Martha Argerich: The Child and the Bewitching
Publisher
:
Buchet Chastel
Parution date
:
2010
EAN
:
9782283023464
Number of pages
:
288
Description
***Translated sample available***
Martha Argerich, a living legend as a pianist, has never ceased to astonish the musical world with her abilities at the keyboard, her career choices, and her life path. She is a true artistic genius—and a fascinating individual.
In this intimate biography, Olivier Bellamy invites us to discover an exceptional artist and a free and passionate character. He acquaints us with her musical self, but without reservations, he also familiarizes us with the places, the friends and lovers, and the events that have marked her life. He makes clear how, unlike for many musicians, her devotion to music is equaled by her devotion to people.
We follow her from her early love of piano and emergence as a child prodigy in Buenos Aires in the 1940s to her incredible European debuts in the 1950s and her victories in leading piano competitions, including the Chopin Piano Competition in 1965. Despite her achievements, Argerich has always tried to escape the expected trajectory of her rise and to retain her individuality throughout her career. She has always been more concerned with developing her own musical voice than her personal glory, so she stopped doing recital performances and instead began performing with friends, conductor Claudio Abbado, or her former husband Charles Dutoit, making her performances a true musical offering.
This fine portrait shows us an extraordinary performer and an endearing woman. Bellamy draws his anecdotes and surprising disclosures from interviews with Argerich and her friends, many of them the greatest musicians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: Barenboim, Rostropovich, Pollini. . . . This exciting book illuminates the life of a brilliant artist and woman.
Author
Olivier Bellamy : Olivier Bellamy was born in Marseilles in 1961. He is a journalist, the host of a daily broadcast on Radio Classique, and a contributor to Le Parisien newspaper and to Classica magazine. He has written documentaries for television, including one about opera soprano Renata Scotto and another about jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater.
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