CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
The Philadelphia Orchestra

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 8:00 PM

The Philadelphia Orchestra
Charles Dutoit, Chief Conductor and Artistic Adviser
Martha Argerich, Piano

RAVEL Valses nobles et sentimentales
PROKOFIEV Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat Major, Op. 10

SHOSTAKOVICH Piano Concerto No. 1
MUSSORGSKY Pictures at an Exhibition (orch. Ravel)

Program Notes:

MAURICE RAVEL (1875–1937)
Valses nobles et sentimentales

The orchestral version of Valses nobles et sentimentales was first performed at Carnegie Hall on November 20, 1919, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Joseph Stransky.

Deeply moved by works of Debussy from the 1890s, around 1900 Ravel began to find his own answers to the questions about harmony, color, and instrumental texture that the late 19th century had left unresolved. As a new century dawned, so did hopes of a “new music,” and this impulse found expression in the music of composers as diverse as Elgar and Schoenberg, Puccini and Debussy. In the first years of the decade, Ravel’s music began to appear in print for the first time: the publisher Demets brought out elegiac pieces such as the Pavane pour une infante défunte and revolutionary works such as Jeux d’eau. Buoyed by these successes, in 1904 the composer wrote Miroirs, a remarkable set of “impressionistic” piano pieces that some would later compare to the paintings of Monet or Van Gogh. After this he was destined to join Debussy in writing a new chapter in the history of French music.

Three times Ravel had entered the competition for the Prix de Rome—1901, 1902, and 1903—and three times he had failed, achieving in his last year only Third Prize. Finally he dropped out of the Paris Conservatory altogether, and instead became involved in Les Apaches, an informal, vaguely disreputable collection of Parisian aesthetes who met to discuss art, literature, painting, music, history, and any other topic that might arise. It was at meetings of Les Apaches that Ravel tried out some of his more daring new works, often for audiences that included such musicians as Manuel de Falla, M. D. Calvocoressi, and Florent Schmitt. Their unconventional tastes gave Ravel just the creative encouragement he needed to continue on the path that he had set for himself.

Ironically, despite early rejections by the musical establishment of his native country, as he matured Ravel found his iconoclastic tendencies becoming tempered by a growing reverence for the past—and especially the music of French masters. Eventually, in the 1930s, he would assimilate jazz as well, and its rhythms and harmonies would imbue his music with unique “popular” inflections that would give courage to later generations of composers compelled to lace their scores with elements of mass culture.

One important work from Ravel’s first productive period was the set of Valses nobles et sentimentales, written for piano in 1911 and orchestrated for a ballet production shortly afterward. Containing music that the composer would later use for the climax of his beloved orchestral bon-bon La valse in 1920, this earlier collection of waltzes represents one of Ravel’s first attempts to recreate an earlier music style. “The title Valses nobles et sentimentales indicates clearly my intention to write a sequence of waltzes following the example of Schubert,” he wrote. “In place of the virtuosity that underlies Gaspard de la nuit there is a much more open style of writing that brings the harmonies into sharp focus and reveals the musical outlines.” Taking his cue from Schubert, Ravel has infused his Valses with a sort of perfumed nostalgia, juxtaposed with outbursts of biting dissonances and polytonalities. He inscribed the piano score with a quotation from the symbolist poet Henri de Régnier: Le plaisir délicieux et toujours nouveau d’une occupation inutile (The delicious and ever-fresh pleasures of a useless occupation). Yet the work’s nonchalant ennui cannot mask a certain seriousness.

The piano version was first performed in Paris in May 1911 by Louis Albert, the dedicatee, with no attribution of authorship—on a program at which audience members were invited to guess the composer. Not many identified the gentle Valses as a work by Ravel, for it went against the avant-garde style by which he was known at the time. One member of the audience, Claude Debussy, recognized it immediately as the work of Ravel. “C’est l’oreille la plus fine que ait jamais existé,” he said of the unmistakable sound of his famous rival (“it is the finest ear that has ever existed”). Later, Ravel orchestrated the Valses at the request of Natasha Trouhanova, for a ballet called Adélaïde, ou Le langage des fleurs. Trouhanova’s troupe premiered this version in Paris on April 22, 1912.

