Martha Argerich

Born in Buenos Aires, Martha Argerich’s early piano instruction stressed lyricism and feeling: "When the sound is empty," her teacher said, "it sounds like a pair of pants walking into the room with nothing inside them." At eight years old, she made her debut playing a Mozart concerto, and she would go on to become the first pianist from the Western Hemisphere to win first prize at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw. Today, although she plays Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann, her repertoire centers on composers such as Rachmaninov, Ravel, Prokofiev, and more modern composers, including Lutosławski and Messiaen.

After the first few years of her career she gave up playing solo recitals, preferring collaborative musical work. Only her first two albums were solo. She is a luminous chamber-music player and a graceful musical collaborator with a lengthy and fruitful association with the Deutsche Grammophon. That relationship has produced many of the great classics in recorded piano repertory, and critics, audiences, and peers all hail Argerich as one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century.

Argerich has been a Steinway Artist since 1967.