Martha Argerich: An Enigmatic Pianist Reclaims Her Stardom
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Few people who have heard the tempestuous Argentine-born
Martha Argerich play ever forget it. She is a colossal
a powerfully intuitive musician and an electrifying
Just last week at Carnegie Hall, as soloist with the
Orchestra in a concert conducted by Charles Dutoit, Ms.
vanquished the formidable challenges of Prokofiev's Piano
No. 3. Her fiery, ecstatic performance elicited a frenzied
including 10 curtain calls, from a sold-out house.
Though she inspires cultlike
devotion among ordinary
concertgoers, her admirers
include many of the world's
most respected musicians.
Mstislav Rostropovich, the
great cellist and conductor,
recently called her "a pianist
with no limits at all, none
whatsoever."
But Ms. Argerich, who will
perform again tonight at
Carnegie Hall, is the most
enigmatic figure in classical
music today, by turns
passionate, disarming and
chaotic. Beset with inner
demons and insecurities, she can be an erratic performer and has been
famously prone to canceling concerts precipitously. "Martha is an
unguided missile," as one close friend of hers has memorably put it.
For years the reclusive pianist assiduously avoided giving interviews,
even as adoring fans worried about her and flocked to her concerts,
hoping that she was well, hoping she would play. Ms. Argerich kept
her silence even as rumors spread that she was fatally ill.
But on one recent night, close to 11 o'clock, Ms. Argerich
(pronounced AHR-gur-itch) sat in the lounge of a midtown hotel for
the first extended one-on-one interview she has given in nearly 20
years and talked openly about her work and her health.
Some weeks earlier she had allowed a statement to be released
confirming that she had been treated for melanoma, cancer of the
skin, at the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, Calif. But
now she revealed the extent of the problem: the melanoma had spread
to her lymph nodes and lungs. "I was afraid of my own body," she
said of the trauma she faced. "I was afraid of myself for the first time;
afraid to be me."
So far the treatments appear to have been successful. She is in
remission. Indeed, out of gratitude Ms. Argerich's concert is to benefit
the institute. All tickets were scooped up weeks ago. Her program
is also significant because, for the first time in 19 years, she is
performing solo repertory in a major American concert venue.
During the wide-ranging 90-minute interview, Ms. Argerich, who is
58, also spoke of musical matters and her tumultuous career: her
beginnings as a pint-size prodigy; her early triumphs; her crisis of
confidence when she felt "out of order," as she put it, "like an elevator
or a telephone;" her practice habits, which can be "not very systematic
and not very disciplined;" and her "contradictory type of relationship"
to the piano. "I can be obsessive" when there is music to be learned,
she said; but at other times "I don't touch the piano at all."
Pinning the unpredictable Ms. Argerich down to a time and place for
the interview proved difficult. When she finally arrived as promised,
she had just finished practicing in an upstairs studio at Carnegie Hall
and was in work mode: dressed in slacks and a long sweater, her sleek
mane of black hair a bit disheveled. Ms. Argerich, barely 5-foot-4, is a
striking woman with bright brown eyes and a sturdy build. Her hands
are surprisingly small, and on this night a few finger tips were
protected by band-aids. In 1981, Ms. Argerich announced that she
was giving up solo recitals entirely, and, with occasional exceptions
for special, usually hush-hush events, she has kept to her word. Why?
It's really a very obsessive situation, when you are alone onstage
playing on your own," she said. "I have a tendency to be a very
obsessive person. It makes me very . . . I don't know." Of course, the
solo repertory is wonderful, she added. But she prefers playing
chamber music and concertos, which is more stimulating and less
lonely.
Her insecurities as a performer long predate her health crisis. The
daughter of two university-based
economists in Buenos Aires, she began piano lessons at 5. When she
was 8 she played a difficult Beethoven piano sonata (Op. 31, No. 3)
for the renowned pianist Walter Gieseking, who proclaimed her a
phenomenon. At 16, within the space of three weeks, she won both
the Busoni and the Geneva International Piano Competitions.
When she was 21 she suffered a crippling bout of depression that
lasted over two years. After studying in Europe, she moved to New
York and "didn't do anything," she said. "I just sat in an apartment
watching the late late show." Even getting married and having the first
of her three daughters, each by a different man, did not lift her from
the depression.
"I felt I could not play any more," she said. "Since I spoke several
languages, I thought I would just become a secretary." She credits a
former teacher, the Polish-born pianist Stefan Askenase, and his
strong-willed wife with helping to lift her out of this hole and back
into music. Their intervention clearly worked, for in 1965, at 24, Ms.
