Martha Argerich's early recordings are still being unearthed, to the great delight of her hardcore fans. Treatment like this, normally reserved for musicians after their death, here serves shows off the fabulous artistry that she still possesses: the Argentine pianist is still performing at full tilt, racking up concerts and recordings, seeming to thumb her nose at the passing years, which have done nothing to slow her impetuous, virtuoso playing.
This album, recorded between 1955 (even before the Geneva Competition which made her name) and 1961, by the Hamburg and Cologne Radio Orchestras, presents a varied repertoire but not many surprises, taking in as it does the composers she would play all her life: Ravel, Chopin, Mozart, Prokofiev and Bartók. But what's confounding about this recording is the technical insolence, the imagination, and the radiant virtuosity which are all constants of her long and magnificent career. With an excellent accompaniment from Ernest Bour heading up the Baden-Baden Sudwestfunk Orchestra (and superbly recorded, which is to say, recorded by a German radio team of the 1950s), Ravel's Concerto in G a hobby-horse of hers, is a touchstone moment, thanks to the poetry (such tenderness in the Adagio!) and the joy it produces. Another big surprise is the Concerto in C Major by Mozart (n° 21, K. 467) accompanied by the great Swiss Mozartian Peter Maag. Their perfect partnership brings us a vision shot through with youth, with lively tempos and fabulous elocution from a pianist who is always "saying" something with miraculous freshness and strength.
We find Martha Argerich playing chamber music in Beethoven's Seventh Sonata with the great violinist Ruggiero Ricci who was one of the first partners she had in her youth in Europe. The rest of the record contains other rare pearls like sonatas by Mozart, Schumann's Toccata, the two Rhapsodies Op. 79 by Brahms, the Toccata and the Third Sonata by Prokofiev and Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies with an exaggerated Romany accent. Absolutely one to discover! © François Hudry/Qobuz