Martha Argerich and Friends: Live from Lugano 2011

EMI Classics is pleased to release the latest instalment of highlights from the Martha Argerich Project at the Lugano Festival. This is the ninth annual 3-CD set celebrating the musical fruits of a project in which young artists join seasoned performers, including Martha Argerich herself, to explore wide-ranging chamber music and orchestral repertoire, both well known and rarely heard. The CDs, recorded in the summer of 2011, are being released in anticipation of the Festival’s 2012 season in June. As a chamber music event which celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2011, this series has become a laboratory that gives guest artists a chance to prove themselves not only in well-known masterpieces but also in rarely performed repertoire. This is the second instalment released in slim-line clamshell packaging, which better represents the prestige of this release and makes it of suitable size for newspaper/magazine promotions. As in previous years, the piano stands at the centre of the programming, This 3CD set welcomes back mainly familiar names from the previous Live from the Lugano Festival releases including pianists Lilya Zilberstein, Sergio Tiempo and Polina Leschenko as well as Virgin Classics’ inimitable violin- and cello-soloist brothers, Renaud and Gautier Capuçon and violinists Lucia Hall and Lida Chen. Few artists have nurtured and promoted emerging young musicians with the level of personal commitment shown by Martha Argerich. In the process, she has created inspired and inspirational chamber music partnerships mixing established and up-and-coming artists. A legend in her own lifetime for her technical mastery and passionate artistry, Argerich possesses an infectious spirit that has fired her own performances and partnerships as well as those of her colleagues and protégés.