Martha Argerich plays Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1

Between 1963 and 1971, the television program Prestige de la musique celebrated classical music on French television, with the greatest performers taking to the stage at the Salle Pleyel alongside the Orchestre de l'ORTF Orchestra—now renamed the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France. This archive from 1970 features the extraordinary Martha Argerich, one of the most admired pianists of our time, just a few years after her victory at the prestigious Frédéric Chopin International Piano Competition, which propelled her to international fame.

Here she performs Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor alongside Franco Mannino and the ORTF Philharmonic Orchestra. Composed by a 20-year-old Chopin, this concerto explores the full richness of the piano's capacities with a bold first movement, a deeply melancholic second, and a third marked by frenzied dancing rhythms. It is an ideal work for showcasing the dazzling virtuosity, striking lyricism, and fully-formed point of view of the young Argerich, qualities that launched her to victory at the Chopin Competition and into the stratosphere of the piano world for decades to come.