Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli - Beethoven Schubert Brahms

Charisma: Many great pianists, past and present, have had almost none. Others, many fewer, have had it to an almost supernatural degree. Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli was one of these. The aura surrounding him, even as he walked to the piano, had a decisive effect on the artistic experience of his audiences. He carried with him an impression not only of overwhelming power and authority, but also of an incorruptible artistic integrity and an almost preternatural calm. This air of Olympian detachment extended both to the near-infallibility of his technique and to the quality of his interpretations. Like many of the greatest artists, Michelangeli was always controversial, arousing in many musicians outspoken hostility and in others a degree of idolatry hardly seen since the heyday of Paderewski. One need not have been in the hall in 1981 when this film was made to experience the mesmerizing atmosphere created there by this greatest of pianistic sorcerers. Playing of this exalted level is enough to nourish the spirit for a lifetime. Here we encounter the very pinnacles of art, a realm vouchsafed to us by very few and from which we emerge enriched. Picture Format: 4:3 ? Sound Format: 5.1 ? Surround Sound, Stereo