Martha Argerich is selective about what she plays and who she plays it with nowadays and so this reunion with Claudio Abbado at the Lucerne Festival last year was a 'hot ticket'.
We are reminded of them in their previous collaborations by some vintage photographs, two young and glamorous musicians from a time gone by.
They begin with Concerto no. 25, its 14 minute opening Allegro a sparkling journey through one of Mozart's exuberant moods. Abbado's performances always have a precision about them, a clarity that this live recording captures superbly. If sometimes I wonder if the contrast between the delicate passages and the bursts of sound is made more of than necessary, one can only reflect that we can't be sure how Mozart heard it. I daresay he might have been open-minded and interested in whatever other musicians did with his compositions.
Something that seems to happen more in concert notes and on recordings these days is that we are told the composer of the cadenzas. Those in Concerto no. 20 here are by Beethoven. And I'm glad to know that.
I spent a lot of time as a teenager with some of Barenboim's recordings and so feel familiar with the territory. It's easy to take it for granted and impossible to imagine what music would be like without Mozart. Never far below the playfulness is the possibility of a darker sub-text and beauty is tainted by sadness. Martha Argerich has all of that and, it seems to me, an ideal touch with which to find the right measure of lightness or assertiveness between which these concertos move.
This is a tremendous new addition to her catalogue and a fitting memorial to Claudio Abbado, an ideal and hugely enjoyable 62 minutes that is now happily available to everyone.
