Martha Argerich

Buenos Aires, where she was born in 1941, formed Martha Argerich under Vincenzo Scaramuzza; she continued her studies in Europe, with Friedrich Gulda, Stefan Askenase and Maria Curcio. At sixteen, in 1957, she took first prize at the Busoni competition in Bolzano and at Geneva, and in 1965 won the Chopin Competition in Warsaw. Her recordings include Prokofiev’s Third Concerto, Ravel’s Concerto in G, Chopin’s Second Piano Sonata, Schumann’s Piano Concerto and Bach’s Second Partita. She has recorded duo and chamber repertoire with Nelson Freire, Gidon Kremer and Mischa Maisky. The festival she founded at Beppu in Japan has carried her name since 1998, and she is honorary president of the International Piano Academy at Lake Como. She left for Europe in 1955 and worked there with Bruno Seidlhofer, Nikita Magaloff and Madeleine Lipatti. Grammys came for Beethoven's Second and Third Concertos with Claudio Abbado and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and for Prokofiev's Cinderella with Mikhail Pletnev, and in 1999 she gave her name to a piano competition and festival in Buenos Aires, with the Progetto Martha Argerich following in Lugano in 2002. France made her Officier des Arts et Lettres in 1996 and Commandeur in 2004, Japan gave her the Praemium Imperiale in 2005, and she was among the Kennedy Center honorees in December 2016.