post include Schonberg’s The Great Pianists: From Mozart to the Present, and http://www.arturobenedettimichelangeli.com/.

“It is not a profession to be a pianist and musician. It is a philosophy, a conception of life that cannot be based on good intentions or natural talent. First and foremost there must be a spirit of sacrifice.”

-Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli

Today’s pianist: Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli

Born: January 5, 1920 in Brescia, Italy

Died: June 12, 1995 in Lugano, Italy

About the man: Michelangeli began his musical training at the age of four, and at fourteen he launched his concert career. At age 19 he won the first prize of the prestigious Geneva International Competition. His importance as a towering figure among 20th-century pianists was coined by pianist Cortot’s saying “Here is a new Liszt.” Along with performing, Michelangeli dedicated himself “with great enthusiasm” to his teaching activities. He is the only Italian pianist of his century (until Pollini) to achieve an international reputation.

Characteristics of his playing: Schonberg puts Michelangeli in the same class as Horowitz and Richter as “one of the great colorists.” He is a legend as a “playing machine,” and some of his colleagues put him in the Horowitz class as a “super-virtuoso.” (Schonberg, p. 461). Schonberg says, “Some of his playing is startling in its sheer pianistic polish and perfection. 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…[He is a] complete master of tonal application, as evidenced in his performance of Gaspard de la nuit…The puzzling part about him [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.”

Repertoire: Debussy, Ravel, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt

Videos

I am unable to embed this video of Michelangeli’s performance of Debussy’s La fille aux cheveux de lin

I wish this were a video, but I couldn’t pass up posting this incredible recording of Michelangeli performing Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit.

Famous Pianists: Emil Gilels

April 20, 2011 Jennifer Boster

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I am excited to introduce a new feature, Famous Pianists, on The Teaching Studio!

In college, during a master class one evening, our professor asked us each to take a piece of paper and write down all of the famous pianists we could think of. He gave us probably five minutes or so, and in those five minutes I came up with {embarrassingly} hardly anything. I don’t think that I was the only one who {sadly} was not familiar with many famous pianists, but I was the lucky one chosen to read my list aloud 🙂

That experience definitely made me think, and gave me the desire to really get to know the great pianists out there. While I have definitely learned about and become familiar with many great and legendary pianists since that day, I still feel that my knowledge is greatly lacking in that area (is there anyone who feels this same way?). As pianists and teachers, we must be familiar with the legendary pianists and the great pianists of our own day, for there is so much to learn from their performances and technique. We need to familiarize our students with these famous pianists as well – in fact, there is a great article in the Clavier Companion about using DVD’s and YouTube videos of historical performances in our teaching.

So, with that said, I will be posting a feature about a famous pianist every couple of weeks or so, in the hopes that I (and my readers, as well!) will become much more familiar with these important pianists! I am so excited! I will be getting a lot of my information from the wonderful book by Harold Schonberg, The Great Pianists: From Mozart to the Present, and will also be sharing some great videos of performances. I hope you enjoy!

Today’s pianist: Emil Gilels

Born: October 19, 1916 in Odessa, Ukraine (which may be why I chose to begin with him, as we share the same birthday!)

Died: October 14, 1985 in Moscow, Russia

About the man: Gilels won the first All-Union Contest of Musicians and Performers in 1933 at the age of 17, and then attended the Moscow Conservatory. Known as “The Little Giant,” he was hailed as a “master pianist” after his first appearance in the West in 1955.

Characteristics of his playing: His playing was strong, clear, objective, steady, logical, unaffected. Schonberg calls him “a thinking man’s pianist.” He, as well as other Russian pianists of his time, concentrated on “tone, on phrase, on the cantabile quality of the instrument.” (Schonberg, 464.) His technique was brilliant.

Repertoire: Gilels played a “steady diet” of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin and Brahms. I love his recordings of Rachminoff; Schonberg mentions his “incredible octaves” in Liszt’s Spanish Rhapsody.

Videos