The piece consists of seven brief waltzes—some less than a minute long—and an epilogue. The vigorous, stomping first segment (Modéré) gives way to the poignant Assez lent and playful Modéré. The fourth waltz (Assez animé), carefree and scattered, is contraposed with the entreating and inward Presque lent. A quick sixth waltz (Assez vif) introduces a hesitant, tuneful seventh (Moins vif), whose climax foreshadows La valse. The Epilogue (Lent) serves as a summary of the range of moods and themes touched upon in the previous seven pieces.

—Paul J. Horsley


SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891–1953)
Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat Major, Op. 10

Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1 received its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall on December 10, 1918, with the Russian Symphony Society of New York conducted by Modest Altschuler; Prokofiev was the soloist.

Sergei Prokofiev enjoyed a relatively pampered, privileged childhood in pre-revolutionary Russia. His parents quickly recognized his musical gifts, sought expert advice on how best to nurture them, and then arranged private lessons to have them realized.

Prokofiev spent his teenage years studying piano, composition, and conducting at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. The First Piano Concerto we hear today dates from near the end of his time there. He had already composed a good bit (he tried his hand at writing operas before the age of 10), but considered this piece his “first more or less mature work in terms of both conception and realization.”

The compositional genesis of the piece can be charted in the composer’s engaging diary. He began writing a piano concerto in the summer of 1910, at age 19, but put it aside in the fall to work on other pieces. Although he thought the concerto contained some good ideas, it “promised to be exceptionally difficult to play.” He therefore decided to go in another direction and by the following spring was composing a much simpler piece, “a light, transparent, and uncomplicated concerto” that he hoped might be played by fellow students at the Conservatory. Thus, along with his “serious, demanding Concerto,” he was also writing a “light, attractive Concertino, full of joie de vivre.”

Plans shifted once again as the modest Concertino began to get longer and more technically challenging. This is confirmed in remarks made in a letter from September 1911 by his good friend, the older composer Nikolai Miaskovsky: “Prokofiev is working on a charming, lively, and sonorous concertino for piano and orchestra. The piano part is very unusual and difficult, but the material contains a great deal that is fresh and fascinating.” In the end Prokofiev opted to merge parts of the original concerto with the lively concertino resulting in his First Piano Concerto, Op. 10. The joie de vivre remains, as does its more modest scale—one continuous movement that lasts just over a quarter of an hour—but the demands on the soloist are formidable.

Prokofiev finished the work in February 1912 and appeared as soloist at the premiere that August in Moscow, performing it 10 days later with another orchestra and conductor in St. Petersburg. He had spent the summer mastering its technical challenges; as he wrote in a letter: the Concerto, “by the way, is not at all easy, and I have to play it well. They say the hall in Moscow is bursting with people—up to six thousand listeners—and since it will be my first appearance with an orchestra I will have to know it cold.”

The audience response in both capitals was enthusiastic, although critical reaction was decidedly mixed, evoking passionate admiration as well as harsh abuse. One critic called the piece “musical mud,” while a more perceptive observer spotted a great new talent arriving on the scene: “Prokofiev may even mark a state in the development of Russian music: the first stage being Glinka and Rubinstein, the second Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, the third Glazunov and Arensky, the fourth Scriabin and … and … Prokofiev. Why not?”

The most famous performance of the Concerto came two years later, in 1914, as Prokofiev was about to graduate from the Conservatory. He had decided that he would try to capture the top honor—the Anton Rubinstein Prize—in the piano competition and devised an unusual strategy. He would play one of his own concertos, opting in the end for the First because he feared the Second would be thought “too outlandish inside the hallowed walls of the Conservatory.” As he recounted years later in his autobiography:

I spent the winter of 1913–14 working hard at the piano … Instead of a classical concerto, I chose one of my own. While I might not be able to compete successfully in performance of a classical concerto there was a chance that my own might impress the examiners by its novelty of technique; they simply would not be able to judge whether I was playing it well or not!

Prokofiev won the top prize over the vehement objections of the Conservatory’s director, Alexander Glazunov. As he recounted in his diary:

Yes, it was indeed a triumph for me, all the sweeter for having been achieved in my beloved Conservatory, and even more so in that it represented not a pat on the head proper to a model student, but on the contrary the striking out of a new path, my own path, which I had established in defiance of routine and the examination traditions of the Conservatory.

