The sold-out De Doelen was buzzing with excitement on Thursday after the break. Very often the 80-year-old Argentine pianist Martha Argerich does not come to the Netherlands, but now she made an appearance with one of her favorite pieces, the Piano concerto in G van Ravel, and then with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, which excels in its refined music.
As soon as she breaks loose in mechanical, pearly finger exercises, Argerich shows herself a force of nature. As someone who has fully inhabited this concerto for decades, she is not afraid to drag the furniture around. She brings Ravel’s jazz tunes with just a bit of shimmering rubato, and in the cadence she slows down and speeds up trills so that they sound now like a blur, then again fiercely staccato. In this way she distinguishes herself not only from her own performances of this work, but also from the ‘cleaner’, more precise performances of others.
In the finely timid second movement you notice that her sound is just as much footwork as handwork. She leaves neither pedal untouched for a moment, alternating crystal clear phrasing with strange reverberation effects. True to her reputation, even in her well-established repertoire, she does not choose the beaten track.
Conductor Lahav Shani leads the Rotterdam Philharmonic with clarity and a firm hand, but takes too few risks. Stravinsky’s firebirdsuite, another showpiece of this orchestra, could use some more sharp edges. For Shani, however, the highlight has already been, after he was allowed to sit next to Argerich as quatre-mains partner for a sparkling encore from Ravels Ma mere l’Oye†
Martha Argerich plays Ravel
Classic
By Martha Argerich, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Lahav Shani.
10/02/2021, De Doelen, Rotterdam.