Classical CDs: wolves, woodwinds and a masonic funeral | reviews, news & interviews Classical CDs: wolves, woodwinds and a masonic funeral Classical CDs: wolves, woodwinds and a masonic funeral A great pianist celebrates a significant birthday, plus music for solo winds and a rare French ballet score by Graham RicksonSaturday, 17 July 2021 Martha Argerich Edition (EuroArts) Almost eight hours of Martha Argerich on film. What a glorious prospect! This six-DVD set mostly consists of recordings of live concerts. The set was released to celebrate the great Argentinian’s 80th birthday last month. Again and again in performance, she finds depths, colours and transcendence that simply stop you in your tracks. There is a Prokofiev 3rd Concerto with the LSO and Previn recorded in Croydon in 1977, where she switches from the most delicate of dream sequences to playing which is forceful, propulsive, totally commanding. And there are those occasional precious moments when the cameras have managed to catch not just the exuberance of her playing, but also her capacity to find joy in it. The grateful, amazed, radiant smile she gives to Charles Groves right at the end of an exuberantly, almost illegally fast performance of the Tchaikovsky concerto at the Guildhall in Preston (!) in 1977 is to be treasured. And witness her mischievous joy as she launches into two encores in Warsaw in 2010 before the audience has had the chance to sit down. The second, a coruscating “Traumeswirren” from Schumann’s Op. 12, is unforgettable.