Argerich, Barenboim in der Phiharmonie

Photo courtesy Opern & Konzertkritik Berlin

By author Schlatz

A concert with Daniel Barenboim and Martha Argerich.

In the Philharmonie, the conductor and soloist rely on familiar terrain, Beethoven's first piano concerto and Brahms' last symphony.

How Martha Argerich plays the C major concerto: daringly accentuated target notes and prominent suggestions, effervescently carefree scales, serious afterthoughts, charmingly violent shifts in tempo. Nobody does it like that. Their tone is unique: the quiet notes sound full, round, always a little roughened and dark, and carry their content easily into the huge space. The first movement, in which, as is well known, the solo voice is not heard once with the main theme (similar to how the solo in the development does not play any of the themes), remains boyish and clear in Argerich's work, but in places devoid of mystery. And in the past, Barenboim dispensed with the execution on the piano in a more floating, gripping manner.

Photo courtesy Opern & Konzertkritik Berlin

The cadenza in the first movement is the short one with the long final trill that Argerich usually plays, not the long one that Pollini and Brendel always used. The Argentinian admirably keeps the Adagio with its trills and sixty-fourths in a natural flow, shaping the phrasing without any mannerism, and yet the approach is far from uncomfortable classicism. The very gentle tempo is due to the Berlin Philharmonic's heavenly phrasing on the second themes in movements 1 and 3.

The finale is excellent. The drumming right-hand semiquavers on the side theme are a bit blurred. On the second return of the theme, she misses the last chord of the solo right before the tutti, and I think she's clutching her forehead in anger at that moment.

Everything that is slow becomes even slower. The musicians' entrances under Daniel Barenboim are not accurate to a fiftieth of a second; in the coda of the Allegro non troppo one fears briefly. What's up?

The symphony takes such a long breath that contrasts such as subjective emotions and objective (sonata) form cancel each other out for seemingly endless minutes. The lyricism of the slow movement is played out with such stunning intensity (the Bendix-Balgley), and the Allegro giocoso is so urgently dense - the full-bodied pizzicati of the cellos and basses - that you can only get through it with bated breath. In the finale everything fits, and in the 3/2 variations of the trombone and horn passages time stands still.

First published at Opern & Konzertkritik Berlin, October 27, 2024

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