In addition to the coveted prize of a grand piano, perhaps even more consequential in the long term was that the composer’s mother gave him a trip to London, where he encountered important future collaborators, including the great impresario Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. Prokofiev retained his affection for the First Concerto, which remained a staple in his repertoire. He continued to perform it many times, even after he moved to the West in 1918 in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution.

Consistent with its modest concertino genesis, the piece is in one movement. A buoyant opening theme helps bind the piece together, returning at key moments later in the Concerto. Although the work is played continuously, it can be divided into three principal sections. The opening Allegro briso is followed by a rather brief Andante assai, a developmental scherzo (Allegro), and then a return of the opening material to conclude.

—Christopher H. Gibbs


DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906–1975)
Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 35

Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 received its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall on December 19, 1935, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Otto Klemperer; Eugene List was the soloist.

The musician we perhaps too often associate with somber portrayals of the emotional turmoil of an artist under Stalinism was also one of the wittiest musicians since Joseph Haydn. “When listeners laugh at a concert of my symphonic music, I am not in the least bit shocked,” wrote Dmitri Shostakovich in a Soviet magazine in 1934. “In fact, I am pleased.” This composer’s early scores are characterized by a sardonic and effervescent humor that is as profound as it is satirical. “I want to defend the right of laughter to appear in what is called ‘serious’ music,” he wrote, touching on a truth known to great composers through the ages: that humor in art exists not just to elicit laughter, but to reveal truth. In Shostakovich, comedy and despair coexist as comfortably and intricately as they do in any music; humor is a means of coping with the unbearable. That there is a sharp edge to this humor should come as no surprise from one who embodied so completely the contradictions of living under the schizoid and unpredictable Soviet regime.

His early stage works (The Nose, The Golden Age, The Bolt) had dealt up ample servings of this sardonic wit, and the First Symphony of 1925 had its moments of youthful zest and joie de vivre as well. But it was with the First Piano Concerto that the composer brought the full force of his droll humor into the concert hall.

Written in the summer of 1933, immediately after the completion of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (the official condemnation of which, in 1936, would change the course of his career), the Concerto is one of the composer’s most delightfully glib and ebullient works. Its wry humor and solid craftsmanship immediately assured that it would achieve the composer’s stated goal of “filling up the gap in Soviet instrumental repertoire, which lacks major works for the concert stage.” The work has remained a favorite of concert audiences for over half a century now.

It also became a solo vehicle for its creator, who had begun his career at the Petrograd Conservatory as a dual talent, completing a degree in piano (at age 16) before earning his composition diploma. He was of course the soloist in the work’s premiere in Leningrad on October 15, 1933, with Fritz Stiedry conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic—and featuring the orchestra’s principal trumpet, Aleksandr Schmidt, a friend and favorite musician of the composer.

The work was initially conceived as a “concerto for piano, with the accompaniment of string orchestra and trumpet,” and the prominent role assigned to the solo trumpet gives it a distinctive quality. This biting edge, and the essential roles given to piano and trumpet, have caused some writers to connect it to Petrushka—and there is no doubt that Shostakovich was familiar with Stravinsky’s masterpiece. But one could also make comparisons to Prokofiev’s early works—particularly his own First Piano Concerto of 1912, which had pulled at the trouser seams of Romantic traditions. Shostakovich’s humor is drier than that of either of those composers—and funnier, too, with an edge of hysteria. Nevertheless, his First Piano Concerto was one of the last times he would give such free rein to his wit—the lively sense of fun that he still believed formed a part of his mission as an artist.

Shostakovich’s conservatory study had been rooted in classical styles and traditions, and he had learned his lessons well. In addition to quotations from Haydn, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and many others, this Concerto manages to work in popular tunes and a healthy dose of the burlesque. The opening Allegro moderato, which introduces piano and trumpet at the outset (in an admittedly Petrushka-like figure), presents a staunchly classical theme in C minor before veering off into a sort of can-can—cartwheeling away, in the words of Ian MacDonald, “into a circus-world of comic turns and raspberries ringmastered by the trumpet.”

