What "Papa" Haydn Taught Mozart

Classical Music / Composers

Wolfgang A. Mozart always said that he had learned how to write string quartets from Joseph Haydn. He found in his older friend's work a strict sense of organisation.  Mozart's scores, on the other hand, are notable for the number and variety of their themes: Haydn taught him economy. Of course, the two shared a common musical language and a great respect for each other and admiration for each other's work.

Haydn's opinion of Mozart is summed up admirably in a letter first published in 1798, in which Haydn wrote, ''. . . scarcely any man can brook comparison with the great Mozart. . . If I could only impress on the soul of every friend of music, and on high personages in particular, how inimitable are Mozart's works, how profound, how musically intelligent, how extraordinarily sensitive! (for this is how I understand them, how I feel them) - why then the nations would vie with each other to possess such a jewel within their frontiers.'' 

Article links:  

MUSIC; WHAT HAYDN TAUGHT MOZART by H.C. Robbins Landon.  New York Times  (Archive, August 14, 1988). Article accessed online, March 31, 2008.  -  H.C. Robbins Landon, American musicologist, journalist, historian and broadcaster, best known for his work in rediscovering the huge body of neglected music by Haydn and in correcting misunderstandings about Mozart. known for his trailblazing work on Haydn and his books on Mozart. Among Mozart lovers and enthusiasts, Landon is famous for his book The Mozart Compendium. (I acquired my own copy few years before Landon passed away.)  In general, he is known for his work in rediscovering neglected music by Joseph Haydn and in correcting misunderstandings about Mozart.  

Related link:
Brief biography of Franz Joseph Haydn.

 

 

(c) March 2009. Tel. Inspired Pen Web.  All rights reserved.  

Willem Mengelberg

Classical Music Datebook: March 28

This day, March 28, 1871, Dutch composer and conductor Willem Mengelberg is born in Utrecht, Netherlands. He studied music in the Cologne conservatory, including piano and composition. When he was chosen as General Music Director of the city of Lucerne, Switzerland at the age of 21, he was conductor of an orchestra and a choir, directing a music school. He also taught piano lessons and continued to compose.

Mengelberg is highly renowned for his work as the principal conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra from 1895 to 1945. Mengelberg founded the Mahler tradition of Concertgebouw. In 1902 he met Gustav Mahler and became friends with him. Mengelberg was instrumental in introducing most of Mahler's work to The Netherlands. Mahler regularly visited The Netherlands to introduce his work to Dutch audiences.

Bela Bartok

Classical Music / Composers Datebook:  March 25

 

Brief biography of Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, folk music collector. While some of his classical music contemporaries, like Schoenberg and Stravinsky, were creating new music, Bartok was forging something new and something old.  With Kodaly, Bartok set off to collect folk songs and dances.

 

 

Bela Bartok (1881-1945), was a Hungarian composer born in Nagyszentmiklos, on the 25th of March, 126 years ago. His works, much influenced by Hungarian folk music, combine folk elements with mathematical concepts of rhythm, tone, harmony and melody. They spring from the folk songs and dances of southern and eastern Europe, with their exotic echoes of North Africa and the Middle East. Bartok is one of the greatest 20th century classical music composers.

Early Years

Bartok learned the piano mainly from his mother. A child prodigy, he studied music at the Budapest Conservatory, having appeared in public as a pianist at the age often. Initially influenced by Liszt, he wrote the symphonic poem Kossuth Overture (1903), which performed under Hans Richter in Manchester in 1904.

Collecting Folk Music with Zoltan Kodaly

Bartok took folk music more seriously. He feared that in a rapidly changing world, with more and more people moving from the countryside into the cities, such a musical heritage might be lost forever.

In 1905 he began to collect folk tunes through scientific study, with his friend and colleague Zoltan Kodaly. Together, they traveled noting down and recording hundreds of folk songs and dances. Their rhythms, harmonies and melodies became the basis for many of his works. They analyzed and systematically classified folk songs. They discovered that the true Magyar folk music differed greatly from that of the Hungarian gypsies whose music had been regarded as the only Hungarian folk music that time. Their researches extended to Slovak, Romanian, Balkan and adjoining countries.

