Gabriela Montero occupies a unique position in the music world. A classical artist who performs the core piano literature with leading orchestras around the world, she is also an intrepid improviser. At her concerts, she often asks the audience to suggest songs and she then plays them as baroque, romantic, or whatever style occurs to her at the moment.
Montero is also an outspoken critic of the corrupt government of her native country, Venezuela. Now based in the United States, Montero has won awards for her piano playing (including the International Chopin Piano Competition and the Rockefeller Award for her contributions to the arts) as well as her humanitarian efforts. She was recently named Honorary Consul by Amnesty International.
Her new album on Orchid Classics, in which she is joined by the YOA Orchestra of the Americas under Carlos Miguel Prieto, displays the various sides of her immense talent.
The album is Gabriela Montero’s debut orchestral recording. The CD features the world premiere of her first formal composition, “Ex Patria,” as well as her first concerto recording, Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2. She feels an obvious kinship to an earlier pianist-composer in exile, in his case Russia.
In a poll of 100 leading concert pianists in 2010, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) was voted the greatest pianist in the history of recorded sound. He has also composed an impressive body of compositions of enduring popularity. Like Puccini, another supreme melodist, Rachmaninov was often looked down upon by critics of classical music as overly sentimental. To some extent, both were throwbacks to the Romantic era.
The theme from the Piano Concerto No. 2 was turned into a pop music hit under the title of “Full Moon and Empty Arms,” famously recorded by Frank Sinatra and included in Bob Dylan’s latest album.
Montero’s recording is successful because she not only has the necessary pianistic skills, but she is also a supreme romantic.
