Rome -Parco della Musica
Sala Santa Cecilia
Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Orchestra
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
Martha Argerich, piano
Prokofiev – Concerto for piano no. 3  in C major, op. 26
Ravel – Daphnis et Chloé
 

Again a double dose – why else do the artists offer three performances of the same programme? I understand that it is for those who enjoy the music to go back for more. It was the case for Nelson Freire, and now for Martha Argerich.

On the first evening, I sat behind the orchestra, as the only seats to be had were in the rear of the theater. These seats have pros and cons, the big pro being the fact that you are being literally “conducted” through the music and thus get reeled into it in a way that is impossible when the conductor has his back to you. The biggest con, alas, is that all the instruments are positioned so that the audience proper can hear them well, which means that you get a rather muffled sound from piano and strings. The wind section can be heard from anywhere, and so can the percussion. That is probably why outdoor bands consist of brass and drums, which maintain their sound quality whether the musicians are sitting or marching and whether the wind is howling or not. I made sure I came back and sat on the other side, so my experience could be complete.

A word about audiences. Who are the most enthusiastic and noisily appreciative crowds in a concert hall? The Italians, ma certo! Wrong, absolutely wrong! Those who rave and adore the most, as far as I have witnessed, are the stolid Germans! Nowhere have I heard such truly hearty applause, nowhere have I seen people so deeply moved by the music. The Italian audience is, by comparison, chilly and often disrespectful. They don’t think twice about unwrapping caramelli during a soft second movement or rushing out as soon as the last chord dies, after all, they have a taxi or bus or subway to catch, so why stop to let the musicians know you enjoyed what they did, or hated it, for that matter. I noticed that especially after Nelson Freire’s superb rendition of the Brahms, which left the Romans cold. Why? Because Freire is not well known here, it was his first performance at Santa Cecilia, and they were just not going to bother. Never mind the quality of the music.

Martha Argerich is a different matter. She has the diva quality which Italians love. She is a star, she acts like one. I hate her for the fact that in spite of all the star display, she is a truly magnificent pianist, as her performance of Prokofiev no. 3 would demonstrate. Again, no preamble. The stage door opens and the diva herself enters, with her signature grey mane (very similar to Mischa Maisky’s, that is probably why they blend together so well when they play chamber music). She now has a heavy figure, and fusses around with the piano bench for a while to create momentum – or, maybe, chi lo sa, to steady her nerves? She is followed by an extremely young conductor, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Canadian, the programme notes tell me. Now, it is hard to hate a great performer who takes more and more time to champion the younger set of virtuosi, as la Argerich does in Lugano, Luzern and in Verbier, and all around the world. She even takes time to make chamber recordings with her young protégés, the Capuçon brothers, Nicholas Angelich, Gabriela Montero, Sergio Tempo, to name only a few.

Her performance of the best known of Prokofiev’s piano concertos is mesmerizing. She can be virtuosistic, poetic, furious or loving, whatever the music suggests to her. And she reads it so well. In another commentary, I spoke of Brendel’s painstaking explanation of humor in music. Well here, Madame Argerich needed no explanation. Prokofiev laughed out loud under her fingers when needed, and murmured when that was what he intended. A thoroughly satisfying performance, in which the orchestra accompanied exceedingly well, molded by this young and very talented conductor. As if to demonstrate that her wish to share with the young is no mere appearance, the encore consisted of four-hand music (I must say I don’t know what it was, but I suspect Debussy or Ravel) with the maestro joining her at the keyboard. Unusual, yes, but not so strange as to justify a review in the Corriere de la Sera (or was it the Reppublica?) devoted entirely to this moment – hardly a word about the concerto.

The orchestra afterwards played Daphnis and Chloé, and as in the case of Debussy, I will not comment as I find both his and Ravel’s chamber music so much more interesting than their orchestral scores.