Gabriela Montero an inspired improviser

As I write I'm listening to pianist Gabriela Montero's album "Bach and Beyond," (here's a link to an MP3 downloadable version) in which she starts playing various Bach pieces fairly straight and then improvises. Of course Bach improvised, as did most Baroque musicians, MOzart and others whom we think of as sticking to the music as written. I rather doubt if Bach improvised quite the way Gabriela does -- she has jazz-like riffs and 20th-century harmonies at her disposal (although one of Beethoven's late sonatas, I forget which one, suddenly goes into a variation that sounds just like jazz, so maybe Bach approached something like jazz as well, though I would be surprised. Gabriela was part of the token classical ensemble (including Yo Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman) at the inauguration just over a year ago, so I guess I'm not the only one who appreciates her.

Gabriela Montero: Worth a listen

In an earlier post I mentioned that I wasn't familiar with the pianist and clarinetist who played with Yo Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman at the inauguration. I missed pianist Gabriela Montero, to whom I am listening as I write this. I got a couple of her CDs in the bonanza I scored when Register classical music critic Tim Mangan had to move to a new desk and decided to offload some of the CD review copies he's gotten over the last several years. And I had listened and enjoyed before the inauguration, but her name hadn't registered strongly enough for me to remember it.

The CD playing now is "Bach and Beyond," on which she takes Bach pieces and uses them as the basis for improvisations. Bach is especially adapted to being played in different styles, as demonstrated by the Swingle Singers' conversion of seemingly staid pieces into swing/jazz, or the early Moog synthesizer albums by Walter (later Wendy) Carlos in "Switched-on Bach." In the liner notes Gabriela writes that she had improvised from early on, but didn't let on to many in classical world. But she was encouraged later on, by Martha Argerich, and I'm pleased. She does surprising wonders with "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring."

Many think improvisation is unique to jazz, but it's pretty certain that players in the Baroque period improvised fairly regularly, and expected to do so, especially in cadenzas in concertos. Gabriela occasionally sounds jazzy, and she employs harmonies a Baroque player probably wouldn't have, but it's mostly classical-sounding. I think Bach would have been pleased.