WHEN Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero
appeared solo at the Bridgewater Hall last year, the most amazing thing – as
well as her mastery of classical repertoire – was the last part.
She improvized three dazzling pieces on
ideas contributed then and there by the audience. She likes to do it whenever
she can, conjuring new creations out of thin air with fluency and bravura that
would be the envy of many who’ve practised their music for years.
She’s appearing as soloist with Manchester
Camerata and violinist Giovanni Guzzo at the Royal Northern College of Music on
November 22 (3pm), and her job is first to play the popular Mozart piano
concerto in E flat (no. 14).
But after that she’ll improvize on themes
suggested by the audience. Her ability is a remarkable gift, not so much the
fruit of training as innate: something most people would call a kind of genius.
She was actually told not to do it by one
of her classical teachers. But when she met Martha Argerich, the great Argentinian
piano virtuosa, in 2001, she had her moment of revelation.
“She said to me, ‘You have a unique gift,
and you need to share it with the world.’ From that point on I’ve been improvizing
in all my recitals.”
I asked her what is in her mind as she
makes her instant creations. “When I’m doing it, I’m just allowing music to go
through my body,” she says. “It’s almost as if I’m witnessing what I’m playing just
like the audience. It seems as if part of my brain shuts down. And a lot of my
improvizations are very, very fast. I seem to kick into a different gear,
neurologically.”
She’s got evidence for that: she’s been
taking part in a medical study to compare what goes on in her brain when she
improvizes with its state when she plays a prepared work.
Gabriela began piano lessons at four and
gave her first concerto at eight. Later
she got a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London and won third prize in the Chopin
Competition in 1995.
Today, married to Irish opera singer Sam
McIlroy, she has a new home in Barcelona,
and a new stage in her career, with rapturous receptions from public and press.
But she says: “Applause never meant much to me. It’s really about the reasons
for dedicating my life to music.”
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