Saturday Evening Concert

Welcome to the Weekend and your Saturday Evening Concert.  It has been another fun week as we conclude our focus on The Grand Pianists with today's featured artist, Martha Argerich.  The documentary footage of her life made by her youngest daughter is not available on line so I could not share that with you.  However I do have some excellent concert footage which we will get to presently.  Once again, I will rely on Wikipedia to gives some more info about the life and times of Martha Argerich:

"Argerich was born in Buenos Aires. Her paternal ancestors were Catalonians based in Buenos Aires since the 18th century. Her maternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire, who settled in Colonia Villa Clara in the Entre Ríos province—one of the colonies established by Baron de Hirsch and the Jewish Colonization Association.[3][4] The provenance of the name Argerich is from Catalonia, Spain. She started playing the piano at age three. At the age of five, she moved to teacher Vincenzo Scaramuzza, who stressed to her the importance of lyricism and feeling. Argerich gave her debut concert in 1949 at the age of eight.

The family moved to Europe in 1955, where Argerich studied with Friedrich Gulda in Austria. Juan Perón, then the president of Argentina, made their decision possible by appointing her parents to diplomatic posts in the Argentine Embassy in Vienna. She later studied with Stefan Askenase and Maria Curcio.[5] Argerich also seized opportunities for brief periods of coaching with Madeleine Lipatti (widow of Dinu Lipatti), Abbey Simon, and Nikita Magaloff.[6] In 1957, at sixteen, she won both the Geneva International Music Competition and the Ferruccio Busoni International Competition, within three weeks of each other. It was at the latter that she met Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, whom she would later seek out for lessons during a personal artistic crisis at the age of twenty, though she only had four lessons with him in a year and a half.[7] Her greatest influence was Gulda, with whom she studied for 18 months.

Argerich rose to international prominence when she won the seventh International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1965, at age 24. In 1965, she debuted in the United States in the Lincoln Center's Great Performers Series. In the same year, she also made her first recording, which included works by Chopin, Brahms, Ravel, Prokofiev, and Liszt, which received critical acclaim. In 1965, she recorded Chopin's Scherzo No. 3, Polonaise, Op. 53.

Argerich has often remarked in interviews of feeling "lonely" on stage during solo performances.[8] Since the 1980s, she has staged few solo performances, concentrating instead on concertos and, in particular, chamber music, and accompanying instrumentalists in sonatas. She is noted especially for her recordings of 20th-century works by composers such as Rachmaninoff, Messiaen and Prokofiev. One notable compilation pairs Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 (recorded in December 1982 with the Radio Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under the direction of Riccardo Chailly) with Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 (February 1980, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Kirill Kondrashin).

Argerich is also famous for her interpretation of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3, Ravel's Piano Concerto in G, and Bach's Partita No. 2 in C minor, which she has recorded several times and continues to perform.

Argerich has also promoted younger pianists, both through her annual festival and through her appearances as a member of the jury at international competitions.[9][10][11] The pianist Ivo Pogorelić was thrust into the musical spotlight partly as a result of Argerich's actions: after he was eliminated in the third round of the 1980 International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, Argerich proclaimed him a "genius" and left the jury in protest.[12] She has supported several artists including Gabriela Montero, Mauricio Vallina, Sergio Tiempo, Gabriele Baldocci, Christopher Falzone [13] and others.[14][15]

Argerich is president of the International Piano Academy Lake Como and performs each year at the Lugano Festival.[16] She also created and has been General Director of the Argerich Music Festival and Encounter in Beppu, Japan, since 1996.

Her aversion to the press and publicity has resulted in her remaining out of the limelight for most of her career. Nevertheless she is widely recognized as one of the greatest pianists of her time.[17]"

The companion piece I have chosen for my tumblr tonight is the 1982 live performance of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto Number 3 by the RSO Berlin and Argerich mentioned in the article above.  Coming up next week, we continue with another  our instrument themed series of posts that I hope you have enjoyed as much as I.  As April is International Guitar Month, I thought I would bring you a week of The Giants of the Guitar,  So something to which to look forward.  

Now for your visual edification this weekend, you will find an excellent collection of lithesome lads who are Naked or Nearly So  posted down below.  There is also Paradise Waiting in the Hottie of the Day! over on my tumblr.  Thanks for sharing part of your Weekend with me, see you on Monday for another week of Music, Men and More!  Until next time as always, Enjoy!