Wittiness is brushed aside in the second movement (Lento), a grave meditation in the vein of the slow movement of Ravel’s G-Major Concerto, and one that makes clear the composer’s wholly serious intent. The third movement (Moderato) is little more than a mournful recitative, a transition to the audacity of the finale. About as “over-the-top” as anything in 20th-century music, this Allegro con brio begins wildly and progresses to such a point of absurdity that the listener becomes aware that it is not really very funny after all—and this is precisely the idea. A solo cadenza for piano serves only to heighten the shrill atmosphere of the movement, which also includes quotations from Haydn, from Beethoven’s “Rage over a Lost Penny,” and from a ditzy tune Shostakovich had originally composed as part of an interlude for Erwin Dressel’s opera Armer Columbus. In the final analysis, what appears to be a self-evident bit of dash and wit is, like almost everything in Shostakovich, full of complex and surprisingly dark hidden meanings.

—Paul J. Horsley


MODEST MUSSORGSKY (1839–1881)
Pictures at an Exhibition (orch. Maurice Ravel)

Ravel’s orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition received its Carnegie Hall premiere on January 31, 1925, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky.

We rarely hear Mussorgsky’s music exactly as he wrote it. Because the composer had difficulties completing projects, particularly large-scale ones, and because his compositional style was viewed as unconventional, supportive contemporaries and later admirers lent a hand. Some finished incomplete works, such as Rimsky-Korsakov did for the opera Khovanshchina, while others edited and recast them in formats considered more palatable, as Rimsky, Shostakovich, and others did for Boris Godunov.

The most famous instance is Pictures at an Exhibition, which Mussorgsky originally wrote as an innovative piano suite in 1874 but which is best known in Ravel’s masterful orchestration. In fact, more than a dozen composers and conductors arranged the piece for orchestra and many others transcribed it for various solo instruments or ensembles. The rock group Emerson, Lake, & Palmer even took a stab at the work, adding amplification and lyrics.

In July 1873 Mussorgsky’s good friend Viktor Hartmann, a noted Russian artist, died suddenly of a heart attack at age 39. The following February a memorial exhibition of his works was mounted in St. Petersburg, organized by the critic Vladimir Stasov and the Architects’ Society. The exhibition of some 400 images inspired Mussorgsky to write a piano suite that drew upon what he saw. Since Hartmann had been involved with theater, architecture, design, and painting, and had spent some years living abroad, the range of media used and subjects captured was quite broad. Mussorgsky matched this cosmopolitan reach by using titles in Russian, French, Polish, Yiddish, Latin, and Italian. Although most works in the exhibition are now lost, six of the ones that Mussorgsky used have survived.

“Hartmann is boiling as Boris boiled,” Mussorgsky reported in June 1874 to Stasov, his great advocate to whom Pictures is dedicated. The genesis of the opera had been protracted because of rejections and revisions, but it had finally premiered successfully earlier that year. Mussorgsky wrote the suite in just 22 days: “Sounds and ideas have been hanging in the air; I am devouring them and stuffing myself.—I barely have time to scribble them onto paper. I am writing the fourth number.—The links are good (‘On Promenade’). I want to finish it as quickly and securely as I can. My profile can be seen in the interludes. I consider it successful to this point. … The titles are curious. …”

Nothing is known about performances of the suite during Mussorgsky’s lifetime, and the work was only published, in a not entirely correct edition by Rimsky-Korsakov, in 1886, five years after the composer’s death. At this time as well Michael Touschmaloff, a student of Rimsky’s, orchestrated the work for the first time, although he did not include all the pictures and used the promenade only at the beginning rather than as a link among the pieces. There were several other attempts before Ravel’s orchestration from 1922, written on a commission from Serge Koussevitzky for concerts in Paris.

As Mussorgsky noted the Promenade represents the composer himself as he strolls through the exhibition. The theme reappears prominently as an interlude three more times in the work, on each occurrence conveying a somewhat different mood, as if the viewer himself were changing as he moves from picture to picture. (The original piano suite includes the Promenade four more times—the cut of the last one is the only significant structural change Ravel made to the original.)

