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One person, however, can make me understand why jazz musicians talk about Bachian fugues that have inspired them. It is Argerich, a pianist of rare quality who brings that special something to Bach to which I can respond, which not even the great Gould has been able to awake in me. Argerich plays Bach with an intensity that one might imagine the old master may well have wished to be able to express himself because he was known to have quite a temper. Hence, it is possible that he also had great passion, something that is usually lacking when his music is performed by today's somberly adoring musicians. But not Argerich. She attacks him with vigor and calls forth something in his music that tells me that I am listening to a worthwhile score.

This review is, of course, not about Bach, but about Argerich, a pianist whom I only know through CDs. As far as I know, she has never appeared with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. She may have performed with l'Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal because one of her three husbands was Charles Dudoit, that orchestra's long-time music director. But, I am only guessing. Their relationship may have ended before the Swiss Dudoit arrived in Montreal. He is, of course, no longer there, having departed in 2002 after a bitter dispute with the musicians' union thus ending a 25-year relationship.

Gachot captured Argerich during a rehearsal in which she responds to mostly unheard questions in French or English, depending on her mood, I suppose. We even get to hear her speak German because the filming takes place during a rehearsal of music by Schumann at the Württembergisches Kammerorchester in the southern German city of Heilbronn in 2001.

The director interspersed the film with footage from various performances going back to her early years when she won a number of awards, including the Frederick Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1965 when she was 24. When she was only 16 she won both the Geneva International Music Competition and the Ferruccio Busoni International Competition within three weeks of each other.

She speaks with enthusiasm about her early teacher, Friedrich Gulda, who is introduced to the viewer through black and white footage. In some ways Argerich has changed little from the time of her early successful years. She still has the long black mane hair, now a little streaked with grey. While she speaks with authority about various composers, and admits to adoring Ravel, she also displays an amazing insecurity. There was a time in her life when she felt she had nothing to offer, which seems perhaps strange when one watches her play a variety of composers with such mastery. She also admits to a type of superstition about the reaction of long dead composers to her juxtaposing them together in a program.

". . . when I include Liszt and Chopin in the same program, if the Liszt went well, then the Chopin Preludes didn't. I used to say he must be a bit jealous. It's my way of personalizing things a little. Prokofiev likes me a lot! He's never played any nasty tricks on me."

There is something admirable about Argerich's playing as well as about her candor during the interview. That candor also has a bit of a drawback because she reveals that she is a bit of a musical snob. She appears derissive when speaking of Erol Garner, who apparently did not know Debussy. The man was a genius, whose jazz scores enriched generations of players. Still, that is minor. I found myself watching this DVD numerous times because I not only enjoyed her conversation and her explanations about how she feels about various composers, but also the variety of composers in her repertoire offered up in Gachot's film. There is music by Beethoven, Piazzolla, Liszt, Chopin, Ravel, Prokofiev, Schumann, Saint-Saëns, Dvořăk, and Lutoslawski. Most of all though, it is her unquestioning passion for music that draws the viewer to her as well as to her playing.