This video captures a rare and special event: a solo stage performance of the Chopin Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 58 by the legendary Argentinian pianist Martha Argerich. This performance was recorded in the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg on June 25, 2020, with no audience but the camera operators.
Argerich burst upon the musical world in the 1960s with stunning impact as a young wunderkind. After a hectic time as a touring virtuoso, she considered abandoning the world of music, but instead withdrew for a period from live solo performances. These solo appearances have remained rare in the years since, as she has preferred to devote herself to concerto performances, chamber music, and mentoring younger artists.
Argerich has said that she feels tremendously alone when on stage in solo performance. All the more remarkable, then, that she should take the stage again, in an empty hall, no less, to present this stunning performance of one of the summits of the Romantic piano literature. What a splendid gift from this extraordinary artist to the musicians and music lovers of the world at a time when traditional live performance had become impossible.
And what an extraordinary performance! Argerich has always been renowned for her musical insights as much as for her almost preternatural technical mastery. To these she has added a level of depth, maturity, understanding, even sensitivity, which can come to fruition only as the product of an entire lifetime lived in music.
Right from the opening bars of the first movement, we're aware of the juxtaposition, in lightning-fast shifts, of power and authority alongside fantasy and delicacy. The arrival of the second main theme is marked by lyrical phrasing and rubato of distinction. Cascading roulades unfold with ease and a gentle flow that might elude lesser hands. In the stormier passages of the development, there's no shortage of power. The tempo transitions into and out of passages featuring the second subject are handled with subtlety and finesse.
The second movement scherzo opens with the most lightweight, fleeting, fairylike textures, growing to a more powerful (but not overblown) rendition of the final bars before the slower, more meditative central trio.
The slower theme of the third movement unfolds with a truly lyrical, indeed vocal sense of phrasing, highlighting the resemblance to a sung melody. Most remarkable is the completely integrated feel of the rubato, as natural as breathing itself and lacking any sense of being an interpretive nuance consciously added on. The closing bars, slowing down and growing quieter ever so slightly, had me holding my breath as if in a live concert, fearful of breaking the spell. I've never heard this movement given such a vivid life of its own, and it led me to do something I don't often do -- to replay it after I reached the end of the sonata.
The tarantella-like finale is taken by Argerich at a reasonable tempo, allowing the busyness of the score to carry the impression of supersonic speed while every stage of the musical argument still emerges clearly. Unlike many interpreters, she holds back her big guns at first, and thus opens up the door to changing her style and emphasis on each recurrence of the dramatic main theme. The movement builds up in the most organic way to the theme's last and grandest occurrence, and the torrents of cascading sound then carry the sonata inevitably to its conclusion.
This magisterial performance was supposed to remain available on Medici TV until the end of October, but appears to have already been removed from that platform. Pity. But there is a copy posted on YouTube, and the sound is good although the picture is slightly out of sync -- distracting in the passages where the camera focuses on the keyboard. It's worth that annoyance to hear this sonata played with such distinction!
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