Martha Argerich and Friends (Full Screen)

Arrau had ears only for her and Barenboim amongst the younger generation. But for the latter, Arrau's assessment might have included his achievement as a conductor. For Martha, Arrau said, "She is not very consistent but she has a revelatory power..."

That power did not come from Gulda alone as he was just a bit short of that himself, albeit that it was him who laid her foundations. Audience who is familiar enough with Gieseking can tell that Martha has absorbed quite a bit from Gieseking and then a bit of Horowitz too. And behind all these was her personality which includes her shyness and her rebellion against the piano and she ran away from it very often and for the longest period three years. An excellent way of not getting mechanical! All these contributed to her unique power.

From Mozart for four hands, we see quite a lot of Martha's hands. And from Rachmaninov, we have much of her bare ( upper as well as lower) arms so that we can see the whole arms/ hands/fingers in action. There isn't any secret about her hands. Her facial expressions and bodily rhythmic movements are instead more telling, some kind of swooning we get from Gieseking's playing.

Amongst her partners, Economou is rather new to most audience, he is young and he is very good. As for Nelson Freire, he is definitely one of the best pianists who is still around. His touch as well as his facility are just amazing. To some (and among them one is none but Martha herself), he is even more interesting than Martha. With a greater musical mind, he would have made another piano Czar!

As to Maisky, he is one of the most celebrated cellists today. He also played with his bare forearm, so that we can see his hands in actions. He is, like Elman the violinist, a rather small person and he often has to resort to a full swing of his whole arm when bowing, but the musicality is superb. He may not have the perfect ease or poise of Daniil Shafran, but he has definitely learned enough from Rostropovich and Fournier. Some audience even prefer him to YoYo Ma. It's a most lovely piece there.

The drawbacks: yes, the sound and visual effects aren't quite the best. But they are more than acceptable. The way each clip finishes off is quite odd too. Above all, it's quite short only 56 minutes in total.

The Schumann's Fatasie is a very nice piece and the sound is really good. But, I don't know why, the cameras seems to treat Mr. Maisky as a kind of soloist, and Argerich's hands its almost never seen.

The cameras shows the faces of the musicians for a long time, more than necessary. When she was playing with Nelson Freire, there is a camera that shows a frontal vision of the two pianos, you see the "body" of the pianos instead of the hands. The hands appears too, but it could appear more.

Some positive points are:

The sound quality is very, very good. The selection is very special. The last two pieces are very strong. The performance is perfect!

There is some program extras, like biographies and music titles. One of them is a feature called music analisys. It's really interesting. You can listen to the music and see a legend explaining the parts of the music. For example, the parts of the sonata: exposition, codetta, development of the first theme and so on.