Catalogue Connection: 20212

Italian pianist Gabriele Micheli received the second-place Ciccolini Prize in 2021, resulting in this recording for Divine Art made in Trani, Italy in October of that year. Among his mentors since his graduation from the Santa Cecilia Conservatoire are the important pedagogues Benedetto Lupo, Pietro De Maria, Roberto Cappello, and Boris Berman. 

Micheli begins with music by Domenico Scarlatti, the Sonata in A Minor conceived during the composer’s stay in Spain. An expansive Andante in binary form, the piece exploits the use of ornamentation, trills, and small arioso kernels that sing in occasional passing counterpoints. The mood shifts into a more martial character with a darker color, but guided by the fascinating balance of staccato and legato gestures. The music soon assumes the character of a ceremonial pavane or richly ornamental sarabande, solemnly introspective. Micheli’s assortment of textural hues and sustained delicacy of filigree may, for some auditors, remind them of the palette of Arturo Benedetto Michelangeli, which says something quite notable in this young man’s playing. 

In terms of keyboard effects, Micheli’s rendering of the Brahms Theme and Variations in D Minor, arranged by Brahms from the second movement of his own 1860 String Sextet No. 1 in B♭, proves quite remarkable, with Micheli quite literally strumming the opening theme, Andante ma moderato. We must rightly consider the independent piano work an homage to Clara Schumann, to whom it is dedicated. With the addition of rich bass chords, the music becomes a nobly austere march with tragic overtones. The six variants conform to classical procedures, rhythmically diverse, with added moments of ornamental punctuation and active scalar patterns. The latter variants diverge from the initial 2/4 impulse and wander into the major mode. Variations 5 and 6 convey a deep sense of consolation or valediction, imbued with bittersweet melancholy. 

Whatever temperamental and artistic differences separated Johannes Brahms and Franz Liszt, their mutual admiration for the virtuosity of Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini led each composer to write variations on the Caprice No. 24 in A Minor from Paganini’s op. 1 set. Brahms conceived his 1863 set of two books on the theme plus the 28 total variations and tripartite coda that follow to serve as studies on the level of Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes, op. 13. Brahms, like Liszt, venerated the Polish piano virtuoso Carl Tausig (1841–1871), whom Liszt described as “the infallible, with fingers of steel.” Both technically demanding and emotionally and coloristically expressive, the Brahms studies preserve the nature of the original theme while demanding brilliance and articulation in double notes, wide arpeggios, competing metrics, and the full exploitation of the keyboard’s registers. Besides demonstrating a striking, resonant sonority, Micheli impresses with his variety in touches and accents, as in the Brahms equivalent of violin bariolage technique. Even in the midst of hands alternating octave patterns and registers, Micheli projects a music-box transparency—as for example in Variation 11 from Book I in A—and then delivers a thunderous cavalcade of effects in the best style of his great predecessors Backhaus and Bachauer. The rendering of part two of Variation 13 enjoys a glittering faux Hungarian style, a moment well reminiscent of the best from Evgeny Kissin. The passion of the Book I coda ripples with excitement. Book II feels more academic in its approach to technique, rife with syncopated complexities and an occasional concession to popular styles, as in the waltz variation, No. 4. The rendering of the chromatic octaves of No. 7 should drop a few jaws in astonishment. A consistent resolve informed by sensitive attention to the Brahms capacity for sweetness in the midst of bravura complexity marks this performance as a banner moment, in what may well become the Micheli canon of immortal sound documents. 

The music of Liszt appears in this recital, seeming inevitable in terms of keyboard evolution. Micheli chooses Liszt’s 1841 Reminscences de Norma by Vincenzo Bellini, a clear opportunity for Liszt to emulate the bel canto piano style patented by Chopin. In the general structure of a one-movement fantasia, Liszt utilizes the overture, the cavatina “Casta diva,” and the cabaletta “Ah! Bello a me ritorna.” In his audacious application of chromatic harmonies Liszt wishes to retain the two central themes of love and death embodied in the opera, even superimposing the two arias, originally sung respectively by the Druid priestess and the Roman centurion Pollione. Micheli applies a symphonic sonority to the opera overture, setting the tragic tone for the dramatic action. Micheli’s traveling trill offers a minor marvel, leading directly to the bel canto writing that soon assumes martial, opulent power. It soon becomes apparent that Micheli bears a torch for the Liszt tradition that owes debts to the pianists Cziffra, Bolet, and Lewenthal. Some canny pedal-work softens Liszt’s hammer blows in the bass, still thunderous in their driven, ominous suggestion of implacable fate. 