Musical Career

The folk tunes provided abundant ideas for his compositions. From 1907, Bartok taught at the Budapest Academy, a post he relinquished in 1934 in order to devote more time to his ethnomusicological research.

During the outbreak of World War I, he intensified his creativity when found unfit for military service. He toured as a pianist and gained international acclaim in Europe and the USA, along with a growing recognition of the originality of his work.

In 1922, Bartok was made an honorary member of the International Society for Contemporary Music. Some of his most demanding music was written in the years 1917-34: ballet The Miraculous Mandarin, two piano concertos, and string quartets nos. 2-5.

Emigration to the USA

The increasing political isolation in his homeland encouraged Bartok to pursue a career abroad. A year after his mother's death in 1939, he left Hungary and settled in the USA. He worked at the classification of Yugoslav folk music at Harvard, alongside his collection of Romanian melodies.

Later Career and Illness

Bartok's health declined from 1942. He suffered from leukemia and was no longer in demand as a composer or pianist. To alleviate his financial hardship, a 1943 commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation for the Concerto for Orchestra was provided. He managed to achieve a number of major works despite his terminal illness. He died in New York in 1945.

Music and Works

Bartok's genius is more fully revealed in his innovative approach to the keyboard. His orchestral is relatively popular, and especially the six string quartets which are widely regarded as the best since Beethoven's.

Some of his works include the ballets The Wooden Prince and The Miraculous Mandarin, six string quartets, a Divertimento for string orchestra, concertos for piano, violin, and viola, a one-act opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle, and graded teaching pieces for piano; also songs and folksong arrangements. Considered his most famous work is Concerto for Orchestra where Bartok displays his mastery of orchestration while giving radiant expression to his passion for folk songs and dances.

Photo credit:

Bela Bartok in 1927. Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain 

Resources:

Oxford Companion to Music, Oxford: OUP, 2002

The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music, edited by Stanley Sadie.  London: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1994

Note:  I originally published a longer article at Suite101 (now close), June 10, 2007. This piece is a brief version.

(c) March 2009. Updated March 25, 2024. Tel. Inspired Pen Web.

Henrik Ibsen

Literature / Writers Datebook: March 20

Norwegian Playwright and Poet, considered "Father of Modern Drama" 

 

Brief biography and works of Norwegian dramatist and poet Henrik Ibsen, famous for 'A Doll's House', 'Peer Gynt', and 'Hedda Gabler.'

Ibsen is often called the father of modern drama because his plays moved away from the Romantic style of theatre popular in the 19^th century toward realism. He was famous for 'A Doll's House,' 'Hedda Gabler' and 'Peer Gynt,' with the last two plays having numerous new productions of plays worldwide, perhaps outdone only by top Shakespearean plays. 

During his life Ibsen's work was much admired. In 1891, fellow playwright George Bernard Shaw, in a lecture entitled "The Quintessence of Ibsenism", called him the greatest living dramatist. James Joyce corresponded with him. British novelist Dame Rebecca West coined her nom de plume after one of Ibsen's characters in his play Rosmersholm. Composer Edvard Grieg, his own countryman, is famous for "Peer Gynt Suite" based on Ibsen's play.  

Early Childhood

Henrik Ibsen was born in Skien, Norway, on March 20, 1828 and died at the age of 78, on May 23, 1906. His father was bankrupt and almost immediately became a social outcast. This event gave Ibsen a lasting impact on his life that resulted in a strong distrust of society which much of his work reflects.

Ibsen's Youth

At age 16, Ibsen became an apprentice pharmacist. Money was scarce, but he was determined to improve his situation and studied in the evenings. When revolution swept Europe, in 1848, Ibsen, aged twenty-two, captivated by the new democratic ideas, wrote his first play, Catiline, which deals with personal freedom, but this was never performed.

Ibsen went to college in Oslo and hoped to become a physician. He supported himself by writing. A year later, however, he was offered the job of writer-manager of the Norwegian Theatre in Bergen, a position he held for eleven years.

Ibsen's Turning Point

At 30, he married Suzannah Thoresen. Their son, Sigurd, was born a year later.

