Martha Argerich

Born in Buenos Aires in 1941 and making her concert debut at the age of eight, Martha Argerich came to Europe in 1955 to study with Friedrich Gulda in Vienna. In 1957, she won the Busoni Competition in Bolzano and the Geneva Piano Competition; she nevertheless continued her training and worked with Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and Stefan Askenase before launching her international career in 1965 when she won First Prize at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw. She has collaborated with the leading orchestras, performing a repertoire ranging from Bach to Bartók. Today she enjoys legendary fame and is considered one of the best pianists of all time. Over the last three decades, she has focused on performances with orchestras as well as on chamber music while at the same time championing up-and-coming talent. From 2002 to 2016, she curated her own festival in Lugano, Switzerland, and since 2018 she has been running a similar project in Hamburg, Germany — most recently, in June 2023. In the process, she has performed with such colleagues as Daniil Trifonov, Mischa Maisky, Gil Shaham, Maxim Vengerov, and Daniel Barenboim. She and Barenboim, who is also a native of Buenos Aires, became friends in childhood, and over the past 20 years have developed a close artistic partnership. Argerich’s recordings have been awarded numerous distinctions. She has received the coveted Grammy Award three times: in 1999 for her recording of Prokofiev and Bartók concertos, in 2005 for a duo CD with Mikhail Pletnev, and in 2006 for Beethoven concertos with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Claudio Abbado. In 2014, she won the Echo Klassik for her interpretation of Mozart concertos, likewise with Abbado. The documentary Argerich, which her daughter Stephanie produced in 2013, is a film portrait of the pianist. In the fall of 2005, Martha Argerich was honored for her life’s work with the Praemium Imperiale. She is an honorary member of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

Lucerne Festival (IMF) debut on 20 August 1969 as the soloist in Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto under Charles Dutoit.

July 2023