A long time ago I was advised that anyone who wants to get an interview with Margerich needs to hang around with her a few times at three in the morning and she might, eventually, oblige.
Javier Hernandez of the New York Times has been doing that all winter, carrying her bags in hotel lobbies, talking to her in Spanish. Was it worth it?
…In Lugano, a holy place for Argerich where she once curated a festival, I caught her by surprise on the stage of the Auditorio Stelio Molo. She had just finished rehearsing the Schumann concerto under the baton of Charles Dutoit, an ex-husband. She greeted me with uneasy eyes, saying she was tired, not feeling well, in desperate need of practice and had nothing to say. But after a cigarette and a Coca-Cola, she invited me into her dressing room to chat.
Some critics have called Argerich the greatest living pianist — the last in a line of titans like Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arthur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz, her idol. But she rejects that title.
“The greatest pianist in the world?” she told me, shaking her head. “There is no such thing.”
I SHADOWED Argerich on tour in Switzerland over the winter. I tried to put her at ease, helping carry her bags and speaking casually in Spanish, her native language. But she was rarely in the mood to talk. One night, a friend of Argerich’s texted to say that I should meet Argerich in a hotel lobby at 3 a.m. When I showed up, Argerich, a night owl, had already changed her mind. “Buenas noches,” she said plainly, before heading to her room….
Read on here.
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