Episode 8
Gabriela Montero
Michael Shapiro in conversation with pianist Gabriela Montero about her pianism, compositions, and improvisational skills.
Find out more at www.michaelshapiro.com
Gabriela's website: www.gabrielamontero.com
Transcript
Michael Shapiro:
Hello, welcome to Interplay. This is Michael Shapiro, your host. And today I'm with a wonderful person. And a pianist, I take person first. And that is Gabriela Montero. Gabriela, you're speaking.
Gabriela Montero:
Hello, Michael.
Michael Shapiro:
Very good to speak to you. You're in Barcelona right now, I understand, yes?
Gabriela Montero:
Yes, I have been here since March, since all of this happened. So, I'm home.
Michael Shapiro:
Is, is, Barcelona your home at this time?
Gabriela Montero:
It's a 50/50 between here and the US and of course, the traveling which takes up about 60% of the year, or it did until COVID happened, yeah.
Michael Shapiro:
The thing that I find remarkable about you and other performers who do many, many concerts, dozens of concerts a year, is that all of you, like me, are home. And we're home for a long period of time. I haven't been this home, H-O-M-E, a casa, a [inaudible], ever. I can't remember. So how is that affecting you? Are you working like a demon or have you found that this has had a different effect on you?
Gabriela Montero:
Um, I haven't been home for more than, I guess a month and a half at the most in 20 years. So I, I, it's an entirely new feeling. I really needed this time, I have to say I needed this pause. Um, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's, how can I say, it's very sad that it, it has come, it has arrived in this way. And that there is, of course, so much suffering in the world with what's happening. But for me, personally, I have to say it was, it was, um, it was a necessary breather that I needed. I think, uh, one of the pitfalls of the performing life is that you, you start to do more and more and more and it's a never-ending cycle of of just, uh, um, hopping on this fast track train and not being able to get off. And I, and for me it was a, it was a wonderful time to spend time with, with my daughters and my husband and just to to be able to do normal things. Um, I haven't been working like a demon, as a, as a matter of fact, I've played very little. When I sit down, I'll sit down every few days and maybe improvise for 10 minutes and then walk away. But it's been a, a, a wonderful reminder of what it's like to make music only when you want to, not necessarily when it's, uh, to fulfill a commitment or to connect to music because you have this crazy schedule.
Michael Shapiro:
I want to ask you about what you just spoken about. Because the thing that we've encountered here, when I've met so-called childhood prodigies, is they're too quickly becoming performers.
Gabriela Montero:
Right.
Michael Shapiro:
And they're getting into kind of a rote playing, especially in concerti, and not growing as human beings. I've met many over the years. And then I see, I see them again in their 20s and their 30s. I don't know your background as far as when you started touring and rising to, you know, play in all the great halls. Did, did you have a childhood prodigy period and then had to step back and and grow as a human being, like you are growing right now?
Gabriela Montero:
That's a good question. I, I, yes, I was, um, what you would call a child prodigy. I, I was, uh, I started playing the piano when I was only eight months old. I, I was, I I started to pick out melodies that my mom would sing to me at night, put me to sleep, on a little toy piano that my parents gave me for my first Christmas. And, um, because they're not musicians and they, they weren't connected to the classical music world at all. This came as a very big surprise to them. And what they, what they noticed was that I, as a little baby, you know, from the age of eight months until I was 18 months, I would spend a lot of time, uh, at the little piano, with the little piano in my crib, uh, playing through all these melodies and trying to, to pick out the themes and also improvising. And, um, then, then they decided that the best course of action was to take me to the most well-known piano teacher in Caracas at the time, Lyl Tiempo. I started lessons with her and started performing when when I was five, and at the age of eight, I gave my orchestra premiere, uh, debut, sorry, with, um, the Haydn D Major Concerto. So my beginnings were very, very early. They were very, very natural because not coming from a musical family, there was no real ambition or push for me to be, you know, the next so and so, but rather just to develop my talent and my desire to be close to music and to express who I was.
Michael Shapiro:
Let's talk about playing the piano, because I'm a pianist. I started at very young age and was in piano competitions and and the like, before I realized I could not become Gabriela Montero.
Gabriela Montero:
You wouldn't want to.
Michael Shapiro:
But, I love the way you play because you sing, you sing in your fingers.
Gabriela Montero:
Oh, thank you.
Michael Shapiro:
No, but you have breath and you phrase. You're not what I would quote call a banger. Every, every tone is pressed with the thought of the sound coming out, which is not every pianist, as we know. There are athletes, let's say, who can play piano, and they can do amazing things, but is it the music?
Gabriela Montero:
Right, yeah.
Michael Shapiro:
When you were studying, were you studying how to produce sound that is possibly like the voice? I'm just curious.
