Martha Argerich / Itzhak Perlman SCHUMANN - BACH - BRAHMS

In a rare meeting of musical minds in Paris last month, Itzhak Perlman and Martha Argerich found the time in their demanding schedules to record a new album, to be released late 2016 on Warner Classics. 

It has been 18 years since their last album together: a live recital from the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. On that momentous occasion in 1998, the pair performed three of the 19^th century’s most ambitious and enthralling works for violin and piano – Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, the Franck Violin Sonata and Schumann’s Violin Sonata No. 1. The first two sonatas were released in 1999 by EMI Classics (now Warner Classics) in what was the pair’s only recording together until now. 

The Schumann Violin Sonata will at long last be released alongside the new recordings from the Paris sessions, making the forthcoming album a fascinating ‘then and now’ portrait of how two living legends have evolved musically.                                                          

In addition to the 1998 recording, this milestone collaboration between Argerich and Perlman sees the duo explore three masterpieces from the Baroque to the Romantic in intimate chamber recital: Bach’s Violin Sonata No.4 in C Minor, BWV 1017 (with its famous Siciliano), Schumann’s impassioned Fantasiestücke Op 73, and Brahms’s Scherzo from the Sonatensatz in C minor (the ‘F.A.E. Sonata’), dedicated to the great violinist Joseph Joachim.

“Martha is the most amazing pianist,” says Perlman of his recital partner. “It’s always been my dream to make music with her… We thought of completing that recording from 1998 by making another record almost 20 years later.

“Working with Martha was a unique experience for me …Her brilliance and the colours she uses when she plays are recognisable as soon as you hear them – it’s her; nobody else sounds like that… I am so excited that we were actually able to record together again… When this possibility came along that she might be able to have a couple of days free to record I said, ‘I’ll go any place!’”

Martha Argerich added: “I feel so stimulated to play with Itzhak, it’s really a feast – fantastic!  It’s a very special relationship, I am completely enchanted.”

Jean-Philippe Roland, EVP of Artists & Repertoire at Warner Classics, said: "I don’t want to sound over the top, but only a comparison of astronomic magnitude can properly depict the musical reunion of these two living legends."

Both artists have maintained a longstanding relationship with Warner Classics. The label celebrated Itzhak Perlman’s 70^th birthday in 2015 with the release of his complete Warner Classics recordings in a lavish 77-CD edition. Martha Argerich, who turns 75 in June 2016, continues to release an annual chamber music collection live from the Lugano Festival as part of the Martha Argerich & Friends project.  Her birthday will be marked with a major boxed set project this year, along with the first release on vinyl of her legendary 1965 Chopin album.

These are two of the most sought-after chamber musicians of their generation. Perlman has recorded with the likes of Daniel Barenboim, André Previn, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Emanuel Ax at the piano; Argerich with Gidon Kremer, Ivry Gitlis, Vadim Repin and Renaud Capuçon on violin. (Warner Classics)

Martha Argerich CHAMBER MUSIC

This 8 CD boxed set is another in a series to commemorate the art of Martha Argerich in her 70^th birthday year. How lucky we all are as music-lovers to have the chance - where we don’t already own them - of obtaining these fantastic performances by a true artist. The title of one of the articles in the accompanying booklet is “The spirit of collaboration”. That sums up this set, for Argerich has, for many years, eschewed solo performances in favour of the collaborative process where she shares the platform with a whole range of world class colleagues, some very well known and some less so. You can be sure that if she wants to play with them they are at the very top of their musical game. I recently reviewed her solo and duos set which I described as “an embarrassment of riches”; this is an even greater one: 8 CDs of performances of the works of 9 composers in which she is accompanied by a total of 23 different musicians! The choice of repertoire cannot be faulted, involves plenty of variety and shows Argerich as a perfect fellow musician whether in duos, trios, quartets, quintets or septet. (Steve Arloff)  

 

Itzhak Perlman / Orchestre de Paris / Daniel Barenboim SAINT-SAËNS Violin Concert No. 3 WIENIAWSKI Violin Concerto No. 2

 There is really very little that need be said about these virtuoso performances of these two sweetly melodious concertos except to record that they are played as brilliantly as one would expect and that the sound is full and warm. Perlman has recorded Wieniawski's No. 2 before on HMV, as can be seen; possibly he has now an even silkier demeanour with it. It is perhaps this quality that leads me to prefer his playing above Chung's rather more forceful manner in the Saint-Saens (Decca). Perlman is particularly elegant in the slow movement of the Wieniawski, and of course he never makes the mistake of trying to inflate either work to the status of masterpiece.
Gramophone [1/1984]
reviewing the original LP

Itzhak Perlman / Emanuel Ax FAURÉ & STRAUSS Violin Sonatas

Itzhak Perlman and Emanuel Ax – each winners of multiple Grammy Awards among a myriad of other honors – have teamed up for the exquisite album of Romantic-era masterpieces: the Violin Sonata No. 1 in A Major by Gabriel Fauré and the lone Violin Sonata by Richard Strauss.  In addition to this being Perlman’s first new solo recording in over a decade, it is also the first recording by this violin-piano team after years of performing together on stage, and the first time Perlman has recorded these two major sonatas.  Perlman and Ax will also kick-off a series of concert dates later this year.

Describing the Fauré sonata, Perlman says: “It smells like ambrosia – the essence of French music, a lovely piece. For a violinist, its phrases are a real satisfaction to play, as they’re so rich.” As for the Strauss sonata, Perlman says, “It’s by the young Strauss – emotionally heroic, very appassionato. I like to write stories in my mind about the music I play, to help me with the phrasing. This is a dramatic story – although in the slow movement, I imagine it in a coffeehouse, intimate and warm.”

Born in 1945 in Tel Aviv, Itzhak Perlman began playing the violin when he was so small that all he could hold was a toy fiddle. Although he was disabled by polio at age 4, he played his first recital by age 10. He studied at the Juilliard School with Dorothy DeLay and Ivan Galamian and made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1963. He was introduced to a wider American public via multiple appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, including a 1964 episode that also featured the Rolling Stones. After winning the prestigious Leventritt Competition the same year, Perlman went on to a career as a soloist that has seen him appear to acclaim on all the world’s great stages and make hundreds of recordings. 

His prize-winning discography not only covers the width and breadth of the great classical violin repertoire; he has also made ventures into Klezmer music and film soundtracks, including the Oscar-winning score to Schindler’s List. He received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. Perlman has won four Emmy Awards, including for the 1998 PBS documentary Fiddling for the Future, about the Perlman Music Program and his work as a teacher. Having collaborated with all the world’s major orchestras as a soloist, Perlman has for years performed with many of them as a conductor. A rarity for a classical artist, he has appeared everywhere from Sesame Street to the White House including a performance for the first inaugural of President Obama. In 2000, he was awarded a National Medal of Arts, and in 2003, Perlman earned a Kennedy Center Honor celebrating his distinguished achievements and contributions to the country’s cultural and educational life. He currently holds the Dorothy Richard Starling Foundation Chair at the Juilliard School. (Universal Music)