Martha Argerich - The Deutsche Grammophon box sets

Reviewed by Null

The Collection 1 : the solo recordings (8 CDs)

(DG 2008)

The Collection 2 : the concerto recordings (7 CDs)

(DG 2009)

The Collection 3 : chamber ensembles (6 CDs)

(DG 2010)

The Deutsche Grammophon label has always put out great recordings of classical music. I like my violins and cellos LOUD and CLEAR. Sure, there are many other great labels but DG has never let me down. Also, just for the record, I don’t give two shits about some stuffy German motherfuckers with asses so tight they can only eat caviar. The whole classical music “scene” makes me kind of nauseous with its stuffy, rich, and elitist atmosphere. I single-handedly commandeer the music back to the heart and the people. That is why classical music needs me. I am that important.

I can’t handle classical music concerts: the few I have been to were a stuffy, uncomfortable affair. The music was great but the crowd…oh my god! You have to sit in those goddam seats like you were carved out of wood, as if the whole idea is to deny any emotion you might feel when hearing the music. The rich have no taste and wouldn’t know how to crank Sergei Rachmaninoff’s 2^nd Piano Concerto and let lose if you gave them LSD and told them they were going to die in 4 hours.

I listen to Rachmaninoff’s 2^nd Piano Concerto while watching the leaves falling outside and shedding a tear for the beauty and futility of existence. This is what I do. Classical music can be some of the most moving and profound music I have ever heard and it is, to me, the antithesis of the cold stuffy atmosphere often found and associated with the genre.

I crank that shit till the house shakes…and then I cry.

Oh, right, this is a review of the Martha Argerich box sets.

For those of you that do not know, Martha Argerich is an amazing pianist. She is originally from Buenos Aires and was born in 1941. She was rockin’ Mozart on the piano when she was eight. I believe her first release was in 1961.

She was often criticized for playing with “too much emotion”; it was said that she was too romantic. She would smoke cigarettes and often dress in black. She didn’t have all that shitty make-up and gaudy crap on; her hair was long and wild like a banshee. In some ways she plays like she looks. As you may have guessed, I was inclined to like her before I ever heard her play. Fuck ’em Martha! Do what you want!

These box sets are fucking handsome little things. I mean, these things are as cool as the Billy Bragg box sets and the first 8 albums included in the Black Sabbath box set. Each box comes with little facsimiles of the original vinyl releases. As you may have noticed from the heading of this review, they are broken up into solo piano, concerto, and chamber ensemble works. Let me tell you, it is a shit-ton of music and it is all beautifully performed by Martha, either solo (astonishing) or with fellow musicians (astounding). The recordings span from 1961 to 2009 and they are all the complete compositions featured on the original vinyl LPs.

Throughout these box sets she plays works by Chopin, Brahms, Ravel, Liszt, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Beethoven, Shostakovich (my favorite composer), Rochmaninov, Bartók, and Shubert. It is a nice sampling of different composers. I could go on and on about each piece but it is just too much.

I am so excited about these box sets that I had to tell somebody. I will be thinking of you while I dance around naked or cry in my wine as Martha makes my windows shake.

In my house…we rock this shit.