Martha Argerich - Martha Argerich and Friends: Live from the Lugano Festival 2007 (2008)

Martha Argerich's annual appearances at the Lugano Festival are highly sought after by her fans. Featuring the Argentinean pianist plus any number of her friends and protégés in a huge range of repertoire, the performances are as enjoyable as they are unusual and as thrilling as they are insightful.
EMI began releasing three-disc sets containing a selection of the Lugano Festival's finest performances in 2002. In this set from the 2007 festival, Argerich is joined by such old friends as cellist Mischa Maisky and violinist Renaud Capuçon and by such recent protégés as pianists Nicholas Angelich and Gabriela Montero in works that range from Beethoven's Piano Trio No. 4 through Glinka's Grand Sextet to Lutoslawski's Variations on a Theme of Paganini. As before, though the performers and performances are uniformly excellent and consistently exciting, they are otherwise not much alike. Argerich, Capuçon and Maisky' Beethoven Trio is powerfully eloquent while Argerich and Capuçon's Bartók First Sonata for violin and piano is incredibly fiery. In the less well-known works and performers, the results are even more varied but no less effective. Karin Lechner, Alissa Margulis, Lida Chen, and Marc Drobinsky's account of Beethoven's Piano Quartet No. 2 is poised and graceful with sparkling themes and sprightly rhythms, while Nicholas Angelich, Dora Schwarzberg, Lucia Hall, Nora Romanoff-Schwarzberg, and Jorge Bosso's reading of Dohnányi's Piano Quintet No. 1 is full-bodied and romantic with massive sonorities and weighty tempos.
As a special treat for Argerich's fans, this set also includes one of her extremely rare solo performances: an account of Schumann's Kinderszenen, which rivals her lovely 1984 Deutsche Grammophon recording for sheer poetic beauty. Captured in vivid live sound that allows plenty of time for the enthusiastic audience to demonstrate its enthusiasm after every performance, this disc will be mandatory for Argerich's fans.