Fish in Deep Waters

Like a big fish that has been sometimes sighted but never hooked, Italy's Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli has a reputation as one of the world's best--and most eccentric--pianists, even though he remains elusive to both critics and audiences. Rated as Italy's No. i keyboard artist, Michelangeli seldom surfaces to perform, yet keeps the waters of controversy thrashing. Some call him great; others regard his style as too light and chilly.

Hailed as "the new Liszt" at 19, Michelangeli has toured erratically and temperamentally, but today, at 40, is known chiefiy among other leading pianists. Perhaps his most important work: his year-round classes for hand-picked students from all over the world. At his summer home in Arezzo near Florence last week, Michelangeli was presiding over his latest international class of 34, enforcing iron discipline but treating musical problems with immense patience. He can dismiss a student at a moment's notice if he fails to show the "talent and good will"; yet he never takes fees from those who stay.

When classes are over, Michelangeli, a powerful, strapping man whose large hands can dominate a steering wheel as readily as a keyboard, climbs into his Lancia and scorches the road to his sea side summer home. The pianist drove in the prewar Mille Miglia three times, won once, but now has quit racing, officially at least. (He boasts that he recently forced his Ferrari to 186 m.p.h.)

Living Within. Michelangeli's house is currently shared by three female students; yet friends who know him well vow that he leads a semi-monastic life devoted exhaustingly to perfecting and augmenting his repertory of Beethoven,

Bach, Mozart, Ravel and Chopin, and to absorbing Italian verse during hours of relaxation. During his teens, Michelangeli lived in a monastery for one year during a bout with tuberculosis, still withdraws there when the world presses too close.

A prodigy who was teaching at a conservatory when he was only 16, Michelangeli served in the Italian air force and Alpini during World War II. He ran afoul of the German SS, who, by his account, "rubber-hosed" his arms when they learned he was a pianist. "A minor war wound of no lasting consequence," shrugs Michelangeli. But since the war, his health has been poor; he has played less and less, behaves with growing eccentricity. During rare recording sessions, he will sit pondering for hours before placing hands to keys, or walk out to take the speeding air in his car. Or he may smash an offending master disk over his knees, as he did at Naples a few years ago, destroying two weeks' work. On the concert stage he is equally unpredictable, sometimes performing in a sport coat or overcoat before audiences in dinner jackets or tails. He balks at applause, is apt to stalk away from cries for encores.

Not from Barnum's. Says Genoa Critic Beppe Borselli indulgently: "The man is capricious and affected. The artist is strict and terse. He flees from every sort of histrionics, from all romantic drivel." The virtuoso's tour to the U.S. in 1948-49 won him lukewarm applause, and the New York Times's late Olin Downes missed "penetrating comprehension and imagination" in Michelangeli's playing. With equal finality, the pianist blames the fact that he would not play to the gallery: "They wanted me to act as if I was from Barnum's circus."

Since he will accept neither teaching fees nor a government stipend, Michelangeli sooner or later will again have to tour in Italy to help support himself. During his travels he is always accompanied by his personal piano tuner and his Steinway (loaded on a truck). The instrument has been stripped of all felt, until, someone observed, it will begin playing if "someone breathes on it." Italian commentators know where Michelangeli is, even if the rest of the world is not so sure. They are still debating his cold-fish, withdrawn but pure style of performing. "As performer of classics he has never satisfied me," states Venetian Critic Giuseppe Pugliese. Not at all, exclaims Corriere delta Sera Critic Franco Abbiati: "He is outstanding as an interpreter of classics or French expressionists." And Verona Critic-Composer Laszlo Spezzaferri pronounces Michelangeli's technique "absolute perfection."

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