Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli could play Chopin so precisely that listeners claimed he communicated directly with the piano's soul. Born on January 5, 1920, in Brescia, Italy, he entered the Milan Conservatory at age 10 and won the International Piano Competition in Geneva at 19. His debut was immediately recognized as extraordinary. Alfred Cortot, one of the greatest pianists of the previous generation, called the young Michelangeli's playing "a new landmark in piano technique." But Michelangeli was famously temperamental. He canceled concerts without warning, sometimes hours before performance time. He walked offstage mid-performance if audience members coughed. He was known to spend months preparing a single recital, rehearsing pieces he had already performed hundreds of times, searching for a perfection that may not have existed outside his own hearing. His repertoire was narrow by choice. He played Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, Ravel, and very little else, believing that depth of interpretation mattered more than breadth of catalog. He demanded specific pianos for each venue and often traveled with his own instrument. His recordings of Debussy's Images and Ravel's Piano Concerto in G are considered definitive. During World War II, he served as a pilot in the Italian Air Force and was captured by the Germans, escaping from a prisoner-of-war camp. He taught at conservatories across Europe but accepted few students, finding most unworthy of serious instruction. He died on June 12, 1995, in Lugano, Switzerland. Perfection was his obsession, and the distance between perfection and everything else was, for Michelangeli, infinite.