Martha Argerich

Martha was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 5 June 1941, a year and a half before her countryman Daniel Barenboim. A kindergarten pupil when she was two years and eight months old, Martha was taunted by an older friend (he was five) who proclaimed that she couldn't play the piano. She went immediately to the piano and played a tune that the teacher had often played for the class. She played it by ear and played it perfectly. The teacher immediately called Martha's mother to report the incident: according to Argerich, she began her first piano lessons at five all because of this little boy who challenged her.

===========================================

As Maria Montessori phrased it, children live in an environment created by adults. Prodigious children may live in a world particularly ill-adapted to their own needs, repressed by their more powerful elders who undercut their will and constrain them. Some musical prodigies survive such dire circumstances and aggressively emerge from their perilous journeys as they approach maturity. Argerich was able to attain such equilibrium only gradually. Until she was approaching 25 she lived an unstable existence as a pianist, rebounding from depression to exaltation in an emotional state bordering on dysfunctional. Perhaps at the root of this anguish was the paradox that despite her love of playing the piano, she already disliked being a pianist.

========================================

Throughout the Busoni competition, Martha never worked at the piano between rounds. She didn't want to practice if she wasn't going to get through. She merely waited to see if her name was announced, and when it was, she would go to work for the next round.

Marth won the Busoni competition and immediately prepared to enter the Geneva competition. Suspicious of the nature of competitions and so unsure of her own role in them, she gave way to her eccentricites, refusing to play the Liszt rhapsody all the way through in the practice studio, not even from her own security. It hardly mattered. Martha won the competition as she had in Bolzano, garnering lavish press reviews as the victor in two renowned international music competitions, the Busoni and the Geneva, that had taken place just 3 weeks apart.

=========================================

After studying with Friedrich Gulda in Vienna, Marth went to Italy to study with Arturo Benedetti-Michelangeli, then returned to New York where she endured a devastating emotional crisis. For one year Marth completely withdrew from playing the piano and simply spent her days watching television. Some friends, among them Fou Ts'ong, the Chinese born pianist and husband of Zamira Menuhin, tried to help 21 year old Marth recover her identity as a pianist but without success.

In 1963 her mother encouraged her to enter the Queen Elisabeth competition in Brussels but of course this was an impossibility since Martha was no longer prepared by this time having been away from the piano for almost 3 years.

She did go to Belgium and the night before the competition said to herself "Well, now Martha, it is over for you. You have been a pianist, but now you are not."
The next morning she went to seek help from Polish born pianist Stefan Askenase. She went with the firm conviction that somehow she would tell him that since she knew languages, she would become a secretary. Once she had arrived at the Askenase home, she was greeted by his wife, a woman of great strength and fortitude who ultimately would help Martha change the course of her unpredictable professional life.

She went everyday to talk with Mrs Askenase and soon started to believe that she could, little by little, begin to play again, all the while questioning what was wrong that held her in check. When finally she had broken through her bond of insecurity, she went to Warsaw to compete in the Frederic Chopion International Competition.

Eight difficult years had elapsed since Martha's success in the competitions in Bolzano and Geneva, years in which one personal conflict followed another but in Warsaw 1965 Martha reigned supreme over 85 young pianists all over the world. One would never have known that the young woman from Buenos Aires had recently been idle for 3 years watching television in New York, constantly considering whether to withdraw permanently from the piano.

As David Feldman has said, "In the lives of musical prodigies, the importance of balance - of the coordination of a totally appropriate set of conditions necessary for development - cannot be overemphasised. When motivational force comes from within the precocious child and is on the mark, it is a force to reckon with; when that force goes awry, it can be baffling and destructive."