ELDER: ... An interview with Martha Argerich is an exploration
of a woman who loves to laugh and who yearns for the verdant
and azure spaces of a more natural life.
[At 16, in 1957, when she won the Busoni and the Geneva
competitions within three weeks...]
... the Liszt Sixth Hungarian Rhapsody. That's where I played
the Liszt the first time. I hadn't played it before, not even
for myself. At that time I was very superstitious so I wouldn't
play a piece all the way through even for myself. I was afraid
that something...so I just waited until I passed to the next
round to learn the next pieces.
... Memory was not the problem. It was the playing. I was
afraid that I couldn't, so I didn't want to play, you see.
[Pronunciation of her name]
I don't know. I say, "Ahr-ge-reech." Whatever comes it doesn't
matter.
[On how her interest in music started]
I was at the kindergarten in a competitive program
when I was two years and eight months. I was much younger than the rest of
the children. I had a little friend who was always teasing me; he was five
and was always telling me, "You can't do this, you can't do that." And I
would always do whatever he said I couldn't. Once he got the idea of
telling me I couldn't play the piano. (Laughter) That's how it started. I
still remember it. I immediately got up, went to the piano, and started
playing a tune that the teacher was playing all the time. I played the
tune by ear and perfectly. The teacher immediately called my mother and
they started making a fuss. And it was all because of this boy who said,
"You can't play the piano."
[Asked if she was forced to practice]
Later, yes I was and I hated it. I didn't want to be a pianist
in the first place. I still don't really want to be, but it is
the only thing that I can do more or less. (Laughter) I wanted to
be a doctor!
. . . I love very much to play the piano, but I don't like to
be a pianist. I don't like the profession. And when one plays,
of course, it is important to practice. But the profession
itself - the traveling and the way of life - all this has nothing to
do with playing or with music, absolutely nothing! This is what I
do not enjoy about being a concert pianist. You never know when
you are very young, when you are studying, what this profession
is about. No one tells you, and the people outside the
profession don't have a clue. They think it is marvelous.
[On whether it's harder for a woman than a man]
I suppose, but it is complicated for me because I had the type of
teacher and parents who used to tell me when I was a little girl that my
fiance was the piano. I didn't have much freedom as a child.
[On being told her "fiance" was the piano]
And isn't that terrible! (Laughter) My teacher used to tell me
this to hypnotize me I suppose - I don't now what. I hate this
type of reasoning, this idea of being high priestess or
something. I don't like this attitude in life, generally. I
would never do that with a child of mind.
[On playing difficult concerts when young]
... But I heard a tape the other day of a concert of mine, of the Schumann
concerto when I was 11 and of that
Mozart Concerto when I was nine. It's a very distorted tape, but I was
touched because, my God, pianistically, it is absolutely amazing. I
mean, I don't understand how I did those things. I just brought this tape
back to my mother. It had been in a deposit box in Switzerland for ten
years.
[On Gieseking telling her parents to leave her in peace when he
noticed she seemed, at age 8, to feel forced to practice]
It was very difficult I suppose for them to understand. I used
to do horrible things to myself in order not to play. I was told
if you soaked blotter paper in water and put it in your shoes,
you would get fever, so I would hide in the bathroom and put
water in my shoes. And I used to hide under the table at soirees
instead of meeting people. Daniel Barenboim was at those
musical evenings too, but he enjoyed playing for those people
very much; I hated it. We used to meet under the table when I
was hiding there.
... I have long periods without touching the piano, and I
don't miss it. And then I can get possessed by the piano for a
while as well. But I enjoy completely different things like
going for walks, talking with people, non-musicians, and being
in a completely different atmosphere.
[On Gulda]
I believe he is one of the most talented people I have ever met.
For me, playing for him was a fantastic experience.
[On remembering what she especially learned from him]
Oh, all kinds of things. A lot of Debussy and Ravel. Isn't that funny?
And Bach quite a lot too. I was with him one year and a half. He used to
record the lesson. And after, he wanted me to listen with him, to criticize
my own things, you see? This was very interesting because it was very
democratic. He liked to know what I had to say, what I thought. It was not
this thing that usually happens between pupil and teacher. It was
fantastic. I learned a lot with him.
