About this Artist

• Biography

Editorial Reviews

Martha Argerich is best known for her volatile performance style, but she can also be a seductive charmer. Her tender caress in the slow movement of Mozart's C Major Concerto (K. 503) could melt a heart of stone. Indeed, every phrase in this live 1978 recording is lovingly molded. And what other pianist finds such variety in Mozart's music? Argerich can drive home a dramatic flourish, then turn around and give a heartrending sotto voce sigh. The result is stylish and riveting: opera without words. Beethoven's C Major Concerto, taken from a 1992 concert, is just as marvelously mercurial. Argerich often revels in the muscular vigor of Beethoven's music -- check out her ferocious performance of the "Kreutzer" Sonata with Itzhak Perlman. But here, as in her 1985 studio recording of this concerto, she is more attentive to the work's lyrical elegance and wit. In her hands, the dreamy central section becomes the dramatic high point of the first movement, and she frolics through the comic finale as nimbly as Bob Hope tosses out one-liners. Conductor Szymon Goldberg inspires some stylish playing from the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra in the Mozart, despite a few ensemble problems, and Heinz Wallberg has the great Concertgebouw Orchestra in fine form for the Beethoven. Andrew Farach-Colton, Barnes & Noble

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