Bach: Keyboard Works

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Advantages:	Brilliant, stirring, excitingly unpredictable, fresh performance; "genius" is not hyperbole in Argerich's case .
Disadvantages:	Reflecting its LP origins, the CD lasts only 50' 16" !

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

[NOTE: This review dates from January 2001, shortly after that personal musical milestone when I first heard Martha Argerich through this J. S. Bach recording--only to be blown away over to the next galaxy. I’ve edited the piece for clarity, but have not updated or altered the original tone.]

Eureka! I have just discovered another great pianist! Goes by the name of Martha Argerich, ever heard of her?

Well, for hermit-living-under-a-rock Philistine me, not till now! I’m only a few decades late, but I finally made her acquaintance recently, through a Toccata, a Partita, and an English Suite composed by my beloved J. S. Bach. All found on a CD purchased on the spur of the moment, music unheard, believing that Deutsche Grammophon Records could not be exaggerating when they included Martha Argerich in the re-releases of their "Legendary Recordings" series. And Philips Classics/DG/EMI Classics have picked her for their "Century’s Greatest Pianists" lineup. How could I go wrong with all that endorsement?

Well, I’m glad I bought into the hype--because this time, it wasn’t just hype. Her petite frame notwithstanding, Martha Argerich is a well-recognized giant among today’s living pianists, one whose live performances cause even other highly respected classical musicians (not to mention her rabid fans) to scramble for those precious tickets that have a tendency to disappear in a flash.

She’s blessed with a clean and nimble technique, and a powerful playing style that is also very tightly controlled. She uses a fantastically large palette of emotional color and tone. She plays with a pure kind of energy and a spontaneity few other pianists can match, and listening to her carry on at the keyboard is wonderful and moving and thrilling all at once. She completely bewitches her willingly captive audiences, taking their breath away and making their hearts race with her accelerandos and propulsive momentums. And everything sounds so effortless!

It’s difficult not to resort to clichéd superlatives when describing her overwhelming pianistic gifts, but it’s all I can do to capture her essence. She has been dubbed the "genius" of her generation, and in her case it is no facile hyperbole.

This CD was re-released by Deutsche Grammophon in early 2000 in celebration of Bach’s 250th birthday. The album was originally recorded in Berlin in 1979, released in 1980, and then most recently underwent "original-image bit-processing" (guess that’s something really high tech and wonderful).

From the first stirring notes of the Toccata, Argerich sweeps you away with her total mastery of the piece. You enter what might seem like a complex maze, as she traces the oft-changing melodic path dotted with lots of little musical surprises. In a few places, she gradually pumps up the pace and volume leading up to the climax, playing as if relentlessly driven by some unseen force, tossing off those diabolical little trills and mordents with cavalier abandon.

I haven’t been this astonished by almost any other performance of Bach. A few (very few) stodgy critics may find her interpretations a bit "excessive," but a colorful, lively and passionate Bach has never been distasteful to me.

Her Allemandes and Sarabandes are softer, gentler and more introspective, while she stirs up excitement in the faster sections with both subtle and overt shifts in mood from one phrase to the next, from one statement to the next, even within the very same phrase. You can’t help but give up and surrender completely to the emotional pull and richness of the music.

Her control of the keyboard is amazing. Following the emphatic introductory chords in the Grave.Adagio of the Partita’s Sinfonia, listen as Martha drops the volume precipitously, beginning the Andante in a whisper, her notes now light and perfectly balanced. The Sinfonia (Partita) and the Allemandes (Partita and English Suite) mesmerize in they way they gently wash over you like liquid waves. In contrast, she attacks the English Suite Bourées with a relish and vitality that’s positively infectious.

She commands your full attention from the first note to the last. She keeps things from growing monotonous and dull, something which can befall Bach’s works in lesser hands, given the somewhat repetitive, rigidly structured, mathematically-perfect nature of his music. On returning to the same theme, Martha always reveals something new and unexpected.

She makes every piece completely hers. She might place a very slight but significant pause here, use an unusually stronger touch there, or begin in a hushed tone yonder, slowly building into a heavy, deliberate playing that rumbles in the lower register. These, along with that breathless rhythm in the faster passages, all add a joy and vibrancy to Bach’s elegant music. For instance, in the Toccata, one can almost hear her piano begin to “smile” happily at the 8:45 mark. She humanizes the music, giving it an intimate quality, making it vividly alive and completely captivating. I’m certain that were he around today, Bach himself would appreciate her sparkling interpretations very much.