The play Brand, published when he was 38 years old, was the turning point in his writing career. With its emphasis on the individual pitted against society, the play became popular with young liberals at that time. A series of plays dealing with real-life issues soon followed. A Doll's House, which deals about a woman who refuses to obey her husband, caused a sensation and reached Europe and America.  

 

Works by Henrik Ibsen

Brand, 1866

Peer Gynt, 1867

A Doll's House, 1879

Ghosts, 1881

An Enemy of the People, 1882

The Wild Duck, 1884

Rosmersholm, 1886

The Lady from the Sea, 1888

Hedda Gabler, 1890

The Master Builder, 1892

Little Eyolf, 1894

When We Dead Awaken, 1899

 

Resources:

Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers (2002)

Dictionary of the Arts, Gramercy Books, (1994)

Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse (1994)   

(Note: I originally published this piece for Suite101.com March 2008. / Tel)  

(c) March 2009. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved. 

Balakirev Symphonic Poem Tamara

Classical Music / Symphonic Poem 

Orchestral Symphony No. 2 Tamara or Thamar is a symphonic poem composed by Russian composer Mily Balakirev.

Mily Balakirev conducts the first performance of his symphonic poem Tamara in St Petersburg, on March 19, 1883. One of his best known works, Tamara is based on a ballad by the poet Mikhail Lermontov, who was inspired by an ancient local legend while exiled to the Caucasus.

Initially, he saw the work as a possible symbol of the recent political unification of the Caucasus under Russian rule. The poetic style and romantic language of the poem are important to an understanding of the plot, which describes a beautiful but evil princess (Tamara) whose songs lure travelers to her enchanted castle in the Caucasus by the river Terek. After a night of passion, the princess murders the traveler, whose body is borne away by the river.




Balakirev began work on Tamara in 1867. In the mid-1870s, he had a four-year battle with depression. Fortunately, his friends confiscated his work sketches fearing what he might do to them. In 1876, his friends helped him rekindle his interest in music by returning the score to him and asking him to resume composition. Three years later, he performed Tamara on piano to an enthusiastic audience of friends. In March 1883, Tamara was premiered with the composer conducting, and the 15-year odyssey, of which perhaps only three years total were spent intensively working on the score, was completed.

The slow (and soft) introduction and conclusion to the piece is a characteristic of Balakirev's orchestral works. It opens with ripples in the strings and low brass, representing the river, which establish the impressively pervasive feeling of foreboding, the key is the ominous B minor. Lyrically supple woodwind melodies abound in the work, and the first few notes of what will later be identified as Tamara's love song are heard from the English horn. After a few more notes of the love song, the rippling returns.

The main work of the score is taken up with the two love themes of Tamara. Balakirev develops these melodies from seductive lyricism to driving passion to the murderous climax, after which the original form and the river music returns.

 Balakirev dedicated Tamara to Franz Liszt, who is considered originator of the tone poem. Despite remaining distinctively Russian in orchestral scope, Tamara, in its form and language, embraces Oriental flavor. In 1912, Diaghilev and Fokine produced a ballet to Balakirev's Tamara.


Resource: 

Mily Balakirev, Tamara, Symphonic Poem.  www.allmusic.com.  Accessed March 19, 2009. 


Video Credit:

Mily Balakirev - Tamara, symphonic poem (1867-82).  Youtube, uploaded by KuhlauDelfing2.
Orchestra: The State Academic Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Evgeny Svetlanov.  Accessed March 19, 2009
Mily Balakirev.  en.wikpedia.org.  Accessed March 19, 2009


(c) March 2009. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Classical Music / Composers Datebook: March 18

 

Brief biography of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, master in orchestration with strong Russian flavour and colour. He was a member of 'The Five' 19^th-century Russian nationalist composers with a gift for lively and colorful orchestration, and known for fairy tale subjects.

 

 

Nikolai (Nikolay) Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov, Russian composer and conductor, was born in Tikhvin on March 18, 1844. He was a Russian nationalist and the youngest member of 'The Five' or 'the Mighty Handful,' a group of 19th-century Russian composers organized by Mily Balakirev.  

