Martha in town and it is pure magic
Some enchanted evening – how does your garden grow ? Ever more beautiful with glowing warmth and the simplicity of an artist whose whole existence is music.

A 30th birthday performance of solo Bach for the quite extraordinary first violin of Andrea Obiso opened the evening that was to close with Beethoven’s 9th with a glittering array of soloists and Lahav Shani at the helm .

The youngest ever conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic who I had heard just a few days ago there conducting from the keyboard Prokofiev 3rd Concerto .

So hardly surprising that he should share the piano with ‘our’ Martha for a gentle stroll together in Ravel’s magic garden.
Tomorrow’s performance will be recorded for radio and television.
Beethoven’s second concerto that I had only once realised what a gem it is and that was from the hands of Gilels when he played all the Beethoven Concertos with Sir Adrian Boult. I was won over too by Pletnev and Von Dohnyani again in the days when Pletnev was less distracted and a pianist who Sandor could not believe would ever want to be a conductor!

It is those gentle arpeggios up and down the piano in the first movement that sort the men from the boys or a great artist from a good musician.Martha like Curzon has this way of highlighting notes in a scale that is nothing short of miraculous.Curzon used to sweat blood over every note and his scores are witness to the amount of work that went into the seeming simplicity of his interpretations.I bet Martha has not seen the score for years because the music is in her heart and soul as it has been from her youth when she went at the age of 16 from Geneva to Bolzano astonishing all that heard her and was justly covered in Gold medals.

But glory from a very early age has never changed Martha for whom warmth,friendship and communication are her ethos.
https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2016/12/13/a-birds-eye-view-of-a-very-happy-occasion-martha-argerich-and-alberto-portugheis-wigmore-hall-75th-birthday-celebration/
Of course she knows who she is as an artist before a doting public but it is always her disarming simplicity and sincerity that shines through all she does.

From the very first notes of the Beethoven played with the ease and simplicity of a child with the final question mark thrown over to her colleagues with a nonchalance that Beethoven himself must have used with improvised genius.Missing the last whispered note she just went and added it a fraction later and am sure no one even noticed except for her and it brought a smile to her face for being so silly ( I was sitting almost next to her,by the way !).Sudden injections of dynamic rhythmic drive and the searing intensity of the more virtuosistic passages were helped with the pedal to build up a larger sonority without any mechanical hardness or flamboyance.The clarity of the fugato in Beethoven’s cadenza was played with such glowing beauty as the entry of each voice shone like a light touching a prism.It was done with such subtlety and purely with fingers ( and what fingers and an enviable arch of the hand that she possesses still ) receiving of course an unconscious message from her superb natural musicianship where fingers ,mind ,heart and soul unite in one of the greatest artist before the public today.

A radiance of sound to the Adagio living every moment of the opening orchestral beauty under the watchful hands of her young colleague .He too using his bare hands to sculpt the sounds aided by the quite extraordinary participation of the birthday boy first violin. Martha,Lahav and Andrea inspiring their colleagues to heights and places they rarely visit I was reminded of the trio of Pappano,Jansen and Gonzales a few years ago on this very stage.

Martha barely touching these notes of Mozartian purity but which miraculously reached into the farthest corners of the vast hall.Martha like a great actor or singer who can transmit the same emotion to the front row as she can to the farthest.It is called artistry and I am reminded of Martha’s great friend Nelson Freire who had this same gift and would also sometimes add the occasional note to open up the sonorities hidden within the depths of the piano.
https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2021/11/02/nelson-freire-rip/
I remember when we were on tour in Venice at the same time that Nicolas Economou had arranged a festival for Martha at La Fenice.On a day off from our sold out performances of ‘The Importance of being Earnest’ at the Teatro Ridotto – now Benetton showroom- we went to hear one of the concerts . Martha had played only the first concert and then left much to the surprise of Hans Fazzari of the Milan Serate Musicali who used to follow her around. We heard of course Nicolas Economou who was to die so tragically at the age of forty in a car accident a little while later and who Martha out of friendship had agreed to take part in his mini festival.The technicians though showed us around the theatre backstage and pointed out that under the orchestral pit were some meters of broken glass because the Venetians had realised that it was a natural substance that would reflect the sound into the hall. Artistry,mastery ingenuity call it what you will but it created a warmth of natural sound that no acoustically assisted sound could compete with these days!It is this same natural God given artistry that we are witness too each time that Martha arrives on stage.

There were big sonorities too to the Adagio as the left hand weaved its way underneath the melodic line in a question and answer with the orchestra.
Impetuous as ever Martha ,with a twinkle in her eye, immediately entered with the impish rondo melody of the Molto allegro last movement. A ‘ joie de vivre’ where any idea of numbers could be instantly forgotten as Martha was a coquettish young maiden teasing and beguiling her colleagues into playing ball with her. Even the last chords were played like bells throwing her hands into the air as though being burnt by the glistening sounds that were coming from the piano and that were taken up exactly the same by the orchestra before the final rumbustous ending.

‘Ma mère l’Oye’ I have heard Martha play with many of her colleagues even with the addition sometimes of percussion to add orchestral colour.Today we were treated only to the last of the five pieces that make up this suite for piano duet : ‘Le Jardin Féerique’. Lahav added some subtle deep bass notes ( as Nelson would have no doubt done) and it opened up the sounds of the piano allowing Martha to barely whisper the notes at the top of the keyboard but with a glowing warmth that gradually built up to the streams of sounds of glissandi that she played with the beauty and grace of all she did tonight.

Next stop for Martha ever youthful with an artistry that just grows and grows on every occasion and is of mastery and simplicity – like Rubinstein.

https://www.symphonikerhamburg.de/en/martha-argerich-festival