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Argerich & Friends: The 2014 Edition

Jed Distler

Artistic Quality:

Sound Quality:

As with previous anthologies culled from Lugano Festival’s Progetto, Martha Argerich, the 2014 edition offers a fairly diverse range of music. Argerich herself participates in four of the collection’s 10 works, two of which are new to her recorded repertoire. She and pianist Dagmar Clottu deliver a crisp and terse account of Poulenc’s Sonata for Piano Duet, while she teams up with her frequent collaborator, violinist Gidon Kremer, for Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s relatively unknown yet quite substantial Fifth sonata. The tonal warmth and carefully gauged vibrato Kremer brings to slow, sustained passages proves especially telling in the long finale, while Argerich’s dazzling unison runs and deft contrapuntal playing in the Allegro molto alone explain her awesome reputation among pianists.

In Beethoven’s “Bei Männern” Variations, Argerich and cellist Mischa Maisky seem a bit freer and more animated in comparison with their earlier DG studio recording. Mozart’s D minor concerto with Jacek Kaspszyk leading the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana is the least orchestrally polished of Argerich’s three commercial recordings of this work, but it’s far more energized and less mannered than in the DG recording with Abbado and Orchestra Mozart, if not so pointed and well-balanced as her first and still best-recorded version with Alexandre Rabinovitch conducting.

The other selections are variable. Mendelssohn’s First symphony loses a modicum of lightness and timbral variety as arranged by Busoni for two pianos eight hands. Alexander Mogilevsky and Daniel Rivera basically bang out Scriabin’s uninteresting, posthumously published A minor Fantasy for Two Pianos at two dynamic levels: loud and louder. The colorful orchestral palette and jazzy inflections of Milhaud’s La Creation du monde translate poorly in an arrangement for piano quintet, compounded by a shapeless, rhythmically stiff performance. By contrast, Borodin’s Piano Quintet receives a delightfully idiomatic and tonally ripe reading, while Gautier Capuçon’s impassioned yet well-thought-out interpretations of the Poulenc and Bridge cello sonatas (the latter with Francesco Piemontesi at the piano, the former with Gabriela Montero) easily stand out.

If the 2014 edition doesn’t reach the heights of earlier volumes, it still offers something for all chamber music fans and Argerich acolytes to consider. As for next year’s installment, how about giving the transcriptions a rest and consider piano-based chamber works by living composers? Lera Auerbach’s Piano Trio? Frederic Rzewski’s Piano Quintet? Just a thought….


Recording Details:

Album Title: Martha Argerich & Friends: Live from Lugano 2014
Reference Recording: None for this collection

Works by Beethoven, Borodin, Bridge, Milhaud. Mendelssohn, Mozart, Poulenc, Scriabin, & Weinberg

    Soloists: Martha Argerich, Francesco Piemontesi, Dagmar Clottu, Gabriela Montero, Eduardo Hubert (piano); Mischa Maisky, Gautier Capuçon (cello); Renaud Capuçon, Gidon Kremer, Michael Guttman (violin); others

    Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, Jacek Kaspszyk

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