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One of the most enigmatic performers of the 20th century, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli was also one of the most compelling and, paradoxically, one of the least-heard pianists of his generation. Michelangeli was famous for having canceled nearly as many performances as he gave, and he committed little of his vast repertory to disc.

Michelangeli was born on January 5, 1920, in Orzinuovi, Italy. His father was a dedicated amateur musician who introduced young Benedetti to the art. After early studies on the violin, Michelangeli took up the piano, entering the Milan Conservatory at the age of ten.

In 1939 Michelangeli's concert career began in earnest after he claimed top honors at the International Piano Competition in Geneva. Of his triumphant performance at the competition, no less a luminary than the great Alfred Cortot exclaimed, "A new Liszt is born!" Service in the Italian Air Force during World War II interrupted Michelangeli's career; taking the stage again at war's end, however, he soon earned a place among the top performers of the day.

In 1960 Michelangeli performed Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto in Vatican City for the Pope. A triumphant 1964 appearance in Moscow reportedly had the audience in an uproar, and in 1965 Michelangeli became one of the first Western artists to concertize extensively in Asia.

In the 1970s and 1980s he made fewer and fewer concert appearances, owing both to consistent health troubles and his growing aversion to public display. During a performance in Bordeaux in October 1988 he suffered an aortic aneurysm onstage; nevertheless, he resumed performing the following season. He gave his last public performance in 1990 and died five years later died from the chronic medical problems that had plagued him since childhood.

Michelangeli regarded the life of a concert pianist as one of labor. His own schedule included upwards of ten hours of practice a day; he suggested to his pupils that they cease practicing only when the pain in the fingers and shoulders became too great for them to continue. Michelangeli took his role as a mentor very seriously; he held various teaching positions in Italy and throughout Europe, and included Martha Argerich and Maurizio Pollini among his pupils.

To many Michelangeli's playing was the ideal blend of technique and uncanny musical depth. His subtlety, revealed in such masterly recordings as Brahms' Paganini Variations, is in restraint and detachment -- calculated to temper power and fury, not to replace it. His performances of Mozart, Haydn, and Scarlatti are particularly esteemed.

Michelangeli never wholly embraced life as a concert artist. He felt that to pour such adulation on a performer was a disgrace, and that it distracted the performer from the very essence of his duty. A deeply private man, Michelangeli had a tendency to distort the truth during interviews, making it difficult for musicologists and historians to build an accurate portrait of his life; he will likely remain a fascinating, little-understood man.

Although he was not an international conducting star, Gianandrea Gavazzeni was one of the most respected and dependable of opera conductors, considered one of the great preservers of the authentic Verdi tradition at La Scala. He was also a composer, but renounced that career.

At the age of 11 he entered the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, studying piano there from 1921 to 1924. In 1925, he entered Milan Conservatory, remaining there through 1931. His primary area of study was composition, mainly under Ildebrando Pizzetti.

He started his musical career in the traditional entry-level job of répétiteur (i.e., individual coach who ensures that singers are prepared according to the conductor's interpretation), as a pianist, and as a journalist in the field of music.

When he had an opportunity to conduct, he began to champion the music of his fellow composers Pizzetti, Luigi Dallapiccola, Gian-Francesco Mailipiero, and Goffredo Petrassi, the leading modernists on the Italian scene at the time, having also supported them in his journalistic writings.

Gavazzeni composed actively at this time. His oratorio Canti per Sant'Alessandro (1934) and an opera, Paolo e Virginia (1935), were performed and well received. He wrote additional orchestral and vocal music. But in 1949, as his conducting career was taking off, he not only announced his retirement as a composer, but also banned any further performances of his works.

In 1948 he first conducted at La Scala Opera in Milan, where he continued to conduct frequently through 1977. He was the artistic director of that house from 1965 to 1972. He also often conducted at Maggio Musicale of Florence. His British debut was at the 1957 Edinburgh Festival, conducting a guest appearance of the smaller La Scala touring company called La Piccolo Scala. He appeared at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera in 1965, leading Anna Bolena by Donizetti, and at the Metropolitan Opera (his U.S. debut) in 1976. He conducted widely in Europe, including several appearances at the Bol'shoi in Moscow, and in Canada and the U.S. He was best known for his interpretations of operas of Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, and the verismo school.

He continued his notable career as a music journalist. His Musicians of Europe (Musicisti d'Europe, Milan, 1954) was a notable summing up of the immediate post-War classical music scene, and biographical/musical studies of Bellini and Donizetti are also well respected.