Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim are connected by a once-in alifetime friendship. They both come from Buenos Aires, had the same piano teacher there, and met in 1949 at a private invitation when they were asked to play for the conductor Sergiu Celibidache. She was eight at the time, he seven. “I’ve known few people as long as Martha,” Barenboim explains, recalling how strongly her imagination and dexterity impressed him even then. “Her piano playing is better than mine,” he says with undisguised admiration. Barenboim and Argerich initially pursued their own international solo careers, but for some 25 years now they have regularly performed together. And at their joint concerts, a special intimacy can be felt. “Our relationship is musical, but there is also a human love between us,” as Barenboim puts it. Martha Argerich, who won the renowned International Chopin Piano Competition in 1965, returns to her roots here with Chopin’s First Piano Concerto. And with the Second Symphony of Brahms, Daniel Barenboim will celebrate the rapturous, late-Romantic sound world in which he is completely at home as a conductor.
