Martha Argerich plays Schumann

Romanticism is a world of great feelings, of longings and secrets, of the dreamy and inexplicable. It is also a world of fanciful, feverish nervousness and the threat this poses to the artist. Or to put it simply, it is the world of Robert Schumann. Probably no other artist has been able to penetrate this ambivalent world as deeply as Martha Argerich. It is fair to say that Schumann’s Piano Concerto is her concerto. It is her music, her world. Only eight years after its first performance in 1845, a twenty-year-old young man with flaxen blond hair came to Düsseldorf to visit the Schumanns, Johannes Brahms. The couple welcomed him warmly, and Robert Schumann in particular was enthusiastic about the young man’s compositions. He was destined to carry Schumann’s flame. “And he has come,” wrote Schumann, “a young blood at whose cradle graces and heroes kept watch. If he will lower his magic wand to where the powers of the masses, in chorus and orchestra, lend him their strength, even more wonderful glimpses into the secrets of the spirit world are in store for us. May the highest genius strengthen him for this.” And Brahms waved his magic wand.