David Dubal

I need to investigate this comment which I found on YouTube.

David Dubal, comparing ABM’s Bach-Busoni Chaconne (in which, he says, “Bach counts for little: it is Michelangeli paying homage to Busoni, his great compatriot”) to the Paganini Variations, draws the parallel that “Brahms becomes merely the medium through which the two Italians commune, Paganini conveying to Michelangeli his dark and rarefied secrets of technique. Such playing has an element of mystery. For Michelangeli, music is a rite to be performed, an exorcism.”

@gullivior replied (translated from the Italian):

In my view, there is neither mystery nor depth in Michelangeli, and I believe it is misleading to look for arcane elements in him... Michelangeli was driven by an obsession with technical perfection and a 'libido' essentially bound up with sound... for him, the search for meaning stemmed from a total outward mastery of the piano's language, from perfect control of the 'machine'... it is almost impossible to find flaws in Michelangeli the pianist, yet if we set aside his exceptional virtuosity, the limitations of the artist seem to emerge—a lack of genuine poetic qualities... ultimately, I think Michelangeli's functionalist aesthetic may have had a negative influence on certain pianists of subsequent generations... and this has nothing to do with Busoni, Paganini, or Italy... it is simply a man pursuing an obsession through the piano, or—and perhaps Dubal is right only in this sense—trying to exorcise his own demons through the instrument...

@gullivior

A mio avviso in Michelangeli non v'è né mistero né profondità, e credo sia fuorviante cercare in lui elementi arcani...Michelangeli fu guidato da una mania per la perfezione tecnica e da una 'libido' legata essenzialmente al suono...la ricerca di significato nasceva in lui dal totale dominio esteriore del linguaggio pianistico, dal perfetto controllo della 'macchina'...è quasi impossibile trovar dei limiti al Michelangeli pianista, ma se prescindiamo dalla sua eccezionalità di virtuoso, a me pare che emergano i limiti dell'artista, una carenza di autentici tratti poetici...e in fondo penso che l'estetica funzionalista di Michelangeli abbia potuto influire negativamente su alcuni pianisti delle generazioni successive...e non c'entrano né Busoni né Paganini né l'Italia...c'è solo un uomo che, attraverso il pianoforte, insegue un'ossessione, o che (solo in questo senso Dubal potrebbe aver ragione) attraverso il pianoforte cerca di esorcizzare i propri fantasmi...