Martha Argerich

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Martha Argerich 2015

Martha Argerich (born June 5, 1941 in Buenos Aires ) is an Argentine-Swiss pianist .

Live and act

Martha Argerich 1962

Argerich's maternal family had emigrated to Argentina from the Russian Empire because of their Jewish origins . There she lived in a settlement promoted by Baron Hirsch .

At the age of three she received her first lessons in Buenos Aires from the Italian-Argentine pianist and piano teacher Vicente Scaramuzza and made her debut there in 1949 at the age of seven with Beethoven's 1st Piano Concerto together with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Radio El Mundo under the direction of Alberto Castellanos. In 1955 she came to Europe with her family and continued her studies in Vienna with Friedrich Gulda . The Argentine President Juan Perón supported this decision by giving her parents positions at the Argentine embassy in Vienna. In 1957 she won first prize at the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano .

At the age of about twenty, after the birth of her first daughter, today's violist Lyda Chen, she got into a life crisis. As a result, she withdrew completely from the concert business. It was not until 1964 that it succeeded, inter alia. also through the intervention of her teacher Stefan Askenase that she showed herself to the public again. In 1965 she became world famous by winning the 1st prize at the International Chopin Competition .

She is committed to promoting young piano talents and participates as a juror in important competitions. As a member of the jury of the Chopin competition, Argerich got into a furor in 1980 after Ivo Pogorelich - whom she described as a genius - was eliminated after the third round, whereupon she left the jury in protest.

In 2002, a documentary was made about her under the direction of Georges Gachot ; another released her youngest daughter in 2013.

Since around 2004 she has been concentrating more on chamber music . For a long time now she has not performed alone in a piano recital, but as a soloist in piano concerts or with other musicians such as Nelson Freire , Gabriela Montero , Gidon Kremer , Mischa Maisky , Cristina Marton , Mauricio Vallina or her long-time duo partner Lilya Zilberstein . From 2002 to 2016 she ran her own festival “Progetto Martha Argerich” in Lugano . Since 2018 she has been organizing the annual Martha Argerich Festival with the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra in the Laeiszhalle .

In 2005 she received the Praemium Imperiale , the “Nobel Prize in the Arts”. In 2014 she was awarded the ECHO Klassik in the category “Concert recording of the year (piano)” with the Orchestra Mozart Bologna under Claudio Abbado for the recording of Mozart's piano concertos 20 and 25 . In 2016 she received the Kennedy Prize .

Piano art

Argerich is known for her spirited game. Many of their interpretations are now legendary; These include the 3rd Piano Concerto in D minor by Rachmaninoff or the 1st Piano Concerto in B flat minor by Tchaikovsky .

Personal

Argerich has been married three times so far. First she married the conductor and composer Robert Chen, with whom she has a daughter, the violist Lyda Chen-Argerich. In 1964, she divorced Chen. From 1969 to 1973 she was married to the Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit , with whom she has their second daughter Annie Dutoit. This marriage gave her Swiss citizenship. Their third daughter, Stephanie Argerich-Blagojevic, comes from a short marriage to the American pianist and conductor Stephen Kovacevich .

Due to her great cultural merits, the city of Lugano awarded Martha Argerich honorary citizenship on June 23, 2010.

Recordings (excerpt)

Documentaries

  • Georges Gachot: Martha Argerich, conversation nocturne. Idéale Audience, ARTE France, BR, 2002 (German title: Martha Argerich, night talk )
  • Stéphanie Argerich : Argerich - Bloody Daughter (Argerich: A Daughter's View) , CH 2012, published under the title Bloody Daughter

literature

  • Olivier Bellamy: Martha Argerich. The lioness at the piano. Bertelsmann, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-570-58023-3 .

Web links

Commons : Martha Argerich  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rodrigo Carrizo Couto: Interview with Stephanie Argerich about her mother, Martha Argerich. In: SWI swissinfo.ch . January 24, 2013, archived from the original on September 24, 2015 ; accessed on September 30, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Echoklassik.de Klassik Prize Winner 2014. In: echoklassik.de. Archived from the original on August 28, 2014 ; accessed on June 5, 2021 .
  3. ↑ Martha Argerich cittadina onoraria, Giudici: “È un momento storico”. In: tio.ch. June 23, 2010, accessed June 5, 2021 (Italian).
  4. ↑ Martin Meyer: Mother Martha and her daughters. In: nzz.ch . April 4, 2013, accessed June 5, 2021 .
  5. ↑ Wolfram Goertz : Pianist Martha Argerich: Stay away from my hair! In: Zeit Online . August 20, 2011, archived from the original on June 22, 2013 ; accessed on June 5, 2021 .
personal data
SURNAME Argerich, Martha
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Argerich, Maria Martha
SHORT DESCRIPTION Argentine pianist
DATE OF BIRTH June 5, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Buenos Aires