Martha Argerich, Verbier Festival July 22nd, 2011

Martha Argerich, Verbier Festival July 22nd, 2011

PROGRAM

Renaud Capuçon, violon
Yuri Bashmet, alto
Gautier Capuçon, violoncelle
Martha Argerich,
Nelson Goerner, piano

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Sonate pour violon et piano N° 8 en Sol majeur op.30 N° 3
- Allegro assai
- Tempo di Minuetto
- Allegro vivace
(Renaud Capuçon, Argerich)

 Robert Schumann (1810 – 1856)
Märchenbilder op. 113
- Nicht schnell
- Lebhaft
- Rasch
- Langsam, mit melancholischem Ausdruck
(Bashmet, Argerich)

Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Fantasiestücke op.73
- Zart und mit Ausdruck
- Lebhaft, leicht
- Rasch und mit Feuer
(Gautier Capuçon, Argerich)

Serge Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Danses symphoniques op.45 (transcription pour deux pianos du compositeur)
-    Non Allegro – Lento – Tempo I
-    Andante con moto - Tempo di valse
-    Lento assai - Allegro vivace

Maurice Ravel (1875 – 1937)
La Valse (réduction pour deux pianos du compositeur)

I'm in love with Martha Argerich.  My wife Tanya has known this for years and she's managed to live with it.  She didn't mind when I went to see Martha perform three times in two and a half days at Carnegie Hall (she was playing different programs!)  She barely mentions it when she finds me listening intently to Martha's recordings staring longingly into the distance.  The only time she “pulled rank” was when Martha happened to schedule her first (and to date only) solo recital in 30 years at Carnegie Hall exactly on her due date (March 22nd, 2000).  Our son was born a few days earlier.  which still should have given me ample time to get to New York for the recital, but somehow Tanya saw things differently.  I'd like to believe that Martha scanned the audience from the wings and queried, “Where is that fascinating man with the large nose and the glasses that is always here when I play?  I'm not going on!” but was somehow persuaded to continue anyway.  I still have a nagging feeling that Martha was testing my loyalty and that I failed.





Rather than defend my love for Martha Argerich, I challenge any red-blooded woman-loving pianophile to explain why they are NOT in love with her.  I present  the Court with Exhibit A:



I think any right-minded court would immediately  award me the case in summary judgment, but here's an Exhibit B anyway:



(really, I could use practically any clip of her on YouTube).

Of course there's the “Legend of Martha” - her tempestuous nature, her history of canceling almost as many concerts as she's performed, her personal life.  I won't recount that.  Google her or read her Wikipedia entry if you're curious.   Maybe all of it is true or maybe none of it is.  I really don't care.  I've been stood up by Martha plenty of times myself.  I'm probably batting .500 over the past 25 years in terms of Martha actually showing up for concerts I've bought tickets for.  No matter – I am powerless to resist her spell.  Martha just turned 70 and now cultivates the look of a hippie grandma.  I couldn't care less.  My love for Martha is unconditional.

I love her because she plays like no one else alive or dead.   She is another one of these “fully realized artists” of the type I described in my Sokolov review.  She has a VERY strong musical personality that some people simply don't like.  She often tends to get caught up in the spirit of the moment and rush fences.  So be it.  Thirty years ago Martha decided that she didn't want to perform alone on stage anymore.  From that point forward, it would only be chamber music with colleagues or solo performances with orchestra.  If those are her terms, those are her terms.   One day she is going to decide that she's done playing onstage entirely and when that happens we'll never hear anyone like her again.  As far as I'm concerned, every note she plays onstage in whatever context  is a precious gift.  She could play a piano/bagpipe/tuba arrangement  of Rebecca Black's “Friday” and I would still move my life around to see her.

If you get the feeling that the “review” which follows may be a little less than totally objective, well, too bad.  I consider Martha Argerich's supremacy to be an objective fact.

Tonight's concert was a prototypical “MarthaFest.”  The first half consisted of chamber works (largely later-period Schumann, which holds a dear spot in her heart).  The second half consisted of two-piano works accompanied by Nelson Goerner.  The musicians accompanying her seemed like dear friends.  Whatever the setting  or nature of the piece, Martha was the clearly the front-and-center of the show.

The first piece was Beethoven's Violin Sonata Op. 30 No. 3.  I was thrilled with this choice because it may be my favorite of the set.  The “Kreutzer” is wonderful, but it's over-performed (in fact, this is the Beethoven Violin Sonata that Argerich invariably chooses to program).  Op. 96 is also special, but Op. 30 No. 3 may be one of the most unabashedly joyous pieces that Beethoven ever composed.  My favorite recording is probably Fritz Kreisler and Sergei Rachmaninoff from 1928.  Nobody communicates joy like Kreisler.  Rachmaninoff may seem like an odd pairing for Fritz on the surface – Rachmaninoff of the grim visage, crew cut, and sad minor-key melodies.  But people are rarely unidimensional.  In fact, Sergei possessed a wicked sense of humor that he delighted in unleashing on his friends.  My favorite example of this involves a time when Fritz and Sergei were playing the Grieg Violin Sonata in a joint recital.  The freewheeling Kreisler got so caught up in the moment that he lost his place in the score.   He leaned down and whispered to Rachmaninoff, “Where are we?” and without missing a beat he answered, “Carnegie Hall, Fritz!” and just smiled his non-smile.  But I digress.  By the way, if these digressions bother you, you are most definitely reading the wrong blog.

