Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli: «Canti Popolari»

A revolution -thus can be defined, without risk of exaggeration, the advent of Michelangeli among the ranks of harmonizers of the Coro della SAT. Michelangeli had intuited the performance capacities of this famous choir, though he adapted them to his own sensibility and artistic requirements. A revolution it was, but one embraced in a natural way, as if the great pianist and the choir had to meet and had always known the fact.

The result is extraordinary: the suspended chords, chromatic scales, the pedal point of the basses, the harmonies set in glorious polyphonic structure, the rhythmic changes, the timbres sought by Michelangeli opened up a new world for the choir, while the choir for its part offered itself to the Artist as an instrument pliant and at the same time creative, alive and full of vitality - overcoming without difficulty the initial perplexities regarding the enormous contrast between not merely the two "Pastora"s but two opposed modes of conceiving popular song.

A must for everyone who actually admires and wants to know other aspects of the Maestro Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli.