Martha Argerich and Friends Live From the Lugano Festival

Everything Martha Argerich touches turns to gold: not only her own piano playing (her earliest Chopin recordings for radio, newly released on DG, are phenomenal) but those around her whom she evidently inspires to new heights. These chamber music collaborations buzz with spontaneity: piano music for four and six hands, sophisticated Schumann and Chopin with the Capuçon brothers, but also rare repertory – who knows the Glinka Sextet or Mendelssohn's Piano Sextet? Argerich dashes off Nights in the Gardens of Spain with ease and can there be any more exuberant four minutes on disc than her piano duet scherzo from A Midsummer Night's Dream ?