WHISPERING PIANISM

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30712, 30 March 1965, Page 11

WHISPERING PIANISM

American Wins Chopin Prize

Martha Argerich, a 23-year-old Argentinian who has been playing the piano since she was three years old, won the seventh Frederick Chopin piano competition in Warsaw last month and Arturo More-ira-Lima of Brazil was second. No-one from the Americas had ever reached the competition’s finals before. In the past the six finalists have been mainly Russians and Poles.

Marta Sosinska of Poland was third, and Hiroko Nakamura, a Japanese girl who has studied at Juilliard School of Music in New York was fourth. Edward Auer, the first pianist from the United States was fifth.

Miss Argerich has studied throughout the world and speaks five languages. Her prize amounted to 1667 dollars. “Trybuna Ludu,” the Communist party daily, said in the finals “her piano was close to a whisper—that is the way Chopin’s own style was once described.”

Another competitor told the “New York Times” reporter Miss Argerich was “beyond the world talent. Musically and technically she is really a phenomenon. She has infinite capacity. She is really something that the rest of us are not.”