Like its predecessors, the 10th three-disc anthology culled from the Lugano Festival’s annual Progetto Martha Argerich features the celebrated pianist alongside established and emerging musician colleagues in a wide range of chamber and concerted repertoire. Three selections showcase Argerich herself.
She inflects Beethoven’s First concerto with more dynamic hairpins and fanciful accents than in her relatively forthright 1980s studio recording with Giuseppe Sinopoli, whose Philharmonia Orchestra turns in stronger, more disciplined playing than the scrawny-stringed Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana musters here. As in the earlier recording, Argerich favors the shorter and easier of Beethoven’s two completed first-movement cadenzas; most listeners would give anything to hear her unleash her still-formidable virtuosity on the longer, more difficult cadenza option.
While Beethoven’s Op. 5 No. 2 cello sonata operates on higher adrenaline levels than the Maisky/Argerich DG studio traversal, I prefer the latter for its superior sonics and cleaner ensemble work. Similarly, the generally brisker tempos and more refined passagework in Argerich’s Philips recording of Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals scores over this fine Lugano account: compare Argerich and Nelson Freire’s sophisticated rubato and pinpointed timing in the Philips “Kangaroos” movement to Lugano’s relatively uninflected Argerich/Lily Zilberstein reading, to give but one example. However, Argerich and Cristina Marton turn in a lively and characterful four-hand collaboration in Debussy’s Petite Suite, while selections from the Offenbach/Rosenthal Gaité parisienne provide fodder for Carlo Maria Griguoli’s latest in a series of three-piano transcriptions premiered on this festival.
Jura Margulis’ fluid and sensitive support for violinists Allisa Margulis (Liszt’s La lugubre gondola) and Andrew Baranov (Ravel’s early one-movement Sonata) is an unexpected pleasure for at least one reviewer who has found his previous solo CDs stiff and pedantic. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Gautier Capuçon and Gabriela Montero had crammed for the Shostkovich cello sonata by playing the volatile, over-the-top Argerich/Maisky DG recording. In Respighi’s violin sonata, Renaud Capuçon and Francesco Piemontesi grab the composer’s energico marking in the Passacaglia finale and run with it, yet they also generate white heat in the first movement’s sustained long lines. Not the subtlest performance around, but quite exciting on its own terms. If 2013’s Argerich and Friends edition doesn’t match earlier releases with regard to off-the-beaten-track repertoire or unambiguously breathtaking performance standards (the Brahms Sonata for Two Pianos, the Schumann Piano Quintet), it surely will satisfy chamber music fans and Argerich devotees.
