Martha Noguera in Rome to show us what it means to be a pianist of class. And what a class,that of 38/39/40 with Martha Argerich,Daniel Barenboim etc in Buenos Aires where the Neapolitan school of playing had been brought over by Vincenzo Scaramuzza. Martha Argerich was in Rome just last week with Beethoven and it was Beethoven that Martha Noguera brought too.

Martha Argerich is back in town and there is magic in the air in the Eternal City

Martha Noguera in Rome in the beautiful Sala Baldini with a programme that would scare most pianists half her age.
Two works by Chopin,the first considered one of the most technically difficult and rarely performed :The Allegro de Concert op 46 and the second a work ,the first Sonata op 4 that I can only ever remember hearing once in the concert hall played by Cherkassky ( as part of a Chopin Trilogy for the students at the Royal Academy ). An early work more in style of Schubert than the Bel Canto that was shortly to follow. After a very short break Martha embarked on Beethoven’s most momentous journey with the Sonata op 106 ‘Hammerklavier’.

Performances that reminded me of Magda Tagliaferro or Vlado Perlemuter for their roots firmly embedded in the harmonic structure and the great architectural line played with chiselled beauty and projection.Like her great colleague Martha has a remarkable arch of the hand and fingers of steel but with wrists and body movements of rubber that can allow the music to flow through her from a lifetime’s experience projecting the musical thought with a concentrated authority and the passionate conviction of a great artist.There was an imposing opening from the very first notes of what was probably to be Chopin’s 3rd Concerto.Full rich sounds resounding in this beautiful and unique hall in the very centre of the Eternal City. An aristocratic sense of spaciousness and timeless beauty where the music was allowed to unfold with simplicity and directness with a chiselled beauty to the melodic line with ornaments that were just streams of ravishing sounds embellishing the beauty of Chopin’s bel canto. As Chopin described to his students,Martha has a rubato where the roots are firmly planted in the ground but the branches above free to flow and move naturally with playing of real weight of a mastery of incredible harmonic cohesion.Playing of sumptuous beauty that filled this beautiful hall with ravishing sounds and the unmistakable beauty of Chopin’s mellifluous outpourings.

The Chopin Sonata op 4 is a very early work but already showing signs of genius but more linked to a formal Schubertian pattern.An imposing first movement played with great clarity and dynamic drive followed by a playful ‘Menuetto’ .But it was the rich chordal opening of the ‘Larghetto’ that spoke so eloquently leading to a mellifluous flowering not yet of Chopin’s bel canto style but of a poignant simplicity and inevitability that was allowed to unfold with such eloquence.The Finale unleashed an explosion of virtuosistic declamations and sparkling brilliance that was played with enviable authority and fingers like limpets that belong to the keys after a lifetime spent of dedication and artistry at the keyboard.

There was a call to arms with the momentous declamation of the ‘Hammerklavier’.The first movement was played with much less pedal that the Chopin which allowed absolute clarity of Beethoven’s knotty twine but also of his overpowering thoughts.There was a dynamic drive with colours of orchestral proportions played with such inevitability and nobility.A searing intensity and contrasts in dynamics that were breathtaking in their daring and rhythmic intensity.A scherzo that seemed rather slow and deliberate for the ‘assai vivace’ indication but it left room for the following ‘Presto’ indication which turned a Brahmsian opening into pure Beethovenian frenzy.

There was a deep rich sound of string quartet proportions to the ‘Adagio Sostenuto’ that was played as Beethoven asks ‘appassionato e con molto sentimento’ . It is the very core of this monumental work and was played with nobility and passion and with a sense of line as the melodic line was allowed to unfold with ever more intensity and deep profundity. A poignancy only broken by the refreshing waves of sounds out of which emerged the monumental Fugue.’ Allegro risoluto’ it was indeed as Martha played with driving rhythms and fearless abandon one of the most difficult works for the keyboard. Richter had played it in London and not being satisfied with his performance he played it all over again as an encore! No encore was necessary tonight as Martha had made a statement that only an artist of her maturity and mastery could offer.Breathtaking,fearless playing of almost improvised freedom as the work evolved from her masterly fingers, as if for the first time ,on a heroic voyage of discovery of one of the greatest works ever written for the keyboard.

