COMPOSERS: Chopin & Liszt,Falla,Ginastera,Granados,Rachmaninov,Scriabin
LABELS: EMI
ALBUM TITLE: Gabriela Montero
WORKS: Recital & Improvisations
PERFORMER: Gabriela Montero (piano)
CATALOGUE NO: 558 0392
Readers were first alerted to
Gabriela Montero’s prodigious
talent via EMI’s ‘Live from the
Lugano Festival 2003’ set (reviewed
October 2004). At 35 she is already
a seasoned performer who can
count the likes of Argerich, Béroff
and Vásáry among her most ardent
fans. On the evidence of this live
recording captured in a single
evening last September, it beggars
belief that this is her first solo album.
Montero is no shrinking violet
– after experiencing her impassioned
assault on Rachmaninov’s E
minor Moment musical, few
could be left in any doubt that the
piano mechanism is activated by
hammers, Yet what is constantly
brought to mind throughout this
dazzling recital is Joseph Hoffman’s
assessment of Rachmaninov’s own
playing: ‘He had fingers of steel,
but a heart of gold.’ No matter how
jaw-dropping her miraculously
clean-fingered negotiation of such
as Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz, it’s what
happens between the notes, the
way she grippingly characterises
everything she plays, that constantly
arrests the listener’s attention. Not
since George Cziffra’s hey-day have
such white-hot, volcanic eruptions
of pianistic derring-do been
captured on disc.
Yet whereas Cziffra could
sound like a caged animal in music
that ideally called for a relaxed,
meditative response, Montero also
magics her phrasing poetically, as
witness Chopin’s heavenly D flat
Nocturne. But what sets the seal
on this remarkable release is the
bonus disc of Montero’s self-penned
improvisations, whose jazz-styled
inflections will have all die-hard
romantics misting over on contact.
Her spine-tingling rethink of
Rachmaninov’s Vocalise is worth the
price of the disc alone. Julian Haylock
