Martha Argerich

Martha Argerich was born in Buenos Aires in 1941 and gave her first concert there at the age of eight. In 1955 her family moved to Europe, where she studied with Friedrich Gulda and later with Stefan Askenase. At sixteen she won both the Geneva International Music Competition and the Busoni Competition in Bolzano, and in 1965 she won the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, the victory that made her name around the world. She is regarded as one of the great pianists of her time, known for the speed, fire and spontaneity of her playing, above all in Chopin, Schumann, Ravel, Liszt and Prokofiev. Since the 1980s she has largely given up solo recitals in favour of concertos and chamber music, saying that she feels lonely alone on stage, and she has worked for decades with partners such as Nelson Freire, Gidon Kremer and Mischa Maisky. She founded a music festival in Beppu, in Japan, and has long supported younger musicians.