The magic of Verbier

A decade before I worked here, I discovered medici.tv through this knockout Verbier Festival performance by the great Martha Argerich. As an amateur pianist, I had long admired Bach's keyboard music intellectually—but I can pinpoint this as the moment when I truly fell in love with it.

Argerich plays the C Minor Partita with lyricism and urgency, making the music sound modern and alive—and the Rondeau's final chord launching directly into the Capriccio is pure electricity. I have played and heard countless hours of Bach since, but I always return to Martha’s Partita, a marvel of counterpoint and voicing that lies under her hands like an elemental truth: the kind of once-in-a-lifetime magic that happens every day at the Verbier Festival.