Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Argerich, Off the Rails?

You know I was thinking about Argerich and the impact her interpretations have made on me, and I happened to come to the question: Has their every been an Argerich performance where she was completely derailed. I mean she often was like a crash test dummy that barely the mark, but you think their would be at least one recording where thing fell apart.

From my memory of her recordings, it seems somehow, even when she play faster than it was possible, she was always able to hold the piece together.

I'd be very interested if someone were to post a recording where thing fell apart.

And why would you think that she'd allow a recording that had fallen apart to ever make it past the editing room?

....except that she did, or somehow it slipped out. (At least one.)
It was Chopin's 1st Ballade. Somebody posted it on here a few months ago, I think from youtube but I'm not sure. Anyway, I couldn't find it (at least not easily). Maybe someone else will....

Do you mean this?

You kidding?
(No, that's not it.)

Well no, I wasn't kidding actually and was thinking if that's off the rails then wow! haha.

Was the recording you're thinking of live? To my knowledge she's only recorded the gminor a few times...once very early on in the studio and a few live recordings from the 80s.

There was one live recording where the coda was fairly sloppy, but that's the closest I can think of... Richter has a (I think it's live) recording where his playing of the coda is sloppy too.

I love it when artists record sloppy (be it live or otherwise). It reminds me that they are human as well.

Even Hamelin is sloppy sometimes! That live performance of the Alkan Concerto 3rd movement... Augh!

Of course, it's also waayyyy too fast, haha. Presto alla barberesca?

One of those 'live' recordings got pretty jumbled up as she proceeded to get completely consumed by her own virtuosity.

But damn- it's been removed from YouTube.

I mentioned that live from the concertgebouw 78/79 recording.

Somehow, her Schumann Op. 12 sounds 'off-the-rails' to me. It just seems rushed, schizophrenic, and at times disconnected.

...I've listened to the recording a few times, and I am warming up to it a bit more. Somehow the schizophrenic thing works with Schumann... off the rails :P.

In the one I talked about, it's more than "sloppy"; it's out of control. "Off the rails" is as good a way to put it as any, at least to my ears. But maybe we aren't talking about the same performance.....

+1 -- although IMO it was way more than "consumed by her virtuosity"; it ran away from her and was out of control. But maybe you meant your phrase as a euphemism for that.


That's what I figured.

I remember listening to that Carnegie Hall performance of the Ballade, and Mark is right in that it was probably her sloppiest recording.

The thing with the these live recording is that while they sound out of control Argerich is actually quite in control. Even the Coda to the Ballade, which she played faster than I had ever heard it, is pulled of rather accurately even if she plays to fast to phrase it.

Seems like a bold statement. (How do you know?)

Although, come to think of it, maybe no bolder than my saying it's out of control.

I guess ultimately none of us can say whether it "was" out of control or not, just how it sounds to us.

It's more the fact that even at the breakneck tempos, which are probably due to nerves, she still is able to maintain are rather remarkably low mistake threshold. This is open to argument seeing that the recording was a very bad quality bootleg.

This is a dangerous subject, discussing whether Holy Martha made a mistake or 2, as long as we earthlings can't beat her, let's keep our distance, but, well, 've got this famous recording of her op.22, Andante flows happily, but that Polonaise gives me the creeps, what bit her?

I ran across a recording that purported to be Richter playing the Brahms Paganini Variations. It was embarrassingly awful to the point I had to doubt the validity of the recording. I take some of these youtube recordings with a grain of salt.

If that recording wasn't her, it was someone else with world-class skill.
It was a world-class off-the-rails wreck.

Agree, if one messes up the whole thing, it should be in the grand manner haha