Gabriela Montero:
No, I mean, this, this is great you're asking me these questions because I, I don't really have many opportunities to really delve into, into that aspect, you know, of of my life. And, you know, for me, piano playing is, is more of a, um, it's more of a, a, a vehicle to communicate very inner and very personal stories, and my desire to reach out to the public, communicates through sound. Um, and in those years that I was, you know, uh, prodigy and I was performing and doing competitions and, you know, I went through the whole circus circuit. Um, I guess the, the fact that my upbringing, uh, was really devoid of that intention of actually seeing music as, as communication, as, as like you said, creating sounds that actually move you. Um, I, I began to feel that music didn't really make sense. It didn't have any value. It was just entertainment. I quit when I was 18. I hated music, I hated having a musical brain. And then I started to really question why I wanted to be a musician, if I wanted to be a musician and follow my nature. And then I think in my 20s, that's when I began to really think about sound. I began to think about how to communicate with the piano in a way that was, um, not physical, but maybe even metaphysical. And that's when it began, began to be interested in, in not necessarily imitating the human voice, but trying to speak through my own voice, through my fingers. And, um, and it's been a, a lifelong getting to know the instrument. It's, it's nothing specific I've done, it's, it's not exercises, it's not methods. I don't think I've ever read a book on piano technique or or methodology or anything like that. It was more of a personal desire for it to mean something. Beyond my ability to do it, but something more.
Michael Shapiro:
I listened to a lot of your, uh, c- uh, recordings to prepare for this talk today. And the one I listened to was, um, the recording of the two concerti, just this morning of the Rachmaninoff Second.
Gabriela Montero:
Right, yeah.
Michael Shapiro:
With, uh, Carlos Prieto.
Gabriela Montero:
Yeah.
Michael Shapiro:
And, uh, the Latin Concerto, your Piano Concerto No. 1. First, the Rachmaninoff. I was, I knew Leopold Stokowski. I we met on many occasions. Um, I'm not that old. I was very young. But I, I, I, I was brought up really on his recording of the, uh, Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto with the composer, which was recorded with the Philadelphia Orchestra in the late '20s.
Gabriela Montero:
I I I have that one. It's, yeah, incredible.
Michael Shapiro:
Now, you take a very different approach. Different different tempo, certainly in the first movement. We don't know also tempi in the early recording days how accurate they were.
Gabriela Montero:
Yes.
Michael Shapiro:
And also there's a thing with Rachmaninoff is, and also Toscanini, they, they, their tempi kind of was pushing all the time, a little faster than.
Gabriela Montero:
Yeah.
Michael Shapiro:
Perhaps it was to record it, it's unclear. But the way you bend the phrase, the way you go places, the way there's development in the music as you perform it, I found it very striking and very warm and very convincing. And I'm a I'm a nut for tempi. Otto Klemperer used to talk about getting under the notes.
Gabriela Montero:
Yeah.
Michael Shapiro:
That there was a specificity, a particularity to a piece that you had to find.
Gabriela Montero:
Yes.
Michael Shapiro:
So when do you think of that when you approach a Schumann Kinderszenen or a Chopin Mazurka or a new piece or a work of your own? Are you thinking of this is not just playing notes. This got to be something else. The wider image. What, what comes, what, what goes through your mind?
Gabriela Montero:
Of course. Um, when I sit down to learn something, um, I, I, I, I guess you could say I'm a very fast learner, but I, I'm less of a fast learner now than I was when I was younger. And I, I don't think it has so much to do with memory, it has to do more with how much I want to dig out of the score now that I'm older. Um, so it takes me a bit of time to actually feel that I've really, um, gotten to know a piece and that I, that I really want to, you know, share it with the public. When, in, in there is a moment when, uh, you're, you're learning a piece or you're performing, you're playing a piece at home, where you somehow crack the code. It makes sense. It's, it's absolutely true. It's absolutely, uh, authentic. There's nothing, there's nothing that is, um, coerced in the music, there's nothing that is, uh, not real, that is, uh, you know, you have to avoid, I, I, I hate mannerisms, I hate trivialities, you know what I mean. I don't like to do anything in music just for the sake of impressing or, or, or leaving my own stamp. For me it's all about trying to find that language in a piece of music that just speaks truth. And it's, it's, it can take decades, it can take years, it can take minutes. It depends on the composer, it depends on you, it depends on everything.
Michael Shapiro:
This is so true. I can't conduct a piece, whether it's my own, or it's some other composer without thinking what were they doing? And you have a special gift, you're also a composer. Um, I was just on, had a wonderful interplay in from Chappaqua, New York to London with Norman Lebrecht, a critic, and we were, and the writer. And we were talking about performers. And he said something that was quite interesting. He said that the, it's not true of everyone, but the great ones, as he put it, think of other things, meaning they think of the world. They think of people, they think of the Earth. They think of, in your case, human rights. So, I know you're more than just human rights oriented. I can see that in your face and I can hear it in the music. You're a mother, you're a wife, you're a daughter, you're a cousin, you're a person. And being.
Gabriela Montero:
So I'm.
