- Joined
- Apr 30, 2005
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Recorded last year in a rest home in Hiroshima Japan.
Martha Argerich 82 plays Ravel's Jeux D'eau on an old upright piano
that survived the Hiroshima's atomic bomb of WWII.What a master to elicit such fluid sound and control from what is (in spite of being a historical treasure) mechanically and musically, an extremely modest instrument, and not even a grand, just an old upright!
In the piano industry old uprights are called landfill pianos because that is where 99% of them belong.
Worse, instead of being worth nothing, they are actually worth up to negative $200 ... the cost for a piano mover to haul one to the dump.
See the video below for Argerich playing the same piece on a high end piano.
Long ago I heard Argerich in Los Angeles at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Sold out, we got arguably the worst seats in the 2,265-seat hall, the VERY back row of the highest balcony.
Still she was magical; we could hear every nuance of her playing despite the sound was not amplified.
By far the best piano concert of my life, even surpassing Angela Hewitt's J.S. Bach's entire Well Tempered Clavier (over two long nights) on her personal 10'2" (a standard concert grand is 9') Fazioli Italian grand piano with four pedals (the standard is 3).
Post concert I got Hewett to sign my Henle Urtext scores.
Here's a young Argerich on a fine concert grand playing the same piece.
Note how effectively Argerich evoke's Ravel's intention for the piece, flowing water.
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