With Martha Argerich, the cream of music at the Château de Chantilly

2023-09-26 15:37:15
Pianists Martha Argerich and Stephen Kovacevich during the concert in Chantilly (Oise), September 22, 2023. BERNARD ROSENBERG

This is the fourth time in two years that Martha Argerich has invited herself to the Grandes Ecuries of the Château de Chantilly (Oise), since 2021 and the first concert of the Les Coups de cœur festival in Chantilly inaugurated without an audience, in the middle of the Covid-19 period. 19. The Argentine pianist then returned to celebrate her 80th birthday (she was born in Buenos Aires on June 5, 1941), then with her friends in the fall of 2022.

This time, it is also with family that she performs: in a duo in Debussy with the man who was her third husband as well as the father of her youngest daughter, Stéphanie, the pianist Stephen Kovacevich, then in Carnival of the Animals, of Saint-Saëns, with her eldest daughter, the violist Lyda Chen-Argerich, her younger daughter, Annie Dutoit-Argerich, reciter, and her two pianist grandsons, the blond Roman Blagojevic and the dark-haired David Chen, 17 and 15 years old . A work that the small musical tribe has already performed on stage, notably at the Victoria Hall in Geneva in November 2021.

The Medici.tv teams, who are capturing the concert, were hard at work, all afternoon on Friday, September 22, in the very beautiful octagonal space with a square plan that is the central dome (28 meters high). top) which separates the two naves of the Great Stables, built between 1719 and 1735 by the architect Jean Aubert for the seventh prince of Condé and grandson of the Sun King, Louis-Henri de Bourbon. The round track and its 600 places also host equestrian shows.

Tragic sounds

The opening night of September 22 began with the String trio, by Schubert, D. 471, of which only the first movement survives. Edgar Moreau on cello, Lyda Chen on viola and Alissa Margulis on violin deliver an elegant and luminous version of this score still very inspired by Mozart. Then the cellist, accompanied by the sensual piano of Iddo Bar-Shaï, continues with the elegiac Beautiful evening, by Debussy, in the version arranged by Jascha Heifetz. The Israeli pianist, close to Martha Argerich, is also the artistic director of the event created under the patronage of Prince Amyn Aga Khan.

Martha Argerich and Stephen Kovacevich entered as if in carriage, side by side, with the same slightly hesitant step. She, still with her beautiful gray mane, him, with his childish face, in a purple shirt. Everyone sat down in front of their black Steinway. Of Lindarajthe first work written by Debussy in 1901 for two pianos in line with the to Havana, by Ravel, whose name evokes one of the patios of the Alhambra palace in Granada, the two friends expose the haunting of a repeated motif, scents of guitar and Spanish dances, in a sort of tormented reverie which fever then softens – mystery, night, departure.

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