Martha Argerich - Chopin (2010)

This release of broadcasts from 1959 and 1967 promises to add six new works to the Argerich discography. The truth is that nearly all the pieces here - with only one significant exception - have long been available (in other performances) on Argerich "pirates." The performances on this disc will tell Argerich's fans little, if anything, they don't already know about her: That few pianists have ever played such treacherous works as the C-sharp minor Etude, op. 10 no. 4, with such virtuosity, musicality and panache; that Argerich - despite favoring extremely fast tempos - plays the Mazurkas, Chopin's most personal and subtle works, with a vibrancy that makes her one of the great masters of this genre; that she can play an extended Chopin work, like the B minor Sonata, in an exceptional manner in which her high-pitched tension is always controlled by her artistry and taste; and that, sometimes, her passionate temperament, restless energy and nervous intensity show up as defects in her Chopin playing - as they do in a performance of the Nocturne in E-flat, op. 55 no. 2, so super-heated that its sultriness obscures the glory of the composer's contrapuntal writing.

But the one significant addition this disc makes to Argerich's discography suggests some things we did not know about this enigmatic artist: why her performances of Chopin are less consistently satisfying than those of Schumann; why she has devoted herself to such a narrow repertory; and why a pianist who has recorded in the studio celebrated performances of almost every important Chopin genre - the Mazurkas, Polonaises, Etudes, Waltzes, Preludes, Scherzos, Concertos and Sonatas -- has completely neglected one major genre: the Ballades.

Argerich performed the Ballade no. 1 in G minor in Berlin's RIAS studios early in 1959. Not quite eighteen at the time, this was, nevertheless, nearly two years after her first-prize victories in the Busoni and Geneva competitions, and at about the same time she recorded her DG debut album, a collection of brilliant performances of Brahms, Liszt, Prokofiev and Chopin (the Scherzo no. 3 in C-sharp minor). While her G minor Ballade shares some of the stellar quality of her C-sharp minor Scherzo - particularly the rapier-like reflexes combined with almost incomparable ease and flexibility - the Ballade is a failure. The way she plays the declamatory, seven-bar introduction is relatively flat and lacks the necessary narrative sweep. Her "get-on-with-it" restlessness and nervous energy make the appearance of the the second theme equally unsatisfactory. Since it is from that appearance that the narrative structure grows, the development fails to culminate in the magnificent affirmation of that subject. And, after Argerich's rather affect-less return to the plaintive G minor first subject, the performance fails to explode in the passionate desperation of the Presto con fuoco coda.

There is room in the Chopin oeuvre for a pianist who is a dramatist (the Scherzos and Polonaises), a colorist (the Nocturnes), a miniaturist (the Waltzes and Mazurkas) and a virtuoso (the Etudes). But unless a pianist also has a knack for telling a story, he or she better stay away from the Ballades. And Argerich, as this performance demonstrates, is no story-teller - at least not in Chopin. Her performances of Schumann - a composer whose works, whether in Kinderszenen or Kreisleriana, reward unremitting restlessness and neurotic intensity - are another story.

That Argerich never returned to the First Ballade or attempted to perform any of the other three suggests that she knew that her strength was for music that drove inexorably, rather than episodically, to a conclusion. And, henceforth, she would only choose repertory that played to that strength. This has meant that during her rather peculiar career - since 1979, so far as I know, she has not performed a single complete solo program in public - that she has been able to perform a relatively small number of nevertheless important pieces as well as or better than any other living pianist. It will be left to history to judge the wisdom of that choice.