“Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim wow their hometown of Buenos Aires” proclaimed the FAZ newspaper. This is the first time the two musicians have performed together in the city of their birth. So this concert, which formed part of the Festival de Música y Reflexión was a sort of “home game” for them, and one for which Argentinians had waited long. “The opera house has not been so packed for a long time as for the concerts featuring these two great artists.” (FAZ) “The Colón seemed to burst at the seams”. (Buenos Aires Herald) Martha Argerich delights the audience as “the untamed lioness of the keyboard” no less than Daniel Barenboim, who radiates “an unusually exuberant sparkling sound” (FAZ). Works by Mozart, Schubert and Stravinsky were followed by frenetic demands from the audience for encores and so, accompanied by three musicians from the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Argerich and Barenboim gave Schumann’s Variations for two pianos, Rachmaninoff’s Suite No. 2 and pieces by Guastavino and Milhaud. The Buenos Aires Herald summed up: a “grand tour de force”.
Barenboim conducts Beethoven & Tchaikovsky
In the course of their Buenos Aires residency Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra together with “honorary member of the Divan” Martha Argerich, gave “a concert that proved to be the hottest ticket in the festival.” Opening with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2, the orchestra confirmed that “it is, simply, one of the great orchestras in the world today” while “Argerich proved again that she has lost none of her magical tone or perfect articulation” (Buenos Aires Herald). In Tchaikovsky’s emotionally tempestuous Symphony No. 4, Barenboim’s reading “rose to all the big moments” (Buenos Aires Herald). As a surprise encore, Argerich and Barenboim played a two-piano arrangement of the sweetly nostalgic Bailecito by their compatriot Carlos Guastavino.
Martha Argerich & Daniel Barenboim – Piano Duos at the Teatro Colón III
In order to continue their incredibly successful piano duos series, Daniel Barenboim and Martha Argerich return to the stage of beautiful Teatro Colón at their hometown Buenos Aires, putting the “city in a state of emergency” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) with a fulminant concert evening. Argerich and Barenboim perform Johannes Brahms’ Variations On A Theme by Haydn, Arnold Schönberg’s Five pieces for Orchestra in Anton Webern’s arrangement for two pianos and Franz Liszt’s Concerto Pathétique. “An unforgettable concert […] Words were not needed. Barenboim and Argerich met again doing what they can do best and what they do in the best way it can possibly be done in this world” (La Nación).
Salzburg Festival 2022: Il trittico
Il trittico was premiered in New York on 14 December 1918, composed while the First World War was still raging in Europe. At first glance, the three one-act operas Gianni Schicchi, Il tabarro and Suor Angelica seem to have no connection with each other; their common denominator is solely the entanglement of man in a fateful destiny that only exceptionally, for a moment, seems to promise a happy outcome to the “adventure of life” — a set of themes that in its complexity seems to be in such good hands with few directors as with Christof Loy. The main female roles in the three opera acts are performed by the Lithuanian soprano Asmik Grigorian, a very rare and tremendous feat, but once again connects the works to each other. “Grigorian is […] a wonderful, intense performer: a gracefully graceful Donna fragile as Lauretta, a feverishly longing for love while tormented by guilt Giorgetta, and a desperately lost Angelica rebelling with defiance.” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)
Salzburg Festival 2022: Bluebeard’s Castle & De Temporum Fine Comedia
The Salzburg Festival presented Bluebeard’s Castle in a double bill evening together with Carl Orff’s De temporum fine comoedia. In his staging of the two works, Romeo Castellucci, reveals the profound connections in their juxtapositio between interiority and explosion of violent power.