Argerich and Renaud Capucon were joy personified.  I'd recently heard Capucon play with his cellist brother Gautier (who played later in the evening's program) an excellent Brahms Double Concerto with Dudamel and the LA Phil only a few months ago.  Argerich recorded this sonata along with the whole cycle of Beethoven Violin Sonatas with Gidon Kremer about 20 years ago.  While I admire Kremer, “fun” isn't always the first word that comes to my mind in describing his playing.  There was a wonderful sense of back-and-forth between Argerich and Capucon.  The middle movement was played gorgeously.   This piece was originally scheduled later in the program but was moved up in order since Renaud Capucon had to run up the street to the Church to participate in a concert later that evening.  This was actually fortuitous because the piece provided the perfect beginning for the concert.

Schumann's Marchenbilder (Op. 113)  for Viola and Piano is rather late in the day for Schumann.  It never really gets its bearings, but it finishes with an ethereally beautiful final movement.  Yuri Bashmet was having some sort of trouble with intonation at the beginning but he too found his way and delivered an absolutely exquisite account of the Langsam (final) movement.  I found out later that he was preoccupied by some family issues.  He's a fantastic musician and I hope all goes well for him.

Next up was another one of Argerich's favorite (and often-programmed) late Schumann pieces, the Fantastiestucke for Cello and Piano, Op. 73.  It's still not top-tier Schumann but it is far more consistent than the previous piece.  Cello sound is a very personal thing, both for the performer and for the listener.  I find Gautier Capucon to have a wonderfully arresting cello tone.  There are several famous cellists past and present who are unquestionably wonderful musicians, but I can't listen to them for more than 30 seconds.  I could listen to Gautier Capucon play forever.   He and Argerich were perfectly sympatico.  Though Argerich must have played this piece hundreds of times, there was no casualness about her connection or conviction with this piece.  Every phrase felt spontaneous and emotionally engaging.

The second half consisted of works for two pianos.  Some people don't care for this repertoire – they find like the famous royal criticism of Mozart that it has “too many notes.”  (I overheard one couple complaining of exactly that and leaving at intermission).  I admit that I have to be in the proper mood for it.  It is not to listen to casually while puttering around the house.  In the wrong (four) hands it can sound like a bad day in a typewriter store, or the KYW Radio background news ticker that my friends from Philadelphia will know well (do they still keep using it even though the last news teletype long ago went the way of old Chief Halftown?  Probably so, and that's one of the reasons I still miss Philadelphia).

First up was the two-piano transcription of Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances (transcribed by the composer).  I have to admit that I'm a little snake-bit with this piece.  I think it's a fine piece of music but not quite top-shelf.  It doesn't hold up well to frequent hearings.  Unfortunately it appears to be stalking me.  It has been programmed in a half-dozen concerts I've attended over the past three years.  When I saw it listed on the program I thought it was a cruel joke.  Still, I haven't heard the two-piano arrangement since Argerich's recording of it came out about 15 years ago.  From the outset, Argerich's mastery of the density of the piece and her ringing fortissimos in the lower register of the piano were overwhelming.  This is the kind of acoustic energy that one can only experience in a concert hall.  A recording of this sound is as inadequate of a substitute as is a photograph of a wonderful meal.  That's one of the reasons I spend a great deal of my time and money going to concerts.  As for Nelson Goerner, all I can say is that he held his own and I mean that is a strong compliment.  Holding your own onstage with Argerich is like holding your own against the ocean. You'll never conquer the ocean, but holding your own is victory enough.

The final piece was Ravel's own two-piano arrangement of his “La Valse.”  As my friends know, Ravel is my bête noire among the major composers.  We all have them.  They are the unquestionably major composers that for some reason or another we simply don't like.  One of my friends hates Chopin, another Liszt, a third couldn't listen to Beethoven's String Quartets.  Ravel's habit of repeating each new musical ideal in succession annoys me.   Ravel's habit of repeating each new musical ideal in succession annoys me.  You get the idea.   I recognize his talent as a master of mood, nuance, and orchestral color, but I find much of his music completely lacking in substance.  Of all of Ravel's pieces, “La Valse” is the one I mind the least.  I hear it as a collision of the waltzes of Johann Strauss and the nihilistic cacophony of Mahler, and that seemed to be exactly what Ravel was striving for.  It represented the death struggles of Old Europe as the horrors of World War I knock it into historical oblivion.  Argerich frequently programs this as the curtain-closer of her two-piano recitals because, really, what can follow the end of the civilized world?  Argerich and Goerner ended the civilized world in wonderfully uncivilized fashion.

No matter how many times I hear her in person, I am amazed anew by Argerich's playing.   Even at breakneck speeds, you can still hear life and character in every note as well as the separation between them.  The electric, otherworldly nature of her playing sometimes tends to overwhelm whomever she's playing with.   That's not to say that she doesn't listen and play sympathetically as a good chamber musician should – we're not talking Jascha Heifetz transforming every chamber work into violin with instrumental obligatto.    She just can't help standing out like the sparkling diamond that she is.

She gets grief for not performing solo anymore, but she put out more energy in her program tonight than many recitalists put out in their entire careers.  If she's made any concessions to age I didn't hear them.  Onstage she appears to be an inexhaustible volcano of musical power.   Rather than ask “how can she possibly put forth so much energy?” the more accurate question might be “how can she not?”  The latter would seem to require more effort.

I snuck backstage to the Green Room after the concert.  A long time ago a musician friend of mine taught me that this was always the right thing to do.   I'm not interested in autographs or even in exchanging words with the artists if there's a big crowd.  After the effort an artist puts forth, they deserve a full Green Room as a show of gratitude.  If it's a modest crowd, then I will say a few words about how much I enjoyed what I heard.

Needless to say Argerich attracts a far-from-modest crowd.  I hung back and snapped a few pictures (no flash), including a few enclosed below of Evgeny Kissin (tomorrow night's headliner)  greeting Argerich.  Backstage she appeared far more tired than she did onstage.  I guess she's human after all.

Au revior Martha, until next time.  And if you decide to stand me up, may it be the time after that.