Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli: a musical TV-shaped reality
Recently I got to see a 70's video from a famous italian pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920-1995) playing Chopin and Beethoven. It's a recording of a studio classical music concert. The episode begins with a series of shots taken from concerts and photographs; there are both moving and static images.
Television tries to recreate the aura of live music, evoking feelings and trying to amplify them in a constant flow by means of one-shot, fixed andstatic images that are almost always close-ups or medium shots. The intention seems to be portraying the famous interpreter through the form that television gave to his musical performance during the recordings of live concerts. The potential of a static image that is reproposed constantly has to be considered as the will to create an interpretational and musical dimension, as a TV-shaped reality. The artist is therefore considered from a fixed point of view, almost always in black & white, his statuesque body, his hands moving on the keys, the slight movements of his face: the sides of his mouth in a tough expression, eyes sometimes closed, sometimes looking up as in contemplation, brows frowned. Benedetti Michelangeli places a handkerchief on the piano before starting to play, and takes it back at the end. A still and academic presence hits the viewer: the music comes out only from the interpreter’s hands, whereas his body is extremely static. Moreover, the nuances of the black & white of the ‘60s create a basic background, an ideal setting to focus the attention on the ‘colour’ streaming from the hands. The earnestness (or the rareness) of appearing (or of not appearing) is thus emphasized. Being there and not being there, showing up or hiding, keeping silent. We see the artist as a young man, then as an old man, but despite time, his essential movements do not change. The composure of the image makes the musician’s position about music very clear. And with position, we do not simply refer to the fact of sitting in front of a piano, the close-up, or the particular of the hands; more basically, we mean the philosophical and aesthetic standpoint. The solitary presence of the artist is the symbol of his own life.
Introductive monologue to the episode, is a crucial musical experience in Benedetti Michelangeli’s life, when, at the age of nineteen, he was awarded with the first prize at the Geneva International Competition. During the competition the artist plays hidden behind a "black veil", a colourless curtain behind which an anonymous musician is judged by a jury of experts. During the performance, music comes out from behind the dark veil alone and naked, wrapped in black, just like the images streaming from the TV. The interpreter becomes then the distance between the instrument and the jury, between the performance and the audience; what is left is music. Television probably supports this distance; a flat image transferred on a black screen detaches, creates mystery; TV and distance can also mean respect towards the composers, towards the music of the past, exhumed from the archives and video-supported. In this episode-tribute to Benedetti Michelangeli, this is the musical repertoire: Beethoven and Chopin. But especially Chopin: Mazurka in D-flat major op. 30, Ballade no. 1 in G minor op. 23, Valse brillante in A major op. 34, Scherzo no. 2 in B-flat minor op. 31,Mazurka in A minor op. 68, Fantasie in F minor op. 49. The musical anthology presents an interpreter on the one hand, and a composer with his technical mastery on the other, the skilful execution and the brilliant architecture of the composition. All this could be done thanks to the concerts realized for the TV by Benedetti Michelangeli during the years of “paleotelevision”. These musical compositions differ from each other but share, however, the destiny of being transposed to dance, like the waltz or the mazurka: they are exterior and visible in their compositional guise, but they are also inner, intimate in their content. This ambivalence in the contents of the compositions can guide us through an interpretational reading of thevideo material about Benedetti Michelangeli that may become symbol of his performances and especially of his aesthetic view of music. Chopin is here the symbol of the musician and composer of an inner world, and the ballads represent his art in very aspect, more than any other of his compositions. He makes feelings resound, though concealed by his technical composure. Nocturnes, scherzos, waltzes, mazurkas. Contradictory,bilateral, inner and outer compositions, fixed and dynamic at the same time, like Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli: a silent musical presence, present and distant at the same time, of whom we perceive the glance and the face, from which the essence comes out: a veil of music.
written under the effect of:
RODA 2005 Reserva, La Riojca, Spain
Like Benedetti Michelangeli this "vino tinto" from Spain has a statuary presence, almost monumental with tannin mouth filling taste.
It comes from a region called Rioja in the north of spain, a charming spot close with a mediterranean climate that makes you feel red fruits, spices, paprika, wheat, barley, asparagus...
Very good with meat, small tapas and red warm orange vegetables... garlic, onion, parmesan lasagna.
Modern shapes from a dryland farming ground.
If you're an organic wine lover... mind the sulfites that are contained in this wine...they make your cheeks red and you are probably gonna wake up still drunk the day after!
