Submitted by Lauri Mitchell, Nov 22, 2007 04:12

I was lucky enough to hear Ms. Argerich in Los Angeles on Nov. 8, prior to the New York performance which Mr. Nordlinger reviewed. I have listened to her recording of the Prokofiev Concerto #3 under the baton of Claudio Abaddo numerous times. I can't imagine how her performance in New York could have been so monumentally inferior to the performance I heard in L.A., except that possibly Ms. Argerich performed even though she was not feeling well.

Let me please be clear about this. I am a professional pianist and piano teacher and am intimately familiar with this concerto. In L.A., she played it brilliantly, with subtlety (yes, subtlety in that work of monumental pyrotechnics), majesty and an array of colors that, heretofore, I have not heard equaled by any other pianist. And this is a concerto she must have performed over 50 times. She did not phone it in, as many pianists might have. She did not lose focus. And, believe me, Ms. Argerich did not have a "technical problem." I would like to know another living pianist who can equal, let alone exceed, her technical prowess.

Perhaps the problem was that I had the good luck to hear it in the Walt Disney Concert Hall, a new hall with state-of-the-art acoustics. Perhaps it was that I had the good fortune to be in a very desirable seat for listening — the 2nd boxes. Or perhaps, Mr. Nordlinger had a cold that night and his ears were congested. I can't imagine that a critic of his caliber could be so ill-informed about the Concerto and how it should be performed.

And, by the way, her choice to play the two pieces from "Scenes from Childhood" "out of order, as told by Mr. Nordlinger, was obviously a well-considered one. To end with the virtuosic "Catch me" would have been the easy way out — end with a flamboyant flourish. Instead, her finale was the delicate "From Foreign Lands and People," which ended her performance on a note of elegance and exquisite beauty.

When Ms. Argerich left the stage, I did not feel that we, the audience, were left with a performance bereft of elegance. I felt, instead, that we were left with a single, perfect red rose placed tenderly on an otherwise empty stage.

Lauri Mitchell
Seattle, Washington

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