I’m only a few decades late, but I finally made this fantastic pianist's acquaintance recently, through a Toccata, a Partita, and an English Suite composed by my beloved J. S. Bach. All found on a CD purchased on the spur of the moment, music unheard, with the belief that Deutsche Grammophon Records could not be exaggerating when they included Martha Argerich in the re-releases of their "Legendary Recordings" series. And Philips Classics/DG/EMI Classics have picked her for their "Century’s Greatest Pianists" lineup. How could I go wrong with all that endorsement?
Argerich is absolutely phenomenal. Her playing is infused with a fantastically wide spectrum of emotional color and tone that takes your breath away and makes your heart beat faster, blessed as she is with a clean and nimble technique, and a powerful playing style that is also very tightly controlled. She plays with a pure kind of energy and a spontaneity that few other pianists can match, and it feels wonderful and moving and thrilling. And everything sounds so effortless!
It’s a bit difficult for me to not sink into clichéd superlatives when describing her overwhelming pianistic talent, but it’s all I can do to capture her essence. She has been dubbed the "genius" of her generation, and in her case it is no facile hyperbole.
Born in Argentina in 1941, Argerich was a child prodigy who debuted at age five, giving recitals in Buenos Aires while receiving lessons from "a despot with sadistic tendencies," as she refers to the Italian maestro, Vincenzo Scaramuzza. Her family moved shortly thereafter to Vienna, so the young pianist could study with the great teachers of Europe. Friedrich Gulda, a highly respected interpreter of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven (and a classical musician who also delved into jazz), was her first teacher there.
As a child, she was a very reluctant pianist, and tried to get out of practising sessions. As an adult, she has expressed her deep dislike not of playing the piano, but of living the life of a concert pianist. She has also said that her piano practising has never been systematic. Wow. Must be some kind of tremendous innate gift, then.
In one of her rare interviews, Argerich tells of when she wasn’t quite three (!), much younger than the rest of the children in a competitive kindergarten class: a five-year-old friend kept taunting her, saying that she couldn’t play the piano. All that that teasing did was to make her go to the piano one day and, for the first time, using just one finger, play a tune she’d heard her teacher play frequently before—by ear, with every note perfect. Her teacher took notice and told her parents, and they "made a fuss about it." Formal lessons followed from there.
She also recalls a time when Friedrich Gulda told her to study Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit for their next lesson. She learned the piece within a few days, totally unaware of the work’s notorious reputation among pianists as an incredibly difficult one.
Better known, perhaps, for her interpretations of the works of the 19th century Romantics (Chopin, Liszt, which I’m about to discover), Argerich is that rare pianist who also does extremely well with a non-Romantic repertoire, including works by the Impressionists (Ravel, Debussy), modern composers (Bartok, Prokofiev), and, as in this recording, J. S. Bach . This makes her a more complete musician, not restricted to a few composers in a particular repertoire. My only lament is that she has recorded too few of Bach’s works.
I see Argerich and the piano in the same way I consider Jacqueline du Pré and the cello—both such musically charismatic and unpredictable performers who have inspired devoted, even fanatical followers, whose praise and cult-like adoration have been similar to that showered upon the likes of pianist Vladimir Horowitz. "You can’t do this, you can’t do that" is absent from their performing vocabulary. Like du Pré, Argerich seems to play instinctively, imbued with an intensity and passion that can only be described as electrifying.
This CD was re-released by Deutsche Grammophon in early 2000 in celebration of Bach’s 250th birthday. The album was originally recorded in Berlin in 1979, released in 1980, and the recording has undergone "original-image bit-processing" (guess that’s something really high tech and wonderful).
From the first stirring notes of the Toccata, Argerich sweeps you away with her total mastery of the piece, first taking you into an intricate maze as she traces the music’s often changing path filled with lots of little musical surprises. In a couple of places, it becomes a gradually accelerating crescendo leading up to the climax, and she plays as if driven relentlessly by an unseen force, tossing off those diabolical little trills and mordents along the way to the conclusion with cavalier abandon.
I truly haven’t been this astonished by too many others’ performance of Bach. A few (very few) stodgy critics may find her interpretations a bit "excessive," but a colorful, lively and passionate playing of Bach has never been distasteful to me.
Although the Allemandes and Sarabandes in the Partita and English Suite tend to be a tad more striking to my sensibilities (softer, gentler and more introspective), Argerich’s playing of the faster sections shows such exciting subtle and overt changes in mood from one phrase to the next, from one statement to the next, even within the very same phrase, that you can’t help but surrender completely to the emotional richness of the music.
Her control of the keyboard is amazing. After the emphatic introductory chords in the Grave.Adagio of the Partita’s Sinfonia, listen as Argerich drops the volume precipitously, beginning the Andante in a hushed whisper, sounding notes with a light and perfectly balanced, even tone. The Sinfonia in the Partita and the Allemandes in both the Partita and English Suite are hypnotic in the ease with which they flow like gentle, liquid waves upon you. Later she proceeds to attack the English Suite Bourées with a relish and vitality that’s positively infectious.
Nothing here is less than excellent. Argerich commands your full attention from the first note to the last. She always keeps things from growing monotonous and dull, something which Bach’s works can become in other hands, given the somewhat repetitive, rigidly structured, mathematically-perfect nature of his music. When she returns to the same theme, she brings to it something fresh, new and unexpected.
Argerich takes each piece and makes it completely hers, adding her own interesting touches to it. A very slight but significant pause here, a more hushed tone there that slowly builds into a heavy, deliberate playing that rumbles in the lower register, and a breathlessly rapid rhythm in the faster passages, for instance, all add a vibrancy to Bach’s already elegant music. The effect is a humanizing of the music, making it intimate, real, vividly alive, and completely captivating. I’m sure that Bach himself, were he around today, would appreciate her interpretation very much.
I really can’t think of anything more to say about this CD other than to beg you to get it immediately and let yourself be seduced into Argerich’s rarefied, divine, yet deeply human world. I’d be willing to bet that you won’t even think to put up a fight.
Now, if only Argerich would record the Goldberg Variations, or any other solo Bach work … *sigh*…
