Mystery and excitement cling to every scheduled appearance of Martha Argerich. For starters, will the wonderful but mercurial artist actually appear? Confirmation on Sunday came just after 7.45pm, when those eyes, that shy smile and that mane of hair, silver-grey now, made towards the love of her life: the piano. Originally, two concertos had been programmed in her Prom with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Charles Dutoit (second of her former husbands). But a recent illness and lack of enough preparation time, we were told, had obliged her to jettison Prokofiev No 1, leaving us with Ravel in G.
In the packed Albert Hall — Prommers in the Arena stood like sardines — that was good news enough. For she spread magic with every note, every little hesitation in phrasing, every crystal run, every accentuation and dynamic shading. Compared with Argerich, even the most masterful pianist seems a bystander, observing the music being played. Argerich’s unique gift is to penetrate inside. She is the music.
What particular delight should I pounce on? Those fragile musings in the second piano solo, sprung with secret inner tension? The first movement’s heavenly close, where her lightly sprinkled fingers dissolved into equally magical harp arpeggios? (The RPO were on top form too.) The slow movement’s delicate intensity, sobriety, and exquisitely controlled rubato? The finale’s jazzy caperings? Hard to pick in a performance so spell-binding, of such natural and individual beauty, and such easy union between piano and orchestra, that your pulse raced, your stomach tensed.
Storms of applause, of course. Conductor and soloist kissed. Then came the next mystery: could Argerich bear to give an encore? Some poetic Chopin, maybe, the perfect dessert after Ravel. Mild disappointment struck: she jolted us into the 18th century with the rapid strummings of Scarlatti’s D minor Sonata, Kk 141,an old favourite, dispatched a tad perfunctorily, but with enough ease to belie its challenging demands. No point clapping for more: the magician was off straightaway, taking the orchestra with her. Until the next time, one hopes.
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Alongside Argerich, everything else in the concert became puny, though there was a point to the UK premiere of Claude Vivier’s Orion, given its premiere by Dutoit in Montreal all of 30 years ago. Dead in 1983 at 34 (he was murdered in Paris), the Canadian Vivier wrote music that’s still winning friends with its colourful, complex textures and abundant melodic life. The RPO’s athletic and fastidious response to this impressive score of interruptions and luminous twinklings augured well for Dutoit’s new reign as the orchestra’s principal conductor.
Less beneficent auguries arrived with largely ordinary performances of Prokofiev’s Love for Three Oranges suite and the Mussorgsky-Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition: bright and chiselled, but without personality or weight. Praise be, though, for Kyle Horch’s mellifluous alto saxophone, snaking along in Il vecchio castello, the exhibition’s second canvas.