If sound could kill, I'm not sure anybody could have emerged from an Argerich concert alive, or at least unscathed. And I certainly wouldn't have survived to write this.
On October 2-4, 1998 Argerich made her belated debut with the San Francisco Symphony conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas performing the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No 3, her signature piece since 1957. Thirty minutes before the concert, I double-checked with the box office to see if she would indeed show up. I only stepped into the concert hall after their affirmative answer. After all, I was not about to be stood up by Martha for the fourth time.
After the piano was set in place and the orchestra seated and tuned, an eerie silence ensued. Then thunderous applause when a gracious and matronly lady in black stepped on stage followed by MTT. My heart was in my throat. It was indeed Martha. For all these concerts she cancelled, there she was now bowing smilingly to the audience, as if to assure them she would indeed play. And God did she play!
With a glowing clarinet solo, the concerto started in a surprisingly slow and purposefully drawn-out tempo, each phrase cautiously refracted by MTT. Then came the artful acceleration in preparation for the piano entry. Argerich calmly arranged her long black hair before diving head-on into the solo entry, which was immediately electrifying. Tossing off runs with beautifully chiseled and arching phrasings, she took blocks of chords in stride and played them as if they were single notes. More astounding still was her range of colors in the first theme, previously announced by the clarinet, where she intertwined the right-hand melodic line with chameleon-like and infinitely shaded left hand accompaniment. Her famous scale runs (starting with the right-hand all-white-keyed notes DEFGEFGAFGABDECDCDEFEFGA...) started with such a perilous speed (but without blurring any notes) that one was left thinking Argerich had outrun herself. But no! The scale run picked up even more speed and weight along the way until it developed into a dizzying fury of interlocking octaves before ascending into passages identical to the movement's opening piano solo part. Even at this point, one was more aware of her enormous reserve as opposed of her incredible virtuosity. Just when one thought she was reaching her limit, another threshold was soon conquered. The tension never subsided and when the movement ended in two sudden thumps in C major, considerable applause broke out among the audience (The same occurred in all three concerts). If I could put forth my theory that only complete novices and serious connoisseurs applaud between movements, it was not hard to tell which group was in action in an Argerich concert.
The second movement started in a relaxed but somewhat alert tempo. When the piano solo made its entry, however , what I heard was simply out of the world. Following low trills in E and F sharp, Argerich lashed out a scale passage that put the common notion of jeu perle to shame, for that single passage was no longer a scale of round pearls, but a sliver of quiet sparkling diamonds flowing out from the keyboard. Pianists behold! How in the world did Argerich stop us dead in the tracks with such a simple passage easily playable by a 10-year old? What fascination and frustration! Even if one practices nothing but that passage for life, one will still have no hope of ever matching a fraction of what she did in those few seconds. Could one videotape that passage and watch it over and over again hoping to uncover the "trick" ? But again, if one could copy Horowitz's beguiling nuances and colors in simple Scarlatti sonatas by endlessly analyzing his hand positions, there would be thousands of Horowitzes the world over. Well, moot point it is then.
The second movement, composed entirely of variations, was fertile ground for Argerich to shower us with her tonal palette and colorings. In one of the variations, Argerich played the slowly descending thirds (starting with a high set of B-D) with such bone-chilling iciness that more than fulfilled Prokofiev's indication in Italian: freddo, meaning cold. No less arresting was her way of ending the movement with a deeply-planted chord, not too loud, but growlingly deep with chilling resonance. She held the pedal for nearly half a minute, letting the sound reverberate around the hall and die away like a death-toll from afar.
