Martha Argerich: The Warner Classics Version (46 CDs)
★★★★★
🎧 Amazon
Some artists cease at nothing to get consideration. Others draw back from it like birds of an endangered species. No prizes for guessing which class Martha Argerich belongs to. The Buenos Aires-born pianist has by no means given a sit-down interview in her life, by no means posed for canopy pictures, by no means taken a political stance. Regardless of these modest precautions, she grew to become the world’s most sought-after keyboard artist. At 83, after bouts of ill-health, every recital she now offers looks as if a miracle.
The current box-set, combining former EMI, Teldec and Erato releases and her competition occasions at Lugano, is however a partial file of her performing life. Lacking are partnerships with Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Seiji Ozawa and Gidon Kremer, which appeared on a 48-CD compilation that Deutsche Grammophon issued for her eightieth birthday. By the point you have got run by the current 46 CDs, I believe you should still be left wanting extra.
Her earliest recordings got here quickly after profitable the Chopin Competitors in Warsaw in 1965. She was the primary and (up to now) solely South American to triumph on the Chopin citadel and no winner since has endowed the occasion with higher lustre. Her early Mazurkas and Polonaises exhibit extra freedom than Arthur Rubinstein at his most relaxed. Her Bartok sonata has the venom of a trapped rattlesnake.
There isn’t any singular Martha model. She appears to return at every composer from an angle no-one thought-about earlier than. A Mozart or Beethoven concerto is a battle with the weather. Messiaen’s Imaginative and prescient de l’Amen, performed four-hand with Alexandre Rabinovich, is extra profane than non secular.
In each occasion, the contact is unmistakably Martha, uncompromisingly so. She recorded the Chopin concertos in Montreal with ex-husband Charles Dutoit, leaving him drumming his heels as she finds unsuspected gems in a phrase. Nobody ought to dare to play Rachmaninov with out first listening to Argerich. She has a really feel for Russian rhythms that sits midway between the borscht and the samovar.
However, you then hear her play Hispanic works and also you’d assume she’s acquired castanets in her socks. Of all of the treasures on this field, I used to be blown off my seat by Argerich taking part in Piazzolla’s Libertango, written no distance from the place she was born and as life-affirming as mom’s milk.
How on earth does she do this? When can I hear it once more?
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Norman Lebrecht is among the most widely-read commentators on music, tradition and cultural politics. He’s a daily presenter on BBC Radio 3 and a contributor to the Wall Avenue Journal, Bloomberg, Standpoint, Sinfini and different publications. His weblog, Slipped Disc, is among the many most generally learn cultural websites on-line, breaking unique tales and campaigning in opposition to human abuse and acts of injustice within the cultural industries.