Born in 1941 in Buenos Aires, Martha Argerich, who made her concert debut at the age of 8, came to Europe in 1955 to continue her piano studies in Vienna with Friedrich Gulda. In 1957 she won the Busoni Competition in Bolzano, Italy, and the Geneva Piano Competition; she nevertheless carried on with her studies, working with Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and Stefan Askenase before she took first prize in the Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1965 and began her international career.
Since then Martha Argerich has ranked among the finest pianists of our era; she has concertized with the leading conductors and orchestras, performing a repertoire ranging from Bach to Bartók. Over the last two decades, chamber music has come to play an especially significant role in her artistic work.
Among her preferred musical partners are the violinist Gidon Kremer; the cellist Mischa Maisky; and the pianists Nelson Freire, Alexandre Rabinovitch, and Lilya Zilberstein, with whom she plays in a duo. From 2002 to 2016 she led her own Festival in Lugano, Switzerland, in which she performed together with renowned colleagues and young artists.
Her recordings have garnered numerous awards. She has won the coveted Grammy Award three times: for her account of concertos by Prokofiev and Bartók (1999), for a duo CD with Mikhail Pletnev (2005), and for her Beethoven concertos with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Claudio Abbado (2006). In 2014 she won the Echo Klassik Award for her performance of Mozart concertos, also with Abbado.
The documentary Argerich, which her daughter Stéphanie produced in 2013, presents a film portrayal of the pianist. In the fall of 2005 Martha Argerich was honored for her life work with the Praemium Imperiale; since 2014 she has been an Honorary Member of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.
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