Rachmaninoff - Concerto No. 3
Tchaikovsky - Concerto No. 1
Argerich / Chailly / Kondrashin
Philips 446-673-2
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Serge Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30
Klavierkonzert d-moll
Concerto pour piano et orchestre en re mineur
(Publishers – Verlag – Edition: Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers, Ltd)
1) Allegro ma non tanto 15:26
2) Intermezzo. Adagio 11:00
3) Finale. Alla breve 13:53
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Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893)
Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23
Klavierkonzert b-moll
Concerto pour piano et orchestre en si bemol mineur
1) Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso – Allegro con spirito 19:07
2) Andantino simplice – Prestissimo – Tempo 1 6:20
3) Allegro con fuoco 6:54
Martha Argerich piano – Klavier
RSO Berlin – Riccardo Chailly (Rachmaninoff)
– Ricardo Chailly appears by courtesy of the Decca Record Company Ltd
Symponie – Orchester Des Bayerischen Rundfunks
– Kirill Kondrashin (Tchaikovsky)
Recorded Live Live-Aufnabmen Enregistrements publics:
Sender Freies Berlin (SFB Werbung GmbH), Berlin, 12/1982
Bavarian Radio, Munchen, 2/1980 (Tchaikovsky)
(P) 1982, 1995 – This compilation (P) 1995 Philips Classic Productions
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One Of Nature’s Happenings
– Bryce Morrison
This
recording is issued to celebrate two legendary performances.
Rachmaninoff’s Third – arguably the most daunting and opulent of all
Piano Concertos – has become inseparable in many musician’s minds from
Martha Argerich, one of the few living pianists able not only to tame
but dominate and engulf music of the highest passion and pianistic
intricacy. Such a statement invites comparisons with other, celebrated
interpreters of this magisterial example of fin-de-siecle Romanticism;
with the composer himself, Horowitz, Gilels and Van Cliburn. Yet it is
surely true to say that like all geniuses Martha Argerich defies even
whispered comparisons, and listening to her performance one is, at any
rate temporarily, blinded to all others. Sensuous, impulsive and with
moments (notably in the finale’s fierce momentum) which will make even
the most blasé listener or virtuoso fancier pale, Martha Argerich
remains acutely sympathetic to Rachmaninoff’s idiom, to subtlety and
rhetoric alike, while at the same time conveying her own inimitable
force and individuality.
Not that Argerich places all her cards
on the table immediately. She keeps her ultimate tour de force in
reserve. Anxious, no doubt, not to confuse first movements and finales,
she gives us a relatively subdued opening Allegro, fully aware of the
composer’s non tonto qualification. Yet how boldly she sings the
opening Slavic and chain-like melody (always with one more link than
you expect and one which, according to the composer, “wrote itself”)
silhouetting it against the orchestra’s pulsing accompaniment. How
sharp, too, is her increase in pace and turbulence at the first piu
vivo and the piu mosso start of the development. Again, in the first
movement’s veloce flight shortly before the second subject, the tigress
momentarily shows her claws and, throughout, the sheer scale and
largesse of her conception proclaim a fearless aplom, with violently
fluctuating tempi, the widest dynamic spectrum and, to take one
specific instance, a heart-stopping acceleration in the thunderous
chordal descent at the close of the cadenza. (She chooses the more
silvery, transparent and better of the two.)
That inimitable
touch of wildness, of untamed magnetism and charisma can be heard again
in the central Intermezzo. Here, her first entry does indeed suggest
“dark pearls flung on velvet” and, once more, terms such as Piu vivo
prompt the sort of fiery conviction inseparable from this pianist. Even
the many if brief moments of repose are dark and uneasy, quivering with
restrained vitality before the next assault is fired. More
specifically, the colossal climax and skittering poco piu mosso
variation in rapid waltz time, with its machine gun volleys of repeated
notes, suggest the sheer range of Argerich’s command; her force and
effulgence in massive chordal writing, her flashing rapier reflexes in
light-fingered brilliance.
But it is the finale which stuns and
bemuses. This is launched at the conclusion of the Intermezzo like an
intercontinental trajectory and with a verve and articulacy that even
the composer (a formidable and eloquent champion of his own concertos)
might have envied. How he would have wondered, too, at the sheer pace
of the sudden rise in temperature. Argerich plays as if possessed and,
like a river in full spate, she weeps all before her; a nail-biting
experience for Riccardo Chailly and the RIAS Symphony Orchestra Berlin,
her partners in virtuosity. Even the scherzando episode, normally a
brief oasis of intricate calm, is volatile rather than playful, though
in the extended meno mosso (excised in the bad and hopefully long past
days of cuts) Argerich pauses to voice and savour Rachmaninoff’s
richness to the full and with the most daring improvisatory freedom.
The following a temp (poco a poco accerlando) proceeds in short gusts
of sound, the end of each phrase curtailed for greater romantic
intensity, then the lento rumination provides yet another breathing
space for Argerich to recharge her energies and attack one of the
composer’s most dazzling elaborations (a tempo come prima) with a truly
vertiginous, reeling brilliance. Declamation is free and rhapsodic and
as the final vivace buildup commences Argerich unleashes a positive
firestorm of virtuosity.
Her, then, is a truly transcendental
performance of Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto. Uncut and, above all,
“live,” it possesses an almost palpable sense of occasion, of
electricity flowing between pianist, orchestra and audience. What a
reminder, too, that virtuosity is as much an attitude or state of mind
as a matter of force and rapidity. Argerich’s alterations of pace and
direction, seemingly at a moment’s notice, are second to none, and yet
such athletic prowess would mean little if it remained uncomplemented
or unenlivened by a temperamental force and fire, a passionate,
elemental and, indeed daemonic quality.
The same characteristics
fire and illuminate Martha Argerich’s no less revelatory performance of
Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto. Her flashing interaction with Kirill
Kondrashin is once more captured “live” and on the wing with passing
inaccuracy and failures of ensemble left, mercifully, uncorrected. Such
things are, indeed, like “spots on the sun,” the result of uninhibited,
superabundant fleetness and brilliance. High spots include the two most
famous octave fusillades played with a molten bravura, a first movement
cadenza where the most audacious volatility and impetus replace a more
customary free-wheeling, and a uniquely rapid, hallucinatory flight
through the Andantino’s central Prestissimo; in Argerich’s hands truly
a “scherzo of fireflies.” Her pace in the finale, too, is white-hot,
with all the devouring force and speed of a bush fire.
Shura
Cherkassky, among the greatest of all living romantic pianist, never
tires of celebrating Martha Argerich’s “genius,” while Stephen
Kovacevich speaks of an ease and fluency “beyond comprehension.” But
perhaps the last word should go to the late Eugene List who, after
referring to Argerich’s capacity, even as a child, to spin off octaves
like single notes, went on to salute her as, quite simply, “one of
nature’s happenings.” 