A belated Valentine card from Mark Swed, GILF-chaser:
For close to a half-century, this concerto has been, for her, a vehicle
for seduction. The cover of her famous 1967 recording of it with
Claudio Abbado shows two extraordinarily good-looking musicians (she,
Argentine and 25; he, Italian and 33) looking as though they had just
stepped out of a Truffaut film and gazing into each other’s eyes. The
slow movement is maybe the sexiest thing Ravel ever wrote, and this was
–- no maybe about it –- the sexiest performance it has ever received. In the fast final movement, Argerich is a dazzling vixen who can’t be
caught.
But then, she is still younger than Placidone.