Martha Noguera in Sorrento at the Villa Fondi on the terrace overlooking the Bay of Naples.
And it was here that the Adagio sostenuto ,the very core of Beethoven where he reveals in his last years the profundity that he tried to conceal with his irascible temperament, and it was in this beautiful spot on a piano with amplification that Martha managed to communicate the deepest thoughts and feelings of the Genius from Bonn.
A silence and feeling of mutual communication with an audience not expecting to be treated to one of the greatest works of the piano literature .
Persuaded by our genial host Paolo Scibilia to offer a small encore that would allow us to share in the perfumes of her native Argentina.

Martha sat at the piano and it was magic as she gave a gentle farewell to this unforgettable evening with a little piece by Guastavino full of the beguiling charm and insinuating emotions of the ‘Schubert of the Pampas’. It calmed the red hot air of 30 degrees but also the tension created by Beethoven’s mighty fugue where the composer throws open the gauntlet to those few pianist who dare tread into such forbidden territory .

Chopin’s Allegro de concert, Op. 46, was published in November 1841. It is in one movement and takes between 11 and 15 minutes to play. The principal themes  are bold and expressive. It has a curious place in the Chopin canon, and while its history is obscure, the evidence supports the view, shared by Robert Schumann  and others, that it started out as the first movement of a projected third piano concerto, of which the orchestral parts are either now non-existent or were never scored at all. There is no evidence that Chopin ever even started work on the latter movements of this concerto.

Chopin published his two piano concertos in 1830. That same year he wrote that he was planning a concerto for two pianos and orchestra , and would play it with his friend Tomasz Napoleon Nidecki if he managed to finish it. He worked on it for some months, but he had the greatest difficulty with it, and this work never eventuated; however, he may have used ideas from it in later works.

There is also evidence that Chopin started work on a third concerto for piano and orchestra. In Chopin: The Piano Concertos, Rink quotes from an unpublished Chopin letter, dated 10 September 1841, offering Breitkopf & Härtel  an “Allegro maestoso (du 3e Concerto) pour piano seul” for 1,000 francs.In November 1841, Schlesinger published the Allegro de concert, which has a tempo indication of “Allegro maestoso”, and Breitkopf & Härtel also published it in December of the same year. The work has the general characteristics of the opening movement of a concerto from around that time. It contains a lengthy introduction , with the section corresponding to the original piano solo commencing at bar 87. It seems clear that the “Allegro maestoso” Chopin referred to in his letter was the piece published two months later as Allegro de concert, Op. 46.

The first few notes of the piece were drafted around 1832,but it is not known when the rest of the piece was written. Chopin dedicated it to Friederike Muller ,one of his favourite pupils, who studied with him for 18 months (1839–1841). Franz Liszt  gave her the nickname “Mademoiselle opus quarante-six” (“forty six”, the work’s opus number, in French).

The Sonata No. 1 in C minor, Op. 4 was written in 1828 (probably begun around July).It was written during Chopin’s time as a student with Jozef Eisner , to whom the sonata is dedicated. Despite having a low opus number, the sonata was not published until 1851 by Tobias Haslinger in Vienna , two years after Chopin’s death.This sonata is considered to be less refined than the later 2 sonatas, and is thus much less frequently performed and recorded.It is in four movements Allegro maestoso ;Menuetto; Larghetto ;Finale :Presto

Beethoven’s  Piano Sonata No. 29 op 106 (known as the Große Sonate für das Hammerklavier, or more simply as the Hammerklavier) is widely viewed as one of the most important works of the composer’s third period and among the greatest piano sonatas of all time. Completed in 1818, it is often considered to be Beethoven’s most technically challenging piano composition and one of the most demanding solo works in the classical piano repertoire.The first documented public performance was in 1836 by Franz Liszt  in the Salle Erard  in Paris to an enthusiastic review by Hector Berlioz Dedicated to his patron, the Archduke Rudolf , the sonata was written primarily from the summer of 1817 to the late autumn of 1818, towards the end of a fallow period in Beethoven’s compositional career. It represents the spectacular emergence of many of the themes that were to recur in Beethoven’s late period: the reinvention of traditional forms, such as sonata form ; a brusque humour; and a return to pre-classical compositional traditions, including an exploration of modal harmony and reinventions of the fugue within classical forms

The four movements are:

1. Allegro
2. Scherzo : Assai vivace
3. Adagio sostenuto
4. Introduzione: Largo… Allegro – Fuga :Allegro risoluto