Martha Argerich was born in Buenos Aires in 1941. After making her concert debut at the age of eight, she moved to Europe in 1955 and began piano studies in Vienna with Friedrich Gulda. In 1957 she won the Busoni International Competition in Bolzano and the Geneva Piano Competition, immediately inaugurating an international career which she interrupted a few years later in order to pursue further study with Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and Stefan Askenase. When she returned to active concertizing in 1965, she won first prize in the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. Since then, Martha Argerich has joined the ranks of the finest pianists of our time, performing with eminent conductors and orchestras and building a repertoire that extends from Bach to Bartók. Within the last two decades, she has placed special emphasis on chamber music. Among her most esteemed partners are violinist Gidon Kremer, cellist Misha Maisky, and pianists Nelson Freire, Alexander Rabinovich, and Lilya Zilberstein, with whom she performs as a duo. In addition, she devotes herself to cultivating a new generation of young musicians. In 1999, she founded the International Martha Argerich Piano Competition and Festival in Buenos Aires, while in Beppu, Japan, and in Lugano she conducts festivals in which she collaborates with distinguished colleagues as well as with young artists. Her recordings have received numerous prizes, including a Grammy Award for her CD of concertos by Prokofiev and Bartók (1999), the “CD Compact Award” for her account of the First Piano Concerto of Tchaikovsky, with Claudio Abbado (1997), and the Prix Cecilia, Edison Award, and Diapason d’Or for CDs with Gidon Kremer. In the fall of 2005, Martha Argerich was honored for her life’s work with the Praemio Imperiale.
LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF) debut on August 20, 1969 playing Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto, with Charles Dutoit conducting the Swiss Festival Orchestra. She performed the same work on her last appearance at Lucerne, with Charles Dutoit conducting the NHK Symphony Orchestra.