MARTHA ARGERICH & FRIENDS
Live From Lugano 2016
Warner Classics 0190295831653 (3 CDs) /
*****
The
Project Martha Argerich at the Lugano Festival came to a memorable close last
year after 15 years of outstanding chamber music making by the then 75-year-old
Argentine piano super-virtuoso and her partners, young and not-so-young.
The
highlight was her return to solo performance, represented by no less then
Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit, a thrilling reading which turns back the
clock to her youthful prime in the 1970s. There is also Ravel's Piano
Concerto in G major with the Orchestra della Svizerra Italiana conducted by
Alexander Vedernikov, which bristles with verve and high octane vibes at every
turn, as one expects from this jazz-influenced masterpiece.
New
to her discography is Beethoven's Choral Fantasy (conducted by Diego
Fasolis), a quasi-concerto with piano and voices which is preliminary sketch
for the Ode to Joy finale of the Choral Symphony. Argerich is
simply commanding in its improvisatory solo and rightly draws prolonged cheers.
In two-piano repertoire, she is joined by Sergei Babayan in Mozart's Sonata
in D major (K.448) and ex-husband Stephen Kovacevich in Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Fawn, performances which excite merely by means of
felicitous touches and knowing nuances.
The balance of three well-filled discs
includes music by Bach, Berg, Busoni, Brahms, Falla and Nisinman, the variety
and quality of which amounts to signing off with a big bang.
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