March 11, 2006
Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero: Eleanor Rigby? Never heard of her..
But that didn't prevent pianist Gabriela Montero from warming to her theme
Published by Financial Times Magazine
By Peter Aspden
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"I can rarely resist an invitation to visit EMI's Abbey Road studios, lingering absurdly (and a little dangerously) on the zebra crossing outside the graffiti-strewn building, trying to breathe in a little history amid the north London traffic fumes. The studios themselves look curiously old-fashioned, giving little hint of the successive technological revolutions that have transformed the nature of the recording industry. Goodness |
knows how burdensome it must feel for one of today's pop or classical artists to sit in these remarkable chambers and contend with the weight of all that tradition.
But then there are those who wear it all rather lightly. I was invited to Abbey Road to meet Gabriela Montero, a 35-year-old Venezuelan pianist recently signed by EMI Classics on the basis of some distinguished performances and a ringing endorsement from Martha Argerich, who encountered her at the Lugano Festival. She has the proper credentials and all the possibilities for a successful career as a recitalist. But that is not what is exciting people. What especially appealed to Argerich, and to an increasing number of advocates, was Montero's gift for improvisation. And I had been asked to this austere setting, Abbey Road's Studio One, of Sir Thomas Beecham fame, to chuck a few tunes at her, so to speak, and see what happened.
Montero was sitting at a Steinway, feeling the chill a little, flexing her fingers like a gunslinger, and asked me politely what I would like to hear played. I couldn't help jumping to the opposite end of the musical spectrum and springing 'Anarchy in the UK ' on her, although I feared that her age and background would have (mercifully?) shielded her from the song. So it proved, although she had heard of punk rock, and was very happy for me to sing the melody, and she would take it from there, an invitation I resisted.
I countered with 'Good Vibrations', to see how she would compete with Brian Wilson's peerless arrangements. Once again, she was not familiar with the song and asked me to hum it. This time I had a go, simultaneously yelping about half a dozen vocal parts, and fruitlessly shaking my right hand when the sleigh bells came in. (Scarily, the entire interview was recorded, which means that somewhere in the vaults of Abbey Road...) Unsurprisingly, she looked puzzled, and I quickly put a stop to the cacophony.
One more go, and I thought I would play it safe. Given our location, how about 'Eleanor Rigby', my favourite Paul McCartney song? Amazingly, another bewildered look. This time, the producer next door came to the rescue (I was not about to sing 'Eleanor Rigby' in Abbey Road ), picked out the melody on the piano, which she rehearsed a couple of times and then she was off. At first the tune was scarcely recognisable, but she warmed to the task and elegantly took the melody apart, sometimes in the tinkly, easy style of a late-night jazz player, other times with contrapuntal rigour. It was mellifluous and fascinating, a little reminiscent of Keith Jarrett and his best-selling masterpiece The Koln Concert.
We chatted about her improvisations. She had always had the gift, she said. As a young girl, it seemed 'the most natural thing in the world' to spin away from the piece she was learning, and start to embellish furiously, mixing genres without quite realising what she was doing, showing an intuitive cultural promiscuity in a world that was monomaniacal. It was that tension that nearly did for her. When she went to the US, her teacher took a dim view of her doodling. 'She told me it was not serious, nothing very special. She said there was only one pianist I should listen to, and try to play like, and that was Claudio Arrau. It went completely against my spirit.'
Montero did battle with herself for 10 years. She stopped improvising completely, submitted to the strictures of a proper classical-music training, and nearly had a breakdown ('I felt this sense of panic. I would cry on my way to the lessons.') Finally, she gave up the piano completely for a couple of years, and tried out other things. She gradually returned to the keyboard, inspired by Argerich's support for her rare talent, and now has the confidence to go with it. EMI, which insists it signed her not knowing about her improvisatory bent, is now seeking to exploit it: in May she releases Bach and Beyond, improvisations on themes including one of the Brandenburg concertos and the Air in G.
She says her ideal concert (she plays four nights of Rachmaninov with the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall this month) would entail 'dimming the lights' in the second half, and respond to requests from the audience.
I expressed my surprise that she had never heard of 'Eleanor Rigby', and she replied that she did not listen to much music because: 'It clashes with the radio in my head, which is on 24 hours a day.'
I'm not expert enough to judge her as a classical pianist, but there was an uncomplicated openness about Montero that was appealing. She said a Schubert sonata should have the emotional clarity of 'that Eric Clapton song about his son' ['Tears From Heaven'], the kind of statement that would have some members of the classical-music establishment choking. But perhaps this is something that will happen more and more: musicians who care not a fig about boundaries and genres and are trained, first and foremost, to enjoy their playing, and see where it takes them. That is wholly admirable. But I do think they all ought to own a copy of Revolver".
