Martha Argerich, piano – RAI Symphony, Andrey Boreyko – Torino – November 27, 2008 – RAI Radio 3 –
Over to Torino this week for a concert featuring the RAI Symphony, led by Andrey Boreyko and the legendary Martha Argerich in the Piano Concerto in G Major.
The rather short-ish concert opens with Cesar Franck’s Le Chasseur Maudit. It’s followed by the Ravel and ends with a performance of Anton von Webern’s Im Sommerwind. It was all recorded live from the RAI Toscanini Auditorium in Torino on November 27, 2008.
A prodigy, Argerich was performing professionally by age eight. In 1955 she went to Europe, where her teachers included Friedrich Gulda and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. She won two prestigious competitions in 1957 at age 16: the Geneva International Music Competition and the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition. In 1965 she won the Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. The next year she made her debut in the United States in the Great Performers series at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. Her exceptionally brilliant technique, emotional depth, and élan won her an enthusiastic international following. She performed around the world and dedicated most of her career to collaborative chamber music, notably with Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer, with whom she produced a number of award-winning recordings. Other musicians with whom she performed and recorded include pianists Alexandre Rabinovitch and Nelson Freire and cellists Mstislav Rostropovich and Mischa Maisky.
Argerich was the recipient of many honours and prizes, including three Grammy Awards (1999 and 2005 [best instrumental soloist performance (with orchestra)] and 2004 [best chamber music performance]). In 2005 she received the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale prize for music and the Order of the Rising Sun from the Japanese government. Beginning in 1999 a piano competition in her name was held annually in Buenos Aires, and from 2001 she directed a music festival in her name, also in Buenos Aires. In 2016 she received a Kennedy Center Honor, an American award that celebrates the arts.
Boreyko was born in Saint Petersburg. At the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in Saint Petersburg, Boreyko studied conducting (with Elisabeta Kudriavtseva and Alexander Dmitriev), graduating summa cum laude. In 1987 he won diplomas and prizes at The Grzegorz Fitelberg International Competition for Conductors in Katowice, and he was a prize winner in 1989 at the Kirill Kondrashin conductors’ competition in Amsterdam.
Boreyko was music director of the Jena Philharmonic between 1998 and 2003. With the orchestra, Boreyko received awards for the most innovative concert programming in three consecutive seasons from the German Music Critics (Deutscher Musikverleger-Verband). He now has the title of honorary conductor with the Jena Philharmonic. Boreyko served as Principal Conductor of the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra (Hamburger Symphoniker) from 2004 until his resignation in November 2007. He was principal conductor of the Bern Symphony Orchestra from 2004 to 2010. In May 2008, Boreyko was announced as the next General Music Director of the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra, effective with the 2009–2010 season, for an initial contract of 5 years. In February 2012, the orchestra announced the scheduled conclusion of Boreyko’s Düsseldorf at the end of the 2013–2014 season.
Lovely concert – worth repeated hearings – sit back and relax.
As you know, we’ve suspended our ads in order to make Past Daily a better experience for you without all the distractions and pop-ups. Because of that, we’re relying more on your support through Patreon to keep us up and running every day. For as little as $1.00 a month you can make a huge difference as well as be able to download all of our posts for free (news, history, music). You’ll see a banner just below. Click on that and become a subscriber – it’s easy, painless and does a world of good.