Born in Argentina in 1941, Argerich debuted on the stage at age five, giving recitals in Buenos Aires while receiving lessons from "a despot with sadistic tendencies," as she refers to the Italian maestro, Vincenzo Scaramuzza. Her family moved shortly thereafter to Vienna, so the young pianist could study with the well-known teachers of Europe. There she first came under the tutelage of Friedrich Gulda, a highly respected interpreter of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, and a classical musician who also delved into jazz.

As a child, she was a very reluctant pianist, and tried to avoid practice sessions. As an adult, she has expressed her deep dislike not of *playing the piano*, but of living the life of a concert pianist. She has claimed that her piano practising has never been systematic.

In one of her rare interviews, Argerich tells of the time when she wasn’t quite three (!), much younger than the other children in a competitive kindergarten class: a five-year-old friend kept taunting her, saying that she couldn’t play the piano. All that *that* teasing did was to make her go to the piano and, for the first time, using just one finger, pick out a tune she’d heard her teacher play frequently—by ear, with every note perfect. Her teacher reported it to her parents, who "made a fuss about it." Formal lessons soon followed.

She also recalls the time when Gulda told her to study Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit (and Schumann’s Abegg Variations, too!) for their next lesson. She learned both within a few days, totally unaware of Gaspard’s notoriety among pianists for being incredibly difficult to play.

I see Argerich and the piano in the same way I regard Jacqueline du Pré and the cello—both such musically charismatic and unpredictable performers who have inspired devoted, even fanatical followings whose praise and cult-like adoration resemble those showered upon the likes of Vladimir Horowitz. The word “can’t” seems to be missing from their performing vocabularies. Like du Pré, Argerich seems to play instinctively, with an intensity and passion that electrifies listeners.

Argerich is that rare performer who does very well with a varied repertoire, including works by Romantics Chopin and Schumann, Ravel, modern composers like Bartok and Prokofiev, and, as in this recording, J. S. Bach. My only lament is that she has recorded too few of Bach’s works.

Not much else to say except to strongly recommend the disc to one and all. It deserves a place in every Bach lover’s library, and that of any music lover curious about one of the world’s genuine living legends. Find out for yourself why so many who have experienced that rarefied, divine, yet deeply human musical world created by Martha Argerich so hate to leave it.

Now, if only she would record the Goldberg Variations, or any other solo Bach work … *sigh*…

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CD TITLE:

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: Toccata BWV 911 * Partita BWV 826 * English Suite No. 2 BWV 807

1 Toccata in C minor, BWV 911

Partita No. 2 in C minor, BWV 826
2 Sinfonia
3 Allemande
4 Courante
5 Sarabande
6 Rondeau
7 Capriccio

English Suite No. 2 in A minor, BWV 807
8 Prelude
9 Allemande
10 Courante
11 Sarabande
12 Bourée I/II
13 Gigue

Martha Argerich, piano

Deutsche Grammophon ©1980 289 463 604-2

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Some definitions…

TOCCATA
- [Ital.,=touched], type of musical composition. Early examples were written for various instruments, but the best-known form of toccata originated about the beginning of the 17th cent. Free in form, it was one of the first attempts at idiomatic writing for keyboard instruments, in contrast to the strictly contrapuntal pieces of the Renaissance. The toccata was usually rhapsodic, often interspersing rapid passages of brilliant figuration with fugal sections. Andrea Gabrieli, Frescobaldi, Sweelinck, Froberger, Buxtehude, and Bach were outstanding masters of the toccata style. Schumann wrote a toccata for piano in sonata form. As a brilliant showpiece the toccata persists today in organ composition.

(from http://www.bartleby.com/65/to/toccata.html, Columbia Encyclopedia)

- musical form for keyboard instruments, written in a free style that is characterized by full chords, rapid runs, high harmonies, and other virtuoso elements designed to show off the performer's "touch."

(from http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/2/0,5716,74612+1+72711,00.html?query=toccata)

SUITE
- in music, instrumental form derived from dance and consisting of a series of movements usually in the same key but contrasting in rhythm and mood. …

(excerpt from http://www.bartleby.com/65/to/toccata.html, Columbia Encyclopedia)

- An ordered set of instrurnental pieces meant to be performed at a single sitting; in the Baroque period, an instrumental genre consisting of several movements in the same key, some or all of them based on the forms and styles of dance music (other terms for the Baroque groups of dances include Partita, Overture, Ordre and Sonata da camera).

from http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/g_suite.html, from the Grove Concise Dictionary of Music

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