“I have already told you everything,” she said. “I should have the freedom to do what I would like.”
But she did not object when I accompanied her back to her hotel. She stayed up for hours in the lobby chatting with friends about Jungian astrology, the controversy at the 1980 Chopin competition and a suitor who once told her that she had so many personalities, she could date several people at once. She grew obsessed at one point with proving that a waxy-looking plant in the lobby was real, burying her nose in its branches and digging into the soil.
“Look at this,” she said to her friends. “You see? Every leaf is different. It’s alive.”
As we parted around 4 a.m., I asked Argerich one more question. I noticed that evening that she had lingered outside the concert hall, looking at the stars. I wondered if she ever pondered her place in the universe.
Argerich said she sometimes reflected on the absurdity of a life spent hunched over black and white keys. “What are we pianists?” she said. “Nothing. We think it is so extraordinary. But it is not.”
As a storm blew in, filling the streets with rain, Argerich said she had made peace with her life.
“I don’t ask anymore,” she said. “I just play.”
Audio excerpts, all with Martha Argerich: Schumann, Piano Concerto in A Minor, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, Alexandre Rabinovitch-Barakovsky, conductor; Schumann, Piano Concerto in A Minor, Orquesta Sinfónica de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Washington Castro, conductor; Bach, Partita No. 2 in C Minor; Ravel, “Gaspard de la Nuit”; Schumann, “Kinderszenen”; Beethoven, Violin Sonata No. 8 in G Major, Renaud Capuçon, violin; Chopin, Polonaise in A-flat Major; Chopin, Scherzo in C-Sharp Minor; Chopin, Mazurka in A Minor; Chopin, Nocturne in F Major; Chopin, Cello Sonata in G Minor, Mischa Maisky, cello; Rachmaninoff, Suite for Two Pianos No. 2 in C Major, Alexandre Rabinovitch-Barakovsky, piano. Credit: Warner Classics (“Martha Argerich: The Warner Classics Edition“); Teatro Colón; Deutsche Grammophon (“Maisky-Argerich, Live in Japan”).