This Week in Classical Music: June 1, 2020.Argerich. Our apologies to the devotees of the music of Georg Muffat, if there are any.We’re not going to write about him, even though his birthday is today (he was born in 1653); however, you can check our earlier entries about himhere and here.Neither will we write about Mikhail Glinka, also born on this day, in 1804, Edward Elgar, born June 2nd of 1857 and beloved by the English, or Aram Khachaturian, the pride of the Armenians.Khachaturian was born on June 6th of 1903 in Tbilisi into an Armenian family; Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, had a large Armenian population at the time.He eventually moved to Moscow and lived there for the rest of his life and only visited Armenia on several occasions.He was affected by the Armenian folk tunes, though, which he loved and collected on his trips to Armenia; his ballet Gayane, written around 1939, incorporated many of them.Khachaturian died in Moscow in 1978 but was buried in Yerevan, in the Komitas Pantheon of great Armenians.
The artist we’d like to celebrate today is Martha Argerich, one of most spectacular pianists of the last 50 years.Martha, whose name is correctly pronounced “Marta Arkheritch” was born on June 5th of 1941 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.Her father’s ancestors came from Catalonia, Spain, while her mother’s grandparents were Russian Jews who came to Argentina to settle in the Colonia Villa Clara, established by the Jewish Colonization Association and supported by Baron Maurice de Hirsch, a Jewish philanthropist.Martha started playing the piano at the age of three and gave her first concert when she was eight, performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 20, Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto and Bach’s French Suite no. 5.The family moved to Vienna when Martha was 14.There she studied with Friedrich Gulda; later she would work with a number of outstanding pianists and teachers: Stefan Askenase, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Madeleine Lipatti, the widow of Dinu Lipatti, Abbey Simon and Nikita Magaloff.At the age of 16 Martha won first prizes in the 1957 Busoni and Geneva international competitions.Then, in 1965 she won the first prize in the Chopin Competition in Warsaw; her playing created a sensation.Argerich made her US debut the same year.For the next 10 years she played up to 150 concerts a year, but by 1980 she scaled down the number of concerts and her solo performances became quite unpredictable: it was never clear whether Argerich would play a concert or cancel it.She was (and still is) much more consistent when playing chamber music, often partnering with the pianists Nelson Freire and Stephen Bishop-Kovacevich, the violinist Gidon Kremer and cellist Mischa Maisky; she often performs with the conductor Charles Dutoit – all either good friends of hers or, like Kovacevich and Dutoit, former husbands.Here’s Martha Argerich playing Bach’s English Suite No. 2 in A minor, BWV 807.Bach is not the composer we usually associate with her repertoire but, as you can hear yourself, Martha’s playing is superb.
Martha Argerich 2020
This Week in Classical Music: June 1, 2020. Argerich. Our apologies to the devotees of the music of Georg Muffat, if there are any. We’re not going to write about him, even though his birthday is today (he was born in 1653); however, you can check our earlier entries about him
here and here. Neither will we write about Mikhail Glinka, also born on this day, in 1804, Edward Elgar, born June 2nd of 1857 and beloved by the English, or Aram Khachaturian, the pride of the Armenians. Khachaturian was born on June 6th of 1903 in Tbilisi into an Armenian family; Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, had a large Armenian population at the time. He eventually moved to Moscow and lived there for the rest of his life and only visited Armenia on several occasions. He was affected by the Armenian folk tunes, though, which he loved and collected on his trips to Armenia; his ballet Gayane, written around 1939, incorporated many of them. Khachaturian died in Moscow in 1978 but was buried in Yerevan, in the Komitas Pantheon of great Armenians.
The artist we’d like to celebrate today is Martha Argerich, one of most spectacular pianists of the last 50 years. Martha, whose name is correctly pronounced “Marta Arkheritch” was born on June 5th of 1941 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her father’s ancestors came from Catalonia, Spain, while her mother’s grandparents were Russian Jews who came to Argentina to settle in the Colonia Villa Clara, established by the Jewish Colonization Association and supported by Baron Maurice de Hirsch, a Jewish philanthropist. Martha started playing the piano at the age of three and gave her first concert when she was eight, performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 20, Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto and Bach’s French Suite no. 5. The family moved to Vienna when Martha was 14. There she studied with Friedrich Gulda; later she would work with a number of outstanding pianists and teachers: Stefan Askenase, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Madeleine Lipatti, the widow of Dinu Lipatti, Abbey Simon and Nikita Magaloff. At the age of 16 Martha won first prizes in the 1957 Busoni and Geneva international competitions. Then, in 1965 she won the first prize in the Chopin Competition in Warsaw; her playing created a sensation. Argerich made her US debut the same year. For the next 10 years she played up to 150 concerts a year, but by 1980 she scaled down the number of concerts and her solo performances became quite unpredictable: it was never clear whether Argerich would play a concert or cancel it. She was (and still is) much more consistent when playing chamber music, often partnering with the pianists Nelson Freire and Stephen Bishop-Kovacevich, the violinist Gidon Kremer and cellist Mischa Maisky; she often performs with the conductor Charles Dutoit – all either good friends of hers or, like Kovacevich and Dutoit, former husbands. Here’s Martha Argerich playing Bach’s English Suite No. 2 in A minor, BWV 807. Bach is not the composer we usually associate with her repertoire but, as you can hear yourself, Martha’s playing is superb.