Argerich won first prize in the Chopin International Competition in
Warsaw, and her career took off. Among the colleagues who helped
was Mr. Dutoit, to whom she was married from 1969 until 1973 and
with whom she remains good friends.
She was quickly acclaimed for
rhapsodic playing,
particularly of the Romantic
repertory.
But as her career developed,
she began missing concerts,
quite often. "I don't know why I
had this very scandalistic
reputation," she said, coyly. "I
played more concerts than what
I canceled." In early 1968 she
was scheduled to play
Beethoven's First Piano
Concerto for her debut with the
New York Philharmonic,
conducted by Leonard
Bernstein. She withdrew on
short notice.
"It was terrible I did this," she
said. "It was not for health
reasons. It was some other
problems I had. So Bernstein
played the concerto himself.
The manager at the time was
very funny. He said: 'Lennie
played. He had a great success,
so he loves you!' " Ms.
Argerich burst into hearty
laughter and grabbed a handful
of the sesame crackers she had
just discovered on the snack
tray.
Of course, some real crises
compelled her to miss
performances in some cases,
like two recitals scheduled in
Tokyo early last month. Ms.
Argerich had been hoping to
try out there the solo works she
will play tonight.
But a former teacher, the pianist
Friedrich Gulda, a deeply
spiritual musician ("my most
important influence"), died,
plunging her into distress. After
attending his funeral in Vienna,
Ms. Argerich flew that same
day to Tokyo, and within two
hours of landing performed, as
scheduled, the Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1 with Vladimir
Ashkenazy conducting. "It was the best Chopin E Minor I ever
played," she said. "I don't know why." But she developed a fever and
had to cancel two eagerly anticipated solo recitals.
Not getting this trial run has added pressure to tonight's concert. Half
of her program will be solo repertory, works by Bach, Chopin and
Prokofiev's daunting Seventh Sonata. Ms. Argerich is looking forward
much more to the concert's second half, when she will have some
company onstage: the Juilliard String Quartet for a performance of
Schumann's Piano Quintet, and an old friend, the pianist Nelson
Freire, for a performance of Ravel's "Valse" in its arrangement for two
pianos.
She has been practicing hard. A night owl, she prefers to work late.
When not availing herself of Carnegie Hall's studios she has been at
the Metropolitan Opera House, where a young friend, the tenor Kamel
Boutros, arranged for access to a studio.
"Once I start practicing I can stay," she explained. "But I don't start,"
she added, laughing again. "O.K, if I am in trouble, I need to practice.
But that kind of obsessive practicing is not good. Ideally, I would like
to practice very little, just two hours and then not more."
Obviously, health concerns have contributed to her anxiety.
Though enormously relieved by her medical progress, Ms. Argerich
delayed the appointment for her annual checkup until after tonight's
concert. "I was too nervous," she said. "Let's hope for good news,"
she added, tapping on the cocktail table.
Her first melanoma appeared 10 years ago, at a very difficult time.
"One year before, my mother had died of cancer," she said. "Then, the
same day I was diagnosed, my best friend died from another type of
cancer. She was 49. It was like a nightmare."
Ms. Argerich underwent treatment in Europe, but five years later
another melanoma appeared. Within a year it had spread. The
condition was now life-threatening.
Through friends Ms. Argerich learned of a surgical oncologist, Dr.
Donald L. Morton, the medical director of the John Wayne Cancer
Institute, a nonprofit organization in Santa Monica, Calif., supported
by the National Cancer Institute and private funds. Since 1960 Dr.
Morton had led a research team seeking to develop a vaccine that
could be used to fight melanoma by simulating the body's immune
system. In addition to recommending the experimental vaccine, which
Ms. Argerich is taking, Dr. Morton explained that she would have to
undergo surgery to remove cancerous tissue from her lungs.
"This was March 1997," Ms. Argerich said. "Just before the surgery, I
felt, 'This is dangerous.' You see, to play the piano you use these
muscles here." She pointing to the areas below her arm, on her side
and back.
Dr. Morton, speaking by telephone from California, said he had not
realized until then how important those muscles were to a pianist.
"Thank God we were able to accomplish the procedure without doing
damage to the muscles," he said.
The recovery was grueling for her, said Dr. Morton, who is in New
York to attend the benefit. "But the same characteristics that make her
a world-class pianist also make her a survivor," he said. "She is a very
brave lady."
While leaving her practice room at Carnegie Hall on the way to the
interview the other night, Ms. Argerich was approached by a young
usher who is a big fan. She wound up confiding her nervousness to
him. "So, he told me, 'You must learn the wisdom of uncertainty,' "
she recalled. "That's nice, no?"
Uncertainty is something Ms. Argerich has learned to live with.
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