   

Early Years

Rimsky-Korsakov was born into an aristocratic family and had conventional music education. His initial ambition was to be a sailor, a naval officer. In 1856, he entered the Corps of Naval Cadets in St. Petersburg but while at sea he had pianoforte lessons, he even composed a symphony. He also attended opera and concerts. Greatly influenced by Balakirev and deeply impressed by Glinka’s nationalist works, he showed great promise in his musical ability especially in orchestration. 

Career beginnings

At 27, the professorship of composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire was offered to him. He accepted the position aware that he was unqualified. Secretly, he began his self-imposed study especially in harmony and counterpoint. About this time, he married a fellow musician, Nadezhda Purgold, also a composer but superior to him.

Music output

It was in 1882 that his work, in particular, an opera The Snow Maiden that showed a new, personal clever voice with some fantasy blended with comedy. The next few years nothing much happened in terms of his musical output. However, after six years, he produced the successful Spanish Capriccio, encored at its first presentation.  With its success, this was followed by Russian Easter Festival Overture and the symphonic suite Scheherazade, an exotic music derived from the famous classic tale Thousand and One Night.  His mastery of orchestration is demonstrated in all three compositions.

 

Featured video:Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade op.35, with Leif Segerstam conducting Sinfónica de Galicia.  Youtube, accessed March 18, 2024. 

Samuel Barber

Classical Music / Composers Datebook: March 9

 

Brief biography of American composer Samuel Barber, musician of the neo-Classical style, with a passion for poetry and drama, famous for 'Adagio for Strings' and 'Dover Beach'. He created a "modern" grand opera Antony and Cleopatra, the first to be performed at the new Metropolitan Opera House (Met) in New York City, Sept 16, 1966.      

   

  

Early Life, Influence and Success  

Born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, USA, on March 9, 1910, he was bred into a cultured musical family. At the age of seven, Samuel displayed a prodigious talent for composing both in vocal and instrumental music. Aged 18, he formed a lasting friendship with Gian Carlo Menotti.

He studied as a baritone, pianist and composer at the Curtis Institute and while there, he won acclaim with such work as Dover Beach. He also wrote his famous Adagio for strings at the age of 25. His opulent yet unforced romanticism struck a chord and he was much in demand during the 1930s.

He rarely incorporated popular jazz and folk idioms into his music.  Samuel won a Pulitzer scholarship in 1935, and the following year, the American Academy’s Prix de Rome. In the 1940s he began to include more ‘modern’ features of harmony and scoring. 

 

More Work and Awards

His works include Adagio for Strings (used in the films The Elephant Man and Platoon in the 1980s), ballets (Medea, Op.23, 1946, reviewed as Cave of the Heart, 1947, and Souvenirs, Op.28, 1952), some chamber music and the opera Vanessa which won him one of his two Pulitzer prizes.

Notably, the opera Antony and Cleopatra, which was commissioned for the opening of the Metropolitan Opera House at the Lincoln Center, New York City, was considered a failure at its premiere primarily due to an over-elaborate staging, but had some success during the later version in 1974. 

 

Later Works

Barber’s music is lyrical and fastidiously worked. His later compositions include The Lovers in 1971. The tuneful style of his composition has been considered conservative by some contemporary critics, understandably, perhaps due to influence from European Romantic tradition, but he is held in highest esteem with the depth of emotion expressed in his music.

 

He died in New York, January 23, 1981.

 

Barber's Major Works:

Dover Beach, for solo baritone and string quarter, 1931

Overture, The School for Scandal, 1931

String Quarter, 1936

Symphony No.1, 1936

Adagio for Strings, 1938

Violin Concerto, 1941

Cello Concerto, 1945

Medea, Op.23, 1946, reviewed as Cave of the Heart, 1947,

Knoxville: Summer of 1915, for soprano and orchestra, 1947

Piano sonata, 1949

Souvenirs, Op.28, 1952

Opera, Vanessa, 1957-1958

Piano Concerto, 1962

Opera, Antony and Cleopatra, 1966

Agnus Dei, for choir, 1967

 

Photo Credit:

Samuel Barber.  Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain

 

Resources:

The Encyclopedia of Music, by Max Wade-Matthews & Wendy Thompson, Hermes House (2002)

The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music, edited by Stanley Sadie, Macmillan (1994)

The Oxford Companion to Music, edited by Alison Latham, OUP (2002)

 

 

(c) March 2009. Updated March 9, 2024. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.   

