Chopin Argerich

It is grand to hear novice players so successfully take on three of Chopin's chamber pieces, the Cello Sonata, Piano Trio, and Grand Duo for cello and piano. There have certainly been great recordings of these works in the past – one thinks immediately of those by Mstislav Rostropovich and Jacqueline du Pré – but the energy, enthusiasm, and sincerity that cellist Andreas Brantelid, pianist Marianna Shirinyan, and violinist Vilde Frang bring to this music more than justifies preserving their performances. Brantelid has a big but nuanced tone, an elegant but impressive technique, and an obvious affinity for the music, and he is well-matched by Shirinyan's polished technique and empathic accompaniments and Frang's easy virtuosity and lyrical interpretation. The ensemble is poised but comfortable and the interpretations are cogent and compelling. Captured in close but smooth digital sound, these performances deserve to be heard by anyone who loves this music, or great chamber music playing.

Argentinian pianist Martha Argerich is widely regarded as one of the greatest pianists of the second half of the twentieth century. In celebration of her 75th birthday, Sony Classical is pleased to release Martha Argerich The Complete Sony Classical Recordings, a new 5-CD original jackets collection featuring two albums available for the first time on CD remastered from the original analogue tapes.

Argentinian pianist Martha Argerich is widely regarded as one of the greatest pianists of the second half of the twentieth century. In celebration of her 75th birthday, Sony Classical is pleased to release Martha Argerich The Complete Sony Classical Recordings, a new 5-CD original jackets collection featuring two albums available for the first time on CD remastered from the original analogue tapes. Argerich rose to international prominence when she won the seventh International Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1965 at age 24. In that same year, she debuted in the U.S. in Lincoln Center s Great Performers Series.

The mother through the daughter's eyes - a family portrait blending intimate conversations, agreements and disagreements, and shred ties of sounds and blood. This intimate portrait of two musical giants by Martha Argerich's daughter Stéphanie has been filmed over two decades and around the world: Warsaw, where Martha Argerich won the Chopin competition first prize; Japan, which hosts a unique Argerich festival; London, where Stephen Kovacevich, Stéphanie's father, lives, works and enjoys intensively Indian food; Belgium, where Martha lives in a house filled with pianos and cats; Argentina, which she left at the age of twelve to study in Vienna, but still conceals valuable family treasures; Switzerland, where Stéphanie and her sister Lyda are currently living. Made up of documentary sequences focusing on the two characters of Martha and Stephen in their everyday lives, in rehearsal and in performance, the film will be largely given over to intimate, delicious anecdotes, and a few scenes in which the family is reunited. A film by Stéphanie Argerich.

Throughout her lengthy artistic career, pianist Martha Argerich has experienced many heights and depths: moments of "crisis" in which she hasn't always seemed prepared to offer the full extent of her artistic insights, but also many, many times when she has managed simultaneously to come into her own and to completely lose herself in music-making. Fortunately it's the latter snapshot of Argerich's career that this CD captures, drawing from two live recitals Argerich gave at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw in 1978 and 1979.