Micheli turns last to the music of Maurice Ravel, the 1920 evocation of the lost world of the Vienna waltz, La valse, in the solo piano version first introduced to this reviewer by Leonard Pennario. From the swirling phantasmagoria of the opening pages to the evolving influx of light in the music’s development, Micheli maintains the nervously tragic pulse of the work, which, like all of Ravel’s dance forms, explodes in a paroxysm of its own momentum. The kaleidoscope of color and nuance achieves a fluent, kinetic energy that swells and retreats with erotic suggestiveness, a tour de force to end what has already proven itself a potent demonstration of keyboard proficiency. 

The accompanying booklet fails to credit Micheli’s chosen instrument, but the recorded sound proves compelling and explosive, courtesy of engineer Massimo Mazzone and executive producer Alfonso Soldano.

   Another very fine Divine Art recording offers more-varied and somewhat less-familiar fare, but by and large still in the Romantic tradition. Gabriele Micheli’s primary focus here is Brahms, but before that, the CD offers the only non-Romantic piece on the disc: a Domenico Scarlatti sonata that does not quite fit on the modern piano (or any piano), and that is played with greater warmth and a bit more of the sustaining pedal then is really appropriate for music of the early 18^th century. The inclusion of this work as a curtain raiser is something of a mystery, since Micheli is clearly more at home in interpreting the rest of the pieces on the disc. The Scarlatti is followed by another slightly odd choice that, however, fits Micheli’s style better: Brahms’ piano arrangement of the second movement of his String Sextet No. 1, transcribed for piano by the composer as a birthday gift for Clara Schumann, who had asked him to do so. The movement is a noble one, mixing elements of proclamation with the sound of a solemn march, all within variation form. It is a touch on the heavy side in Micheli’s performance, which is a bit slow and which seeks the emphatic more than the emotionally expressive. The playing is first-rate, however, which makes the overall reading a convincing one. What follows on the CD comes across even better. Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Paganini, Books I and II, based on the famed Caprice No. 24,manage to straddle the worlds of theme-and-variations on the one hand, and étude on the other – Brahms actually called this work Studies for Pianoforte. Each of the two books starts with the caprice itself and then presents 14 variations, the last of which is the most virtuosic in both sequences. Micheli really goes to town with this material, attacking the keyboard with abandon that is nevertheless carefully controlled – and handling the considerable technical challenges of the variations with tremendous skill and a certain panache, especially in the second book. Pianistically impressive, the performance is not particularly deep, but unlike much other Brahms piano music, Variations on a Theme by Paganiniis primarily a display piece, not a profound one. Micheli clearly enjoys a certain level of showing off, as is apparent in his handling of Liszt’s Réminiscences de Norma, which takes the dramatic core of Bellini’s opera and turns it into a piece of great power and concentrated drama. Not incidentally, Liszt also makes the work a grand showpiece for the pianist; and again, Micheli relishes the challenge and rises to it in a performance of considerable sweep and intensity. After the Liszt, this CD concludes with Ravel’s La Valse, originally an orchestral work but transcribed by the composer for two pianos and subsequently for a single one. There is a subtle, bittersweet character to the music, whose implied irony – or lack thereof – continues to be a source of debate. Micheli plumbs the depths of the piece, quite literally in the growling way he handles the opening, and while he allows some of the “gradual illumination” of dancers that Ravel said the work includes, the general feeling here is a dark one – the eerie material in the work’s second half sounds especially disconcerting in this performance. The impressionistic nature of the music is less apparent in Ravel’s piano versions than in the orchestral one – the odd playfulness of flute, glockenspiel and triangle at one point, for example, falls a bit flat on keyboard. But the lighter elements of La Valse are not Micheli’s focus in any case: he highlights the restless and grandiose elements rather than the tender and sweet ones. The result is a rather dour La Valse – a justifiable interpretation, certainly, and a very well-played one, but perhaps not quite as sensitive to the many internal contrasts that Ravel built into the work as other readings have been. As a whole, this is a (+++) disc, characterized throughout by excellence of playing but also by somewhat quirky, if not quite ill-considered, handling of several of the pieces.