The Unwritten Performance – Michelangeli and Kleiber in Beethoven’s Fourth

There are musical encounters that never happened yet remain strangely inevitable in the minds of those who dream in sound. As if the ether had whispered them into being, as if the stars aligned once on some higher plane, where truth and beauty are the only currencies. One such phantom collaboration is the imagined but resoundingly genuine partnership of Carlos Kleiber and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, two of the most elusive and uncompromising artists the 20th century ever produced, in Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto.

This is not about what was. It is about what ought to have been.

Let us conjure their presence: Kleiber, the conductor who shaped silence as meticulously as he did sound, his gestures akin to symphonic poems; and Michelangeli, the keyboard monk, ascetic and alchemist, who transformed every phrase into a ritual, every note into distilled essence. The pursuit of perfection consumed both; both were allergic to compromise, and both, in their own haunted way, were seeking the Absolute.

And what better battlefield or perhaps sacred ground than Beethoven’s Fourth? A concerto unlike any other. A work suspended between the Apollonian and the Orphic. The piano’s solitary, introspective entrance gently weaves its way into being as if waking from a metaphysical dream. Then the orchestra, not in triumph but in quiet awe, responded like a Greek chorus to the inner monologue of the soul.

It is a concerto not of argument but of conciliation. And who better to bring forth its unspoken drama than these two men who understood that sound, in the right hands, becomes a metaphysical act?

The Ritual of Preparation

In this imagined collaboration, nothing is left to chance. Weeks before the first rehearsal, Michelangeli sends ahead a heavily annotated score, immaculately copied by hand, filled with his hieroglyphics of phrasing and voicing, as well as pedalling suggestions not as commands but as philosophical proposals. Kleiber, ever suspicious of interpretive dogma, receives it not with annoyance but with intrigue. Here, finally, is a pianist who, like him, believes in the secret architecture behind the notes, not the mere skeleton, but the soul dwelling inside it.

Their first rehearsal takes place in a dimly lit hall with no journalists, no entourage, and no indulgences. Only the orchestra, under Kleiber’s severe gaze, and Michelangeli, wrapped in grey silence, his hands already murmuring over imaginary keys.

Kleiber does not speak much. He conducts with his eyes, his shoulders, and a flick of his wrist. Every cue is a gesture toward inevitability. Michelangeli responds not as a soloist but as a shaman deciphering the codes of a higher reality. When they play the opening of the first movement, time ceases. The G major chord floats from the piano not as sound, but as an invocation.

There is no applause. There is no need.

The First Movement – Logos and Lyrical Fire

Here, their temperaments converge with eerie precision. Michelangeli’s controlled inwardness and Kleiber’s poised volatility do not collide; they complement. The piano’s opening phrase, barely audible, is a meditation on origin shaped by fingers that do not “press” but breathe. Kleiber lets the orchestra hesitate before responding. The strings murmur, unsure, reverent. He understands that this is not yet a dialogue; it is listening made manifest.

As the movement unfolds, one witnesses a miracle of balance. Michelangeli avoids all theatricality, yet what he achieves borders on the sublime. His touch is pure vibration; the trills seem etched in light. Kleiber surrounds him with orchestral textures that breathe, sigh, and question. The entire movement is suspended between structure and surrender, a bridge not just between soloist and orchestra but between spirit and form.

One could analyse the transitions, the voicings, and pedalling (or the near-complete absence of it), but that would miss the point. This is not performance. It is a revelation.

The Second Movement – Orpheus Among the Furies

Here, the narrative tightens. Beethoven does not provide an explanation for this enigmatic movement. The orchestra roars in stark octaves, implacable, almost cruel. Michelangeli’s response is unflinching but inward. His piano does not plead. It does not lament. It simply is. The left hand speaks first, a single line of meaning, unbroken, unapologetically human. Kleiber shapes the orchestra into a wall not of brute force, but of elemental resistance.

And then: the slow thaw. The orchestra begins to yield, not to volume, but to presence. The piano’s voice softens nothing; it awakens. Michelangeli does not “win” the battle. There is no battle. The transformation occurs in silence, in restraint, in the space between two notes where something else, something other breathes.

Kleiber and Michelangeli understand that this movement is not a confrontation but a transfiguration. By the end, the orchestra no longer thunders. It listens.

The Final Movement – Joy Without Uproar

The Rondo emerges not as a celebration but as clarity regained. The soloist and orchestra now move as one, not in unison, but in spiritual consonance. Michelangeli’s passagework is effortless but never virtuosic in the vulgar sense. Each run is a spiral, not a display. Kleiber animates the orchestral lines with barely contained joy ot exuberant, but radiant.

There are no grand climaxes, no indulgent ritardando; just the steady, almost impersonal return of G major, like sunlight breaking through after a long twilight. When the final chords fall into place, one feels not triumph but completion.

They do not bow. There are no interviews. No encores. The concert, if it had ever happened, exists only in the memory of those who were transformed by it. Or in the dreams of those who never heard it and never needed to, for its power transcends the need for physical presence.

Two Artists, one Compass

What makes this imaginary performance compelling is not the genius of either man alone but the convergence of their truths. Michelangeli sculpted silence with the delicacy of an archer drawing breath. Kleiber, who conducted with the agony and ecstasy of one possessed by form. They shared an understanding that perfection was not the goal but merely the precondition for something more profound: contact with the eternal.

Both men were fugitives from the ordinary. Kleiber walked away from careers that others would have sold their soul for, conducting only when the music demanded it. Michelangeli cancelled more concerts than he gave, as if the performance were a sacrament, not a service. In each other, they would have recognised kindred spirits, monks of the score, exiles from the world of superficial art.

Beethoven’s Fourth was the only terrain on which they could have met: a concerto that refuses violence, that begins not with assertion but with invocation and ends not in conquest but in peace.

The Absence That Speaks

It never happened, of course. There is no recording. No rehearsal tapes. No shaky bootleg captured in a dusty European church.

And yet, it is more real than many performances that crowd our streaming platforms and our concert halls. Because what we imagine with the ears of the soul often carries more truth than what passes for reality.

In the quiet hours, if one listens closely, one can still hear that unplayed performance, that dream concerto between Michelangeli and Kleiber. A single G major chord floats into the silence. A pause. A breath. Then, a dialogue begins that speaks of things no words could carry.

Not a collaboration. A communion.