After “one memorable day of rehearsal”, as the introductory note puts it, Martha Argerich and a group of friends recorded this generously long programme at a public concert in Holland “with the enthusiasm and intimate inspiration of a house-party”. The rarity is the Andante and Variations, Op. 46, neglected on CD in its original version for two pianos, two cellos and horn since the Ashkenazys’ welcome Decca version, and here brought up with all the spontaneous freshness of new discovery in a performance as enjoyable for its self-generating continuity as its diversity. Argerich and her fellow pianist, Rabinovitch divide keyboard responsibilities in the remainder of the programme. Her own major triumph comes in the Quintet (with truly inspirational help from Maisky’s cello). Every note tingles with life and colour in an arrestingly imaginative reading of exemplary textural transparency. In none of the more familiar works in the concert is that little extra stimulus of live as opposed to studio recording combined with more finesse and finish than here.
In the Quartet Rabinovitch is a little less successful in concealing Schumann’s inclination to entrust too much to his own instrument, with some aggressive accentuation en route. I also questioned vagaries of timing in the Scherzo, and thought the Andante cantabile too slow to maintain its rightful flow. The finale is breathlessly, albeit excitably, fast. Rabinovitch is joined by Marie-Luise Neunecker in a hearty performance on the second disc of the Adagio and Allegro for horn and piano.
In this second half, even Argerich herself sometimes allows Florestan’s defiance in the D minor Sonata to grow disproportionately explosive. But both she and Dora Schwarzberg are winning in Eusebius’s more tender lyricism. Again, in the smaller pieces Argerich reaffirms herself as an artist of ‘temperament’, much given to the impulse of the moment. In place of clarinet, the Op. 73 Fantasiestucke are played here with cello (Natalia Gutman), one of Schumann’s two sanctioned alternatives despite its low-lying voice. However, in the Marchenbilder she partners the prescribed viola (Nobuko Imai). The recording itself is pleasingly natural, notwithstanding the odd moment of less than studio-perfected balance. And there is heartening audience applause, judiciously unprotracted, as a further reminder that we are in fact in the Concertgebouw at Nijmegen.
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