Following the immense success of a first album devoted to Martha Argerich and her many musician friends, Avanti Classic is offering us a second: a compilation totalling almost six hours of music. Now in her eighties, the great Argentine pianist is carrying on with her career, maintaining the quality of her exceptional playing: her music remains as free and impulsive as ever. The programme of this vast work is, as one would expect, diverse and varied, both in terms of the works presented and the artists who gather around the one universally known as "Martha"—"Martitta" to the closest friends—with equal parts affection and deference. Space prevents us from listing the twenty-five or so musicians who accompany her here, from violinists Tedi Papavrami and Renaud Capuçon to her ex-husband Charles Dutoit who conducts her in Tchaikovsky's First Concerto, not to mention her lifelong companions: Stephen Kovacevich and Mischa Maisky, and a host of young musicians who pick up the baton from them. This enjoyable story of solid and interlocking friendships echoes the new festival run in Hamburg by Martha Argerich, which matches the one in Lugano. © François Hudry/Qobuz