This is the first instalment of two devoted to Martha Argerich in Philips’s Great Pianists series and the material here is all well-trodden territory, adding little new to the recently released Martha Argerich Edition (10/97). That is inevitable, of course, given the pianist’s limited production in the studio, and the especially limited amount of material produced before her abandonment of solo recording and recitals. Her concerto work, including that represented here, has always been dazzling; but the piano is an intimate instrument, and full artistic assessment demands sustained, intimate listening.
The second volume will be entirely devoted to her solo repertoire, which is good news since here we get just two pieces by Ravel (a luminescent and classical reading of the Sonatine and her mighty Gaspard de la nuit) and a Bach Partita.
The only tracks not encompassed by the Argerich Edition are those devoted to the overpowering live Rachmaninov Concerto No. 3 of 1982, recorded with Chailly. It remains a peculiarly heart-wrenching performance, filled with the pianist’s mercurial way with tempos, redolent with a tragedy made all the more poignant by her eerie and almost resigned sense of composure. It is exhilarating, yet profoundly sad, with the aura of a valedictory reading which, thankfully, it is not. The sparks with Chailly are extraordinary. Equally thrilling is the Prokofiev Third, with Abbado, a favourite partner and one well represented in this collection.
Her Bach Partita in C minor is a funny little afterthought in such weighty and dramatic company. The playing is delightfully unstudied, fluid, natural and, somehow, very un-Argerich. The piece becomes a kind of strange pendant to the rest of the material, but an enticing reminder of the deeply vulnerable, mesmerizingly self-reflective player that Argerich was when she had nothing between her and the audience but a piano. It is achingly exposed music-making, so much so that it becomes almost hard to keep listening. It awakens the old craving to hear her again on the empty stage. '