The Italian Repertoire

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli's Italian repertoire. I've compiling a list of most of the Italian pieces which ABM played, especially in his earlier years (using as a guide Antonio Armella, I concerti di Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli [December, 2025]). This is not a complete list. Please feel free to add a comment below.

'Michelangeli's transition from celebrity to myth occurred when, in 1964, he held concerts in Moscow and Leningrad.  Russia -  which had scattered a dense group of piano heroes around the world -  prostrated itself reverently in front of the Italian who came from a peripheral piano culture.' (Igino Vaccari)

Was there an Italian piano tradition?

​'Ferrucio Busoni, ruler of the concert scene, was born in Empoli (Tuscany) but worked in Germany. Only in the twentieth century did there appeared the first Italian who could compete with the most important pianists of other nations: it was Carlo Zecchi, born in 1903. Michelangeli, born in 1920, was the second. Benedetti Michelangeli was a pure cultural product of Italy, or rather of Lombardy. (Igino Vaccari)

'Benedetti Michelangeli had not studied in Paris, but in Brescia and Milan, and in the Milan not of the Conservatory, but of the ladies of high society. But in Italy in those years, we have also said that a new cultural revival was underway, that of the entire eighteenth-century world; in other words, what we conventionally call neoclassicism had spread. It was during these years that Vivaldi was [re-]discovered, which meant that performing Vivaldi meant being in step with the times, being modern. Indeed, the neoclassicism of Casella, Respighi, and others was riding the wave of many recent musicological discoveries, and vice versa.

'Musicological discoveries were often driven by a search for music from the Italian instrumental tradition, especially from the eighteenth century. Underlying this attitude was, of course, a nationalist culture, supported and fuelled by the Fascist régime, which saw the predominance of Italian music even in the instrumental repertoire. Thus, attempts were made to recover and valorize even that which had fallen into oblivion, often without the philological rigour that is considered indispensable today.

'Transcriptions were therefore made at will, mostly transposing to the piano what was originally written for strings, harpsichord, or other instruments. In this context, Benedetti Michelangeli adapted by studying Scarlatti and all the Italian harpsichordists, and incorporating works into his repertoire that today are considered incredibly kitsch or even unheard-of monstrosities, which nevertheless responded to the tastes and dictates of the time.' (Enrico Filippini)

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The date in brackets is of a record of the (earliest in some cases) performance. (Scarlatti generally not included.)

*Meyer, Tarantella (1927)

Marcelle Meyer was French but the music is a tarantella, a fast, lively southern Italian folk dance traditionally played in 6/8 time.

A sonata by Domenico Scarlatti was first perfomed by ABM in Brescia at a concert on 17 April 1932

Giovanni Anfossi, Capriccio (1932)

ABM's private teacher in Milan, after Chimeri. Anfossi (1864-1946). Or was the piece by Neapolitan opera composer Pasquale Anfossi, from whom Giovanni was descended?

Giuseppe Michelangeli (father), Carillon (1932)

Capitanio, Danza dei fachiri (1936), Dance of the Fakirs

Salone Pietro da Cemmo, Brescia; 20 February 1936. The scherzo had not been perfomed in Brescia for 20 years.

"Lo Scherzo ottiene ancore il più luninghiero successo per il sapore di composizione recente concepita com' è com arditezza di forma e originalità di diesgno..." Il Popolo di Brescia

"The Scherzo also achieves signal success, bearing the stamp of a recent composition—conceived as it is with boldness of form and originality of design..."

Isidoro Capitanio (1874–1944), an Italian musician and composer from Brescia. He taught at the Instituto musicale Venturi di Brescia alongside Paolo Chimeri (1852-1934). Capitanio taught composition to Giulio Tonelli, Luigi Manenti and Franco Margola, some of whose music ABM also performed. [ARMELLA p.9]. ABM had some early composition lessons from him.

Giovanni Sgambati (1841-1914), Studio melodico (1936) [=Étude mélodique op. 21 no. 5 in B minor?]

*Sgambati had been a student for Liszt. Jorge Bolet was to revive his Piano Concerto in G minor Op.15 in the 1970s

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Cipressi Op.17 (1936)

[in a Brescia piano competition, ARMELLA p.15]

Roncalli, Passacaglia (1937)

?Ludovico Roncalli (1654-1713) arranged for piano

Turrini, Presto (1937)

Margola, Tarantella-Rondò (1937) - first performance

Baldassare Galuppi, Allegro vivace (1938)

Baldassare Galuppi (18 October 1706 – 3 January 1785) was a Venetian composer, born on the island of Burano in the Venetian Republic.

Baldassare Galuppi, Sonata in B flat major

Baldassare Galuppi, Sonata No. 5 in C major (still performed e.g. Tokyo, 1973)

Baldassare Galuppi, Presto

Martucci, Tema con variazione Op.58 (1938)

Paolo Chimeri, Romanza; Scherzo (1930s)

Respighi, Notturno in G flat major (from his Sei Pezzi per Pianoforte P.044 (1938)

Ottorino Respighi (9 July 1879, Bologna – 18 April 1936) was one of the leading Italian composers of the early 20th century.

Pick-Mangiagalli, Impetuoso

Riccardo Pick-Mangiagalli (1882 – 1949) was an Italian composer and pianist of Czech birth. Born in Strakonice, South Bohemia, on July 10, 1882, Pick-Mangiagalli moved with his family to Milan, Italy, when he was two years old. In 1896, at the age of 14, he began his studies at the Milan Conservatory. After graduating from the conservatory in 1903, he worked as a concert pianist for the next 11 years in Italy and Vienna. In 1914, Pick-Mangiagalli abandoned his performance career in favor of pursuing work as a music teacher and composer. He taught at the faculty of the Milan Conservatory, and in 1936, he succeeded Ildebrando Pizzetti as its head.

Impetuoso is from Tre composizioni per pianoforte (1932), No. 3 (along with Filigrana and Sarabanda ieratica)

Manenti, Nacchere ("Castanets", written in 1934) (1938)

Luigi Manenti (Cazzago S. Martino, March 16, 1899 - Brescia, February 24, 1980). "His refusal to join Fascism hindered a promising career." The title derives from the Persian terms nakar and Arabic naqqāra .

Carlo Bossini, Pezzo nella forma di rondo (1939)

Alessandro Longo (the editor of Scarlatti), Mazurca

Marescotti, Fantasque (1939)

Martucci, Tarantella [napoletana?] (1940)

Florido Tomeoni, Fuga e Allegro (1941); Fuga

*Beethoven, Variazioni su un tema di Paisiello ("Nel cor più non mi sento") - does this count?

Luigi Ferrari Trecate (1884–1964), Bautte e Gondonlieri (from Riflessi lagunari)

Franco Margola (1980-1992), Concerto (1944)

Margola, a composer from Brescia whose Concerto in C-sharp minor ABM had performed in Florence and which was revived in Milan after the war.​ The concerto was premiered by Benedetti Michelangeli at the Teatro Comunale di Firenze in 1944.

He was born in Orzinuovi, in the Brescia province, on October 30, 1908, and attended the CA Venturi Music Institute in Brescia.

Alfredo Casella (1883-1947), Funebre (primo dei die Ricercari sul nome BACH) (1947)

Mario Peragallo (1910-1996), Concerto (1950)

Clementi, Sonata in B-flat major, Op. 12, No. 1

Clementi, Sonata in C major Op. 7 No. 2 (Tel Aviv, Israel 1969)

Franco Margola, Kinderkonzert (1955)

A recording exists from 18 September, 1955: Teatro La Fenice, Venice, Italy

– Franco Caracciolo / Unidentified orchestra