The stately Promenade is boldly interrupted by Gnomus, based on a lost image of a toy nutcracker shaped as a grotesque dwarf. After a return of the Promenade comes The Old Castle, which derives from a lost watercolor of a troubadour singing a ballad before an old palace—the haunting song is memorably represented by the alto saxophone. After a shortened version of the Promenade the music shifts to one of the scherzo-like movements, here conveying children playing in the Parisian gardens of the Tuileries. This is in stark contrast with the more lugubrious movement that follows, Bydlo, the Polish word for cattle.

The Promenade, this time quite brief and more lyrical, bridges to another fleeting scherzo, Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells, based on designs Hartmann had created for a ballet production in St. Petersburg. “Samuel” Goldenberg and “Schmuÿle” is based on two surviving Hartmann sketches, one of a rich Jew, the other poor, from a Polish ghetto. The title, complete with quotation marks, may have been viewed as anti-Semitic by Stasov, who replaced it with the more descriptive “Two Jews: rich and poor.” The rich one is portrayed by a slow, exotically tinged melody, the poor by a rapid muted trumpet.

Ravel cut the reprise of the complete Promenade that returns at the mid-point of the suite and he proceeded without pause to Limoges: The Market, another swift scherzo. The pace slows for Catacombs (Roman sepulcher), referring to the famous burial site under Paris. Hartmann’s watercolor shows him holding a lantern as he and two others explore the dark underground realm. The score carries the Latin subscript “Speaking to the Dead in a Dead Language” as the Promenade theme is weaved into the rich chordal texture. In the manuscript Musorgsky added the remark: “Hartmann’s creative spirit leads me to the place of skulls, and calls to them—the skulls begin to glow faintly from within.” The Hut on Fowl’s Legs refers to a sketch Hartmann made of the lodging of the folkloric witch Baba Yaga. This leads directly to the monumental finale: The Great Gate at Kiev, based on one of Hartmann’s architectural sketches for a never-realized project. A quiet chorale melody comes in the middle before the conclusion that ingeniously incorporates the opening Promenade theme one last time.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

Program notes © 2008. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association.

The Philadelphia Orchestra
Charles Dutoit, Chief Conductor and Artistic Adviser
Founded in 1900, The Philadelphia Orchestra has distinguished itself as one of the leading orchestras in the world through a century of acclaimed performances, historic international tours, best-selling recordings, and its unprecedented record of innovation in recording technologies and outreach. The Orchestra has maintained unity in artistic leadership with only seven music directors throughout its history: Fritz Scheel (1900–07), Carl Pohlig (1907–12), Leopold Stokowski (1912–41), Eugene Ormandy (1936–80), Riccardo Muti (1980–92), Wolfgang Sawallisch (1993–2003), and Christoph Eschenbach (2003–08).

This rich tradition is carried on by Charles Dutoit, who was appointed chief conductor and artistic adviser of The Philadelphia Orchestra from the 2008–09 season through the 2011–12 season. Mr. Dutoit has a longstanding relationship with the Orchestra, having made his debut with the ensemble in 1980. Highlights of his first season include performances of Berlioz’s Romeo and Juliet and Requiem, part of Mr. Dutoit’s four-year focus on the works of that composer, and an Orchestra celebration of Krzysztof Penderecki’s 75th birthday. During his tenure, Mr. Dutoit will also showcase the music of the Ballets Russes, beginning in the 2008–09 season with performances of Stravinsky’s complete music to The Firebird.

The Philadelphia Orchestra Association has recently formed a music director search committee comprised of musicians, Board members, and staff, and will be bringing some of the world’s greatest conducting talent to Philadelphia to identify the next music director of The Philadelphia Orchestra.

Recent Philadelphia Orchestra highlights include the opening of the Orchestra’s Online Music Store, thephiladelphiaorchestra.com; regular broadcasts on NPR; a series of critically acclaimed recordings on the Ondine label; and a $125 million endowment campaign.

The Philadelphia Orchestra annually touches the lives of more than one million music lovers worldwide through its performances, publications, recordings, and broadcasts. Each year the Orchestra presents a subscription season in Philadelphia, education and community partnership programs, annual appearances at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, and a three-week tour. Its summer schedule includes performances at Philadelphia’s Mann Center for the Performing Arts, free Neighborhood Concerts, and residencies at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.


