Salzburg Festival honours Martha Argerich with ruby-studded pin

Pianist Martha Argerich has received the Salzburg Festival’s Festival Pin with Rubies, ORF reported. The award was presented on Friday at the House for Mozart concert venue after the 85-year-old performed a solo recital with Renaud Capuçon.

“We are grateful that Martha Argerich has been associated with us as a festival artist for 55 years,” the festival directors said on Monday. “The grande dame of piano performance turns each of her concerts into a singular moment of brilliance.”

Argerich first appeared at the Salzburg Festival in 1971, performing with the Czech Philharmonic Prague under conductor Claudio Abbado. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1941, she is regarded as one of the most famous pianists of the present day.

Distinguished list of previous recipients

Argerich began studying piano at the age of five and soon gave public concerts as a child prodigy. After studying in London, Vienna and Switzerland, including under Friedrich Gulda, Nikita Magaloff, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and Stefan Askenase, she achieved her international breakthrough in 1957 by winning the Geneva Competition and the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition. In 1965, she won the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw.

Previous recipients of the Festival Pin with Rubies include Cecilia Bartoli, Grigory Sokolov, Riccardo Muti, Christa Ludwig, Anne Sophie Mutter, Zubin Mehta, Mariss Jansons, Daniel Barenboim, Franz Welser Most, Wolfgang Rihm and Andras Schiff.