Martha Argerich plays Ravel

To 21st-century ears, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 can feel like the most modern and daring of them all. Anticipating musical developments a hundred years away, it was the first symphonic work to build a journey primarily from rhythmic rather than melodic blocks. No work of the period can match the wild dances, insistent rhythmic propulsion and infectious joy of Beethoven’s Seventh – but one piece from the following century that certainly can, is Ravel’s jazz-infused piano concerto of 120 years later. The legendary Martha Argerich is the soloist in Ravel’s electrifyingly slick and slinky piano concerto after Annie Dutoit-Argerich narrates the greatest musical menagerie of them all, Saint-Saëns’s beastly and enchanting Carnival of the Animals.