Chief conductor and artistic adviser of The Philadelphia Orchestra, beginning in September 2008, as well as artistic director and principal conductor of the Royal Philharmonic, beginning in 2009, Charles Dutoit regularly collaborates with the world’s leading orchestras. Since his debut with The Philadelphia Orchestra in 1980, Mr. Dutoit has been invited each season to conduct all the major orchestras of the US. He has also performed regularly with all the great orchestras of Europe, Japan, South America, and Australia. Mr. Dutoit has recorded extensively for Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Philips, CBS, Erato. His more than 170 recordings, half of them with the Montreal Symphony, have garnered more than 40 awards and distinctions.

Since 1990 Mr. Dutoit has been artistic director and principal conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra’s summer festival at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Between 1990 and 1999, he also directed the Orchestra’s summer series at the Mann Center, and led them in a series of distinctive recordings. From 1991 to 2001, he was music director of the Orchestre National de France. In 1996 he was appointed principal conductor, and in 1998 music director, of the NHK Symphony in Tokyo. For 25 years (1977 to 2002), Mr. Dutoit was artistic director of the Montreal Symphony.

Mr. Dutoit holds honorary doctorates from McGill University, the University of Montréal, and Université Laval. In 1982 he was named Musician of the Year by the Canadian Music Council; in 1988 the same organization awarded him the Canadian Music Council Medal. In 1991 Mr. Dutoit was made an Honorary Citizen of the City of Philadelphia. In 1994 the Canadian Conference of the Arts awarded him their Diploma of Honour. In 1995 the government of Québec named him Grand Officier de l’Ordre National du Québec, and in 1996 the government of France made him Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has also been invested as an Honorary Officer of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest award of merit.

Mr. Dutoit was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, and his musical training took him to Geneva, Siena, Venice, and Tanglewood, where he worked with Charles Munch. A globetrotter motivated by his passion for history and archaeology, political science, art, and architecture, Mr. Dutoit has traveled and visited all the nations of the world. He maintains residences in Switzerland, Paris, Montreal, Buenos Aires, and Tokyo.

Martha Argerich, Piano
Pianist Martha Argerich is a celebrated presence in the concert halls of North and South America, Europe, Russia, and the Near and Far East, and she has performed with the world’s major orchestras. In 2000 she appeared in recital for the first time in 19 years in a benefit concert at Carnegie Hall. Earlier that season, she received a Grammy Award for her recording of Prokofiev’s First and Third concertos and Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Montreal Symphony and Charles Dutoit. She was also selected as Musician of the Year 2001 by Musical America.

Ms. Argerich began her piano studies at the age of five with Vicenzo Scaramuzza. Three years later she gave her first professional performance in her native Buenos Aires. She later moved to Europe to continue studies with Stefan Askenaze, Friedrich Gulda, Nikita Magaloff, Madame Dinu Lipatti, and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, among others. At the age of 16, Ms. Argerich won both the Geneva and Ferruccio Busoni international competitions. In 1965 she was the first artist from the Western Hemisphere to win first prize at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw.

Ms. Argerich’s varied discography includes more than a dozen Deutsche Grammophon recordings of works by Bartók, Beethoven, Brahms, Falla, Liszt, Janáček, Lutosławski, Messiaen, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Schubert, and Tchaikovsky, among others. She has recorded much of the literature for piano four hands and two pianos with Nelson Freire, Stephen Bishop-Kovacevich, Nicolas Economou, and Alexandre Rabinovitch. Other recordings include Schumann violin sonatas and the complete Beethoven violin sonatas with Gidon Kremer, Chopin and Schumann duos with Mstislav Rostropovich, Schumann works and Bach cello sonatas with Mischa Maisky, and the Ravel Piano Concerto in G with the London Symphony. Ms. Argerich has also recorded on the EMI, RCA, CBS, Philips, Sony, and Teldec labels.

In 1996 Ms. Argerich was named Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. Since 1998 she has been artistic director of Japan’s Beppu Festival. In 1999 she created the International Piano Competition and Festival Martha Argerich in Buenos Aires and, in 2002, the Progetto Martha Argerich in Lugano.