While on tour with Martha in Spain, the Italian pianist Gabriele Baldocci wrote a four-hand piece for her, together with Genesis founder Anthony Phillips. It’s called Gemini.
It’s … different.
Gabriele has started a blog, dedicated to his love of Martha, here.
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Well, she is a Gemini.
That Gemini piece is nice, but also a bit cheap, like chique hotel lobby music.
Couldn’t agree more-lounge music
Spot -on.
A fleeting resembelance to the gorgeous piano duet /duo writing of Percy Grainger made me want to hear this pair in something more elevated (as opposed to elevator).
It’s pretty wonderful, actually.
It can be added to this interesting repertoire list. Had never realised MA had played Grieg and Emperor concertos
https://web.archive.org/web/20100408052855/http://home.swipnet.se/bjorn_ostlund/argerich_repertoire.htm
Tender and endearing piece. Beautifully played! I prefer it to the Rachmaninov.
Minutes after hearing it, phrases from Barber’s Knoxville surfaced. Not shabby or “chique”.
“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.”
Tributes to the past sometimes work rather well. For instance, this Waltz by Barber is clearly based on Faure. The sensibility is deeper though: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Vtx5IF0u-mQ
“Those who find beautiful meanings in ugly things have read too much Adorno.”
Beautiful and ugly are very subjective, and without wishing to point out the obvious , not all art aspires towards beauty. For instance, Francis Bacon.
Entirely true. It is not ‘about’ beauty as such. But I wonder: why contributing to the ugly territory of the world when it is so generously present and for all to see? To wake-up the dumb to the terrible state of their life? And if so, what then? It seems obvious that intentional ugliness as an expression of ‘truth’ can only be functional in a time, in a culture, which does not want to know the full range of life’s experiences. But when it becomes a convention, a bandwagon everybody wants to join, the very meaning of authentic ugliness gets lost. And then, it is not so difficult to paint, to compose, to build utterly ugly things. Bacon is so shocking because it is very well done, so that his paintings become indiscrete looks into hell.
The 20C cult of ugliness in the arts (including music) is an entirely new thing, the ugliness of former ages have always been unintentional. Beauty has always been a natural part of any art, being born from the human instinct to produce something that transcends the purely material world.
I’m really glad you have posted this. I adore Anthony Phillips. Have done so since I first heard “The Geese and the Ghost” in 1980. I have all of his official output (30 + CDs) and he has written some of the most beautiful music to come of of the rock idiom. He is also a thoroughly decent and lovely bloke. I’m very happy that someone of Martha Argerich’s stature is playing his music.
Melodic, “pretty”, boring.