DG’s “Martha Argerich Collection” consolidates and confirms (if confirmation were necessary) our sense of a unique vision and virtuosity. Here, simply and assuredly, is one of the most magisterial talents in the entire history of piano playing, so that this 11-disc box and tribute (its contents forever journeying from shelf to CD player) proudly stands next to parallel recorded celebrations of Rachmaninov, Cortot and Horowitz – immortal examples of re-creative genius.
Even the greatest pianists can be disarmed at the mention of Argerich’s name, stunned into unaccustomed silence by her witchery of gifts. Yet reacquaintance with so many legendary performances also reminds us of how lazy assumptions are a poor alternative to revitalized opinion, for the keenest critical appraisal. Returning to Argerich is like confronting a magical crystal that obligingly shatters into glittering fragments so that it can be lovingly rebuilt and restored to an ever more pristine state. Such a process is both exhilarating and exhausting, for Argerich is hardly a comfortable companion, confirming your preconceptions. Indeed, she sets your heart and mind reeling so that you positively cry out for respite from her dazzling and super-sensitive enquiry. But again, in the final resort, she is surely (unlike Horowitz, for example) a great musician first and a great pianist second. The division may be artificial but it is difficult to resist saying that whether her transcendental pianism creates rivers of fire or a timeless sense of Elysium, her musical priorities are always clear.
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Then, I am reminded of how Argerich’s favoured partners (here, Freire and Economou as well as her conductors) are propelled into a commitment that must surely astonish them in retrospect ...
Finally, a suggestion concerning Argerich’s enigmatic silence (her last solo recording was made in 1984). Her protest that she suffers from loneliness when isolated on the concert platform is a teasing half-truth. What she surely and, no doubt self-consciously, senses is the fragility of her Olympian gifts, their curse and blessing – of how, abused or overexposed, such an elixir can vanish as mysteriously as it came (a dilemma memorably evoked in Coleridge’s Dejection: An Ode). Frustratingly, but in the long term necessarily, Argerich has guarded the right to make her own choices. And if her free spirit leaves us tantalized, thirsting for the continuation of her Beethoven concerto cycle, for Chopin’s First and Fourth as well as his Second and Third Scherzos, for example, she has also left us overwhelmingly enriched, for ever in her debt. DG’s compensation is beyond price. Lavishly refurbished it is a presentation for initiates and uninitiated, for all musicians (not just pianists) alike.
NB: This recording refers to an earlier release of the Ravel and Prokofiev Concerto performances included in the box set pictured above.
There have been others to match the bustle and brilliance of Argerich's Prokofiev, her coloristic range, her drive, her flashiness, her straining at the leash. But I'm not sure I could name anyone who has so satisfyingly combined all those qualities, who has given us such a rocket-launched recapitulation in the first movement, such circus-routine vividness in the following variations (Prokofiev grew up in a Russia where 'circusization of the arts' was one of the 'in' concepts), or such monstrous, hyperbolic fairy-tale imagery in the finale, and all done with the most engaging reckless abandon. The Ravel Concerto is another bundle of energy. I had forgotten how miraculous is the blend and interplay of piano and orchestra, and how ecstatically Argerich weaves around the cor anglais restatement in the slow movement.
NB: This recording refers to an earlier release of the Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev Concertos included in the box set pictured above.
There is no finer version in any medium of the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto than Argerich's 1971 version. Her later live recording for Philips, more idiosyncratic, hardly replaced it. Now that the earlier version has been transferred (like the Philips) to CD, I have no hesitation in preferring it as currently a first choice on CD for this popular concerto, particularly when it is coupled with another classic Argerich performance from early in her career. The digital remastering of the analogue recording keeps a faint hiss, noticeable in practice only as you start the record, and the inner clarity is not so acute as it would be on the best digital recordings, but there is no doubt that the studio sound as reproduced here is firmer, with more sense of presence, than the Philips live recording. On the Prokofiev recording from the 1960s, the tape hiss is marginally higher and the sense of presence not quite so immediate, with a dynamic range rather less extreme, but it is still excellent sound for its period, which allows the sensuousness of the performance and its wit, as well as the urgency and power, to be fully appreciated.
NB: This recording refers to an earlier release of the Liszt and Chopin Op 11 Concertos included in the box set pictured above.
This is early vintage Argerich but the sound has transferred well to CD. She is balanced rather noticeably forward in comparison with either Emanuel Ax (see above) in the Chopin or Francois-Rene Duchable (Erato/Conifer) in the Liszt concerto. Much of the outer Chopin movements is taken remarkably fast, yet a crystalline clarity is maintained. claudio Abbado does well with the orchestral passages, lingering more than Eugene Ormandy. The latter, with the Philadelphia Orchestra complements Ax exceptionally well, and the pianist is as lucid in thought as in sound. Good sense is made of all the semiquaver figuration in the first movement's development section and an affecting lyrical feeling shapes the various statements of the second subject and is again evident in the Romance. Frankly I prefer his reading to Argerich's.
As to Liszt, the Richter interpretations on Philips are among the classics of the gramophone, and comparison with Duchable is probably more apt. The latter is a real fire-eating performance of extreme virtuosity, with fine orchestral support. This is important as Liszt makes a far more extensive use of the orchestra than Chopin, and in Duchable's version, as in Argerich's, the many orchestral solos are well phrased and clearly focused in the recording. The latter's is again a high-speed yet immaculate account of Liszt's piece, with plenty of feeling in the reflective passages. Richter remains first choice, however.
NB: This recording refers to an earlier release of the Beethoven Concerto performances included in the box set pictured above.
Argerich is an exceptional pianist, but she needs to be if she is to master a world in which great issues are often rumbustiously addressed; a world not unlike our own House of Commons in which a woman needs to be exceptional to survive let alone thrive. Some works in the Beethoven canon have been tellingly illuminated by pianists like Clara Haskil and Dame Myra Hess but women who can take on Beethoven in his most bullish mood are few and far between. Guiomar Novaes comes to mind, as does Annie Fischer, whose recording of the C minor Concerto with Fricsay and the Bavarian State Orchestra (DG SLPM138087, 2/61—nla) has long commanded respect.
Argerich has something of the necessary dauntlessness; she has also studied with some of the most distinguished as well as the most radical of post-war Beethoven pianists, including Gulda, Michelangeli, and Kempff who as long ago as 1970 singled out Argerich for special praise in an interview I had with him. She is, of course, a brilliant technician; but there is also a fantastic streak in her make-up, a capacity for creative fantasy, which is needed if areas of these remarkable works are to be brought fully and vividly to life. In both these early concertos, her touch is light and expert. There are occasionally exaggerations of tempo and phrasing but there are no exaggerations of scale. In this respect it is significant that Argerich, like Lupu on Decca, opts for the short, second Beethoven cadenza in the first movement of the C major Concerto.