Watch: Martha Argerich plays new repertoire
mainAt her Hamburg recital last night, Martha played Schubert’s ‘The Shepherd on the Rock’ for the first time in public. It’s at 27:30 on this video, and it’s phenomenal.
She also performed Chopin’s 3rd piano sonata for the first time in 25 years.
We understand the Schubert was pre-recorded a few days before.
Die Göttliche.
The Schubert is heavenly. And quite the best performance I’ve heard of the Chopin Sonata – one basic pulse through all the movements creating an inter-related sonata structure with such pure lyricism and sense of the moving harmonies, such calm restraint. Argerich just gets better every year.
Loved that concert. But the best for me was the Beethoven with Capuçon.
Gotta admit — when she shows up, there’s few better.
The calm restraint is a most welcome addition to Martha’s playing. Listen to her Carnegie Hall recital from 2000 – where such a quality totally eludes her.
She’s well dressed for a change.
“For a change”? She always looks good, and more importantly, it’s always a joy to experience her performances.
…and that’s the important thing.
Nobody was available to synchronize the image with the sound?
It’s so surreal to see Martha finish a performance like that to complete silence. Even she looks confused by the lack of audience reception.
Then again, she is known to hate the spotlight and the crowds, so maybe this is the start of a new phase of her performance career–I would love more full solo online recitals from Martha!
The tempo of the Schubert is interminably slow…The slowing down at the end of every phrase becomes very predictable…The last movement is also performed with little character and is quite dull in general.
The clarinetist is amazing! Why don’t we see more of him!!
Julia Kleiter is the soprano
From the same concert last week in Hamburg, here is MA playing Franck’s Sonata with Renaud Capucon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZnATQ1vfwg .
“Martha played Schubert’s ‘The Shepherd on the Rock’”
Better to say that she accompanied. The clarinet and soprano carry all but about 3 measures of the piece. The piano part is almost all oom-pah.
Sound and vision not quite in synch in the Chopin but great this document was made.
Can’t see who the conductor is, but from behind it looks like a total hommage de Solti. Argerich as always is splendid.
One of the greatest traversals of Chopin 3 that I’ve ever heard. There were moments particularly in mvmts I and III where I almost had a static sensation of being lost in time, in that emotionally ambiguous transitional passagework…never felt it quite like that…I was honored to listen and feel like I was almost there.
The clarinetist is David Orlowsky.
Thanks for bringing this sublime concert to our world
The Chopin is at 19:51 here https://vimeo.com/433223725
3rd party Youtube uploads are being removed but everything is available (for now) at the official site https://www.symphonikerhamburg.de/ – follow the »Die liebe Erde allüberall« link to https://www.symphonikerhamburg.de/mediathek/
Iy’s one of Schubert’s very last songs, almost a yodel, and a delight, as is the rather different other obbligato song of his, “Aug der Strom” for soprano, horn, and piano, first met on a Marlboro taping by Benite Valente, Myron Bloom, and Rudolf Serkin. A soprano friend of mine put it on her program, sang it, and everybody got lost, playingit three times over. I was blissfully unaware although I knew Serkin’s record, and assured them it wasn’t a minute too long Schubert enthusiastically agreed.
eThe other ensemble work might be “Nachtgesang im Walde” for men’s choir and a quartet of horns. A similar Bruckner work acctually calls for two w omen yodelers. Very rare.
The yoounger Argerich undeniably had a tendency to run off the rails … finale of Rachmaninoff third, zum Beispiel … and sometimes did. Zoltan Kocsis is another who often forced over fast tempi, Moravec less so and more tolerably but still very quick.