The tempo was pleasantly crisp in the Finale, where Argerich started with considerable poise but the underlying tension was never in question. Again, her legendary chordal playing and thundering octaves showed their teeth. Yet Argerich did not fail to show that she was also a consummate alchemist, able to turn simple and thin lines into a diamond necklace. This was particularly the case in the mock-serious passage where the piano stubbornly sputtered out BBB, bcfga, B-flat,B-flat ,B-flat, echoed by various woodwinds in fragments of the same phrase. Her trills were like ghost flames flickering in and out of the background. Argerich the lioness revealed her claws in the coda section, generating billows of sound waves and searing heat. She tackled the up-down-up-down runs in seconds with the left palm hovering over the right hand, each finger playing adjacent notes in a rapid succession, a far cry from many others who resolve the problem with right hand glissandi using the second and the middle fingers. I must admit the glissandi method is more visually impressive, but Argerich's note-for-note flights created massive and solid sound waves that swept all before it. Let's not forget how she tamed similar runs in seconds in Ravel's Scarbo from the Gaspard de la Nuit. When the movement ended in a truly scintillating climax, the audience unanimously leaped to its feet, delivering an instant standing ovation with deafening rounds of bravos
Backstage, Argerich was mobbed by the orchestra members and gate-crashers like myself. One orchestral member was so thrilled she was at her wit's end for compliments, so she actually just said "Your hair is beautiful!", which was greeted by Argerich's hearty "Thank you!" in a charismatically Latin inflection. Indeed, Argerich was a lot more attractive and young-looking up close than her recent publicity photos suggested. She was telling people that she had recently played the Prokofiev Third with Myun-Whun Chung in Rome and Liszt First with Dutoit in Beijing. When I told her about all these previous times she stood me up, she responded "Really? Where? Oh, with Kremer, yes, I wasn't feeling well, but I played with Maisky in Lincoln Center!" And I said "Yes, I saw the review in New York Times, they gave you a rave review", to which she replied "Yes, I know, but Maisky got a terrible review, don't you think it's unfair?" What modesty.
Being a die-hard piano buff, I of course attended all three Argerich performances. The Davies Symphony Hall was near capacity at the second performance, mostly likely because word had got out that Argerich DID show up and was up to her own par. Interestingly, Argerich got pre-performance bravos as soon as she appeared onstage. For most soloists, such gesture could well be premature. But who am I to discount those ardent fans when the last note sounded and she, right in front of my very eyes and ears, had just delivered a Prokofiev Third yet even finer than the one before ? Not only was it note-perfect this time (there were isolated but insignificant clinkers in the previous performance), the orchestral rapport was much better (it probably took the SFS a while to get attuned to Argerich's temperament), and the second movement even more sparkling. The third performance was basically the same.
A common characterization of Argerich is her mercurial temperament and fickleness in interpretation. But by attending all three concerts, I realized that she is actually a very consistent musician with well thought out ideas. However, Argerich goes beyond this, for she allows ample space for liberal and impromptu alterations whenever inspiration calls. I think its her balance of discipline and freedom that makes her live concerts so irresistible. With Argerich at the keyboard, her legendary voltage and lightening reflex was at once apparent and arresting. Watching her fingers commanding the keyboard was an astounding spectacle of sheer fluidity and grace. Pianists eager to copy any secret hand positions from Argerich would be searching in vain, for she played like any pianist with "normal" positioning. There was no bizzare flattening (such as Horowitz's)and no highly raised wrists (such as Kissin's). In short, neither tricks nor gimmicks. Her hands and arms were simply but robustly placed on the keyboard with flexible wrists. Yet those hands produced the most amazing sounds. What a great rebuttal for those insisting on "special" hand positions for great playing!
For those acquainted with her 1967 recording with Abbado, Argerich's conception of the piece remains largely unchanged. There are notable exceptions, such as one particular variation in the second movement where she steeply accelerated to create a two-tier tempo within the same variation. In addition, the opening phrase in the Finale was razed across the keyboard entirely unpedaled (creating an uncanny effect akin to diamond spewing forth) until the chords in contrary motion erupted (pedaled) like a floodgate opening. (She pedaled throughout this passage in the DG recording) Before closing, may I recommend a "pirate" recording (available from Tower Records in the US) for those who want to sample what Argerich sounds like in concert but never had the chance to hear her in flesh. It's a CD on Artists lable (FED 049) which has the Prokofiev Third with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Ricardo Chailly in 1983. This is the best recorded Prokofiev Third by Argerich so far. Her most recent recording of the same piece with Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony seems tame by comparison, though the Prokofiev First and the Bartok Third on the same disc are superb and hard to surpass.
Oct/1998