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (CPE)

Classical Music / Composer's Datebook: March 8

 

Brief biography of CPE Bach, master of the keyboards, arguably, founder of modern piano-playing. The most famous Bach in his lifetime.   

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, born March 8, 1714, German composer and musician of the Classical period. His name was also formerly spelt Karl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, and commonly abbreviated C. P. E. Bach or CPE, the fifth child and second surviving son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach.  To his contemporaries, he was known simply as Emanuel. His second name was in honor of his godfather Georg Philipp Telemann, a friend of Johann Sebastian Bach.  CPE was educated at Leipzig, then at the University of Frankfurt-on-Oder. 

To distinguish CPE from his brother Johann Christian, the "London Bach," who at this time was music master to the Queen of England, CPE Bach was known as the "Berlin Bach" during his residence in that city, and later as the "Hamburg Bach" when he succeeded Telemann as Kapellmeister there. 

CPE Bach introduced a new ‘homophonic’ style that time, which influenced Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn, and Ludwig van Beethoven. A left-handed, CPE studied music under his father, JS Bach.  

In 1738 he moved to Berlin to become harpsichordist to the Prussian crown prince when his employer became King Frederick in 1740. During this period, his most important compositions were his keyboard sonatas. 

 

Career

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote and published his famous treatise on keyboard playing entitled Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (Essay on the Correct Method of Playing the Clavier), 1753, which established him as the leading keyboard teacher and theorist that time. He may well be regarded as the founder of modern piano-playing. He was however discontented with his poor salary and wanted out. It was only in 1767 when Frederick reluctantly released him. The following year, he succeeded his godfather Georg Telemann as Kantor and church music director at Hamburg.

CPE Bach wrote over 200 pieces for keyboard instruments, numerous chamber music including solo clavier pieces, many songs, fiery and energetic symphonies and concerti with orchestral accompaniments, cantatas, as well as choral works from his late years, including two oratorios. Some of these church music included adaptations of his own and works of other composers. 

He died aged 74, in Hamburg, December 14, 1788. 

CPE Bach's Legacy

Together with his music, Carl Philipp Emanuel (CPE) Bach was greatly respected and recognized for his treatise which summarized the musical philosophy and practices in the second half of the 18th-century Protestant north Germany. He received much greater recognition for his abilities as composer and performer in his lifetime than his now famous father, JS Bach. 

 

CPE Bach's Major Works

Trio in B minor  1731 

Prussian Sonata  1742

Sonata for clavier, Wurtemburgian  1743

Magnificat  1749

Harp Sonata in B minor  1762

Passion Cantata  1770

Fantasia in C minor  1773

Die Israeliten in der Wüste (The Israelites in the Wilderness), oratorio  1769

Symphony in F major  1780

Morgengesang am Schöpfungsfeste, ode  (1783)

Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu (The Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus), oratorio  1787

Concerto in Eb  1788

 

Photo Credit:

CPE Bach. Public Domain. 

Resources:

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. en.wikipedia.org

Kennedy, Michael & Joyce, & Tim Rutherford-Johnson. Oxford Dictionary of Music, Sixth Edition. OUP. 2012.  

Sadie, Stanley, Ed. The Grove Dictionary of Music. London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1994. 

 

(c) March 2009. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.

Gabriel García Márquez

Literature / Writers Datebook: March 6

 

Brief biography of Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, novelist and short story writer, noted for magical realism stories, and famous for his book, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

 

 

Gabriel García Márquez is one of South America's most respected and famous writers. He is best known for One Hundred Years of Solitude, awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982. Garcia Marques is generally regarded as the greatest practitioner "magic realism".

The term "magic realism" refers in particular, to works of South American novelists in which are describes happenings in the real world with excursions into the realm of fantasy.       