Sometimes he would challenge me because I would be lazy. I
wouldn't work and learn fast enough. I was going through a sort
of mystic crisis about God, whether I believed in God and the
immortal soul. It was complicated. I used to arrive late at every
lesson and start talking about this with him. I was so worried
and he had to answer, and at the same time he knew I was doing
this because I hadn't prepared.
[On Gulda fearing she was an underachiver when she was
a month with a Schubert Sonata]
"For your next lesson, five days from now, you have to bring me
all of Ravel's 'Gaspard de la nuit' and Schumann's 'Abegg Variations.'"
All right, so I brought them all learned; it was not difficult because I
didn't know that it was supposed to be. When one doesn't know that a piece
is very difficult, one learns it easily. If you know already from everybody
that this piece is difficult, then you don't learn it fast. I didn't know
this, so I learned these pieces fast, and he was very happy about it.
[On how she learned the Prokofiev 3rd initially]
Well, I was rooming with a girl who used to practice it while I was asleep
in the mornings. We had only this one room. Somehow this music came
subconsciously into my mind, even with the wrong notes she was playing. I
noticed I knew it when I started to play it.
[And you learned the wrong notes that she played?]
Yes, I did. (Laughter) She was practicing the difficult parts and had
these problems. . .
[On Michelangeli as teacher]
Well, I was one year and a half with him, and I had four
lessons. It's not much. Once he said to David Ruben from
Steinway, "Oh, I've done a lot for that girl." And David said,
"But Maestro I know that you gave her only four lessons." And he said, "Yes, but I taught her the music of silence." It's all very
mysterious. (Laughter)
[On duo piano partner Nelson Freire]
Nelson has the greatest facility I have ever seen. He can sight-read like
I've never seen in my life except for Gulda. Nelson is always looking for
new things to play or to read. He is one who enjoys playing the piano as
you were saying, like Gieseking, not like me. I have a conflict.
[On pianistic idols, Elder naming Horowitz and Rachmaninoff]
I love them, but not only them. I love Gieseking and Cortot too.
I like Schnabel, Glenn Gould - a lot of people.
[On hearing, with Nelson Freire in January 1978, Horowitz's first appearance
with an orchestra in 25 years, and her response to his Rachmaninoff Third Performance]
It was the first time I heard him in the flesh, you know. It was an
incredible shock for me because it was more Horowitz than what I thought
Horowitz was. Nelson and I were sitting there holding hands, tense. The
strength of his expression, the sound, and this incredible violence he has
inside which is so strange, weird, and frightening. That he can express it.
He's like possessed. I've read about this, but this was the first time
that I saw on stage someone who has that!
[On possibly making a recording of Scarlatti sonatas.]
Well, no, I can't. I have a horror of all those little trills. You
see, little trills are my horrible obsession, and most of Scarlatti is
full of them. Long, fast trills go all right, but the little ones - they
are for me the horror - you know, sometimes I get stuck. I don't lift
my fingers enough. It's like stuttering if I'm not in shape. Let's say I'm
sight-reading something, and there are some little trills. Then they go.
But the moment I know in advance that I have to do them, then ugh! It's
terrible.
[On the Chopin Competition in 1965, which she won]
The night before the competition I said to myself, "Well,
now, Martha, it is over for you. You have been a pianist but
now you are not. You cannot play, so what kind of a pianist are
you? You know some languages; you must start to earn your
livelihood as a secretary."
[On Stefan Askenase's wife's influence.]
I had been away from the piano for about three years ... I was one year
here in New York, and all I did was watch television. . . . She had
something very special, like a sun. She gave me
strength and security. I started to believe again that I could,
and little by little I started to play -- very bad, wrong notes
all over the place, and I couldn't stand it. I was thinking,
"What is the matter with me?" I went on and on like this. Because
of her I started to play again, and almost immediately I went to
the Chopin Competition. It was because of her. Otherwise, I
couldn't have done it.
[On her interpretive goal]
I think interpretation is trying to liberate what one is unconscious
about. When one can let go some things one doesnt know are there - the
unexpected things and the surprises in the performance - that's when its
worthwhile. This is also what I appreciate in other performers. When they
are masters of their means of expression, this does not exactly interest
me. That interests me in a teacher, but in a performer I am interested in
what happens behind or in spite of the things the performer consciously
wants to do. Maybe I am a little bit of a voyeur, you know, that way. But
this is what I love.
