Recorded during the 2021 Hamburg Festival, Avanti Classic’s third “Rendez-vous with Martha Argerich” box set features the legendary pianist and various emerging and established colleagues in a wide scope of chamber music collaborations. The repertoire ranges from familiar favorites to novelties, although no selections involving Argerich add any new works to her discography. As such, considerable comparative listening informs my disc-by-disc survey below:
CD 1: All Beethoven: In the “Bei Männern, welche Liebe fülen” Variations, Argerich and cellist Mischa Maisky bring more spontinaiety to Variation 2 and expansiveness to the minor key Variation 4 than in their two previous recordings (live in Lugano 2014 on Warner Classics, and the 1993 DG studio version). Argerich and violinist Renaud Capuçon retain the sprinting gait of their 2011 Lugano Op. 30 No. 3 Sonata’s outer movements, but with less dynamic contrast on Capuçon’s part. The Lugano performance also has superior engineering. Furthermore, Capuçon’s lighter elegance contrasts with the edgy intensity of Gidon Kremer’s contributions in his DG studio traversal with Argerich. No real surprises are in store for collectors familiar with the two earlier “Rendez-vous” collections as well as Warner Classics’ Lugano Festival “Argerich and Friends” releases from 2002 through 2016. A colleague of mine described the “Ghost” Trio with Alissa, Natalia and Jura Margulis as “classically tempered,” which is code for undernourished sustained string tone in the central Largo; this performance pales next to the blazing 2007 Lugano recording with Argerich, Capuçon and Maisky.
CD 2: Argerich remains as spirited and insouciant as ever in Beethoven’s Second Concerto, but you get better sound and better orchestral playing in her DG studio recording with Giuseppe Sinopoli and the Philharmonia. Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter joins Maisky and the pianist for a more soloist-oriented Mendelssohn D Minor Trio than the ensemble equanimity and discipline that the pianist and the Capuçon brothers displayed in their 2002 Lugano recording. A beautiful Brahms Viola Sonata Op. 120 No. 2 with Gérard Caussé features lovely piano support from the late Nicholas Angelich in what proved to be his final public performance.
CD 3: Maria João Pires plays Schubert’s A-flat and B-flat Impromptus D. 935 with more flexibility and tenderness compared to her very fine DG studio recordings. These words also apply to the Schubert A Major Sonata D. 664, where she now observes only the first movement exposition repeat. Pires joins Argerich in a reading of Mozart’s C Major Sonata K. 521 for piano duet that proves more relaxed and genial than in Argerich’s earlier Teldec studio recording with Alexandre Rabinovitch.
CDs 4-5: Tedi Papavrami’s unctuous portamenti in de Falla’s Popular Spanish Suite are less to my taste than Maki Okada’s gorgeous handling of the piano parts, although the violinist fares better in Astor Piazzolla’s The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. Pianist Evgeny Bozhanov lends powerful presence to an excellent Franck Quintet. Gidon Kremer is on great form in Sofia Gubaidulina’s brilliant arrangement for violin and piano of Astor Piazzolla’s Great Tango; he effortlessly navigates the tricky double stops and the passages in harmonics, abetted by Georgijs Osikins’ excellent piano support. While Anton and Daniel Gerzenberg offer clean two-piano ensemble synergy in Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, they don’t nail the rhythmic idioms.
CD 6: The positive concert reviews for baritone Michael Volle’s rendition of Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death were clearly justified, if only for his prodigious breath control and impressive Russian diction. While Argerich’s collaboration with Nelson Goerner in Bartok’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion is marginally superior to her Lugano traversal with Stphen Kovacevich and markedly superior to her mediocre pair-up with Daniel Barenboim, it yields to her far more dynamic, scintillating and sonically breathtaking studio version on DG with Nelson Freire. But it’s good to have Arno Babajanian’s unjustly obscure Piano Trio solidly represented by pianist Elena Lisitsia, cellist Jing Zhao and violinist Michael Guttman.
CD 7: There’s little to choose between the Hamburg Argerich/Maisky Shostakovich Cello Sonata recording and the live 2003 DG version from Brussels: both exploit the music’s emotional extremes to the hilt. In this composer’s Concertino for Two Pianos, I prefer the Allegretto sections’ crisper interplay between Argerich and Lilya Zilberstein in their 2006 Lugano encounter, possibly due to the latter’s superior sonics. Flutist Suzanne Barner is better in Weinberg’s Miniatures than in Prokofiev’s D Major Sonata, which pales next to James Galway’s RCA studio recording featuring Argerich’s finest account of the piano part on disc.
Naturally Argerich acolytes will want this release as a matter of course, while general collectors may prefer to sample before buying. Certainly Volume Three’s strongest items are worth owning, yet Volume One still remains my first choice in the Rendez-vous series for repertoire breadth and interpretive consistency.