Early Life

Garcia Marquez was born in Aracataca, on March 6, 1928, in a small town in Colombia. His childhood home was large and extended, and became the inspiration for many of his later work. After studying law in college, Garcia Marquez became a newspaper journalist and began to publish stories and articles in various periodicals.

Career as a Journalist

His work as a journalist took him to Europe and to the South American countries, where he witnessed the oppression and violence suffered by people living under dictatorships. His own country, Colombia, also suffered from political violence.

The Novelist

At the age 27, Garcia Marquez published his first book, Leafstorm and Other Stories. Macondo, the fictional Colombian town that is the setting for the title story, later became the setting for his most famous book, One Hundred Years of Solitude. He wrote it during a stay in Mexico several years later, and it was published when he was 39.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, which became internationally famous, follows the fortunes of the Buendia family and the provincial town in which they live from the earliest days pf European settlements to the present. Garcia Marquez vividly narrates the lives of the decaying family. It is an allegory of the history of Colombia. 

Garcia Marquez's style of writing mixed politics and everyday life in a settling that was full of larger-than-life characters, sex, violence and magical events - a good example of magic realism.    

Later Years

However, in his later novel, The General in his Labyrinth, a fictionalized biography of Simon Bolivar, the hero of Latin American independence, according to critics, seemed to mark a departure of the work of Garcia Marquez in a more realistic approach to his subject. 

Gabriel García Márquez died on April 17, 2014 (age 87 years), in Mexico City, Mexico

 

Works by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Leafstorm and other Stories, 1955

No One Writes to the Colonel, 1958

One hundred Years of Solitude, 1967

The Autumn of the Patriarch, 1975

In Evil Hour, 1979

Chronicle of a Death Foretold, 1981

Love in the Time of Cholera, 1985

The General in his Labyrinth, 1989-1990

Of Love and Other Demons, 1995

 

Photo credit:

Gabriel Garcia Marquez. NNDB.com

 

Resources:

Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers (2002)

Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse (1994)  

Guide to Literature in English, by Ian Ousby, Cambridge University Press (1993)

 

(c) March 2009. Updated March 6, 2024. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.  

Frédéric François Chopin

Classical Music / Composers Datebook: March 1

Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin was a Polish composer and piano player. His music was exclusively written for piano. He lived in Paris since 1830, aged 20, where he changed his name into Frédéric François Chopin. He is famous for Piano concertos 1 and 2, nocturnes, etudes, mazukas, and the popular solo piano "Fantaisie-Impromptu". 

Frédéric François Chopin was born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin, on March 1, 1810, in Zelazowa Wola, Masovia region, Duchy of Warsaw, Poland. His father, named Mikolaj (Nicolas) Chopin, was a Frenchman who came to Poland from Lorraine, and eventually became professor at Warsaw Lyceum. His mother, named Tekla Justina Krzyzanovska, was a relative of Polish Countess Ludwika Skarbkowa, owner of the Zelazowa Wola estate.

From 1816-1822 Chopin studied piano under professional musician Wojcech Zywny. He wrote his first piano compositions at the age of 7. At 8, he gave piano concerts and wanted to become a professional piano player.

In 1820, Chopin moved with his family to Warsaw. There he gained a reputation as a "second Mozart" for his piano playing. He moved to Paris in 1830, aged 20, where he was welcomed by important composers of his time like Franz Liszt and Hector Berlioz as well as no prominent authors like Heinrich Heine and Honoré de Balzac. The aristocratic circles had Chopin playing in their salon all the time, especially his own polonaise compositions which were inspired by his Polish background.

Note: Apology, the video of the legendary concert pianist Martha Argerich playing Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11, with Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra, conducted by Jacek Kaspszyk, is no longer available when I revisited Youtube (1 March 2024). Instead, I found this link:  Here.  I hope this stays available: Martha Argerich: Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11(Live in Warsaw, 1999). Sinfonia Varsovia conducted by Alexandre Rabinovitch May 14, 1999 Teatr Wielki Opera Narodowa.

 

Below, I found this video uploaded by Michael Nichols:  Martha Argerich interpreting  Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2, conducted by Bernard Klee. The orchestra is not mentioned. Accessed 1 March 2024.