Michael Shapiro:
Yeah. So, I ask you, when you're playing a piece of Schumann. Do you think of what Schumann may have gone through when he was writing it, you know, du meine Seele, du mein Herz. When, you know, Liszt takes, Liszt takes that great song and makes it into a Lisztian mess in my book. You know, but when you're doing that song or if you're doing four hands, I know you play with Martha Argerich sometimes. When you're, when you're doing something, whatever it is, are you thinking of the origin of that piece and the, what was that composer going through at that very moment? Does that cross your mind or is it just an abstract event? I don't think it is with you.
Gabriela Montero:
Definitely. And, and, I mean, I, I, I went through a period of my life when I, I was very interested in psychology, and I, I'm, I'm, I don't think I, I would have actually gone through the process of, of studying psychology at university, but I, I definitely played around with the idea because I, it, it was, it was something that not only interested me but also a way that I thought I could be helpful to people and I could contribute. Um, so for me, the emotional, um, baggage in a piece and the emotional story, uh, which relates to humanity, uh, across time, the, the, these are all experiences and joys and sorrows that every human being has in one way or another lived. I, I, I, of course, connect to that and I, and I think about it and I try to inhabit that world when I am playing a piece, as much as I can. And perhaps that's an advantage of having lived a lot and having experienced a lot. You can, you can draw from this well of experience. And, um, that's something that is more and more and more present in me and and how I connect to the music that I'm playing, even though it's not my music, but somebody else's.
Michael Shapiro:
So I'd like to talk to you about your piece Patria, is it, is that the name?
Gabriela Montero:
Expatria, actually, which means, uh, without a home.
Michael Shapiro:
We have the word expatriate.
Gabriela Montero:
Yes.
Michael Shapiro:
Without a home.
Gabriela Montero:
Yes.
Michael Shapiro:
You know, the idea of being without a home is nothing new to this person. My mother as an infant was carried out of, um, Tsarist Russia, which was becoming communist in 1919 with the fear by my grandparents that they would be destroyed by the Cossacks, the whites, the reds, who knows what.
Gabriela Montero:
Wow.
Michael Shapiro:
So, but, they gathered themselves in America in 1920, as my paternal grandparents did much earlier, and found a home here. However, however, I understand the Expatria concept.
Gabriela Montero:
Yes.
Michael Shapiro:
Very deeply. Um, I'm a United States citizen but I have relatives in Europe and Mexico. I have a large Mexican, uh, uh, uh.
Gabriela Montero:
All right.
Michael Shapiro:
Coterie, yeah, in Mexico City.
Gabriela Montero:
Wow.
Michael Shapiro:
And of course in Israel. But Patria is sometimes something that's very important because that's where family is. That's where our experiences are. When you th- think about your life and in fact that Venezuela is Expatria to you now. How did that, how did that find its way into the music?
Gabriela Montero:
Well, it's, um, actually, just around this time it's been 10 years since I was in Venezuela. Since I visited home for the last time. Um, it has marked everything I do, everything I speak about, everything I am, everything I create. It's, uh, the development of the collapse of my country in the last 20 years has, uh, impacted every aspect of my life and my family's life. Um, and of course, I, I, I can't help but think that it's influenced the way that I play. My, my playing has become, I think, much raw- much, much more raw and much more, um, again, connected to that emotional well and, uh, storytelling that I always refer to. And, um, it's a device that for me has been very, very useful in telling the story of Venezuela. And it's also been, um, a way to, a way that in which my pianism has, I think, uh, evolved because in order to tell the story, I've had to become a much more communicative pianist. So it kind of all comes full circle. And, uh, I wish it wasn't so. I wish that none of this would have happened. But, uh, but the reality is that, that it is what we have to deal with. And, and in my case, I've just been very, very clear about the need to speak about it, the need to denounce, the need to get involved and not look the other way.
Michael Shapiro:
Correct.
Gabriela Montero:
Yeah.
Michael Shapiro:
listen, I wish I had 75 Polish Jewish relatives who were killed in Treblinka. I don't.
Gabriela Montero:
We don't learn.
Michael Shapiro:
I wish. No, we don't learn. And, you know, the whole Black Lives Matter, uh, movement is so valuable for the United States. And it's a continuation of what we, what was started by my cousins with the movement in the '60s with Dr. King. This is nothing new.
Gabriela Montero:
Right.
Michael Shapiro:
But we must persevere because the truth is there in human rights.
Gabriela Montero:
Yeah, and, uh, we, we have to discern and we have to learn to scratch the surface and and learn what stands for what, who stands for what.
Michael Shapiro:
Yes.
Gabriela Montero:
And not become, you know, enamored because it belongs to one party or the other. It's about, it's about across the board, human lives and human rights and the impacts of politics on, on lives.
Michael Shapiro:
You're a mother of two, two daughter, two daughters, I think, yes?
Gabriela Montero:
Yes, yes.
Michael Shapiro:
I'm a father of four children and two grandchildren.
Gabriela Montero:
Wow!
Michael Shapiro:
We say thank God.
Gabriela Montero:
God bless you.
Michael Shapiro:
[in Italian] So, but.
Gabriela Montero:
[in Italian]
Michael Shapiro:
But the question there is the world that we create now in my mind must be healed. There's a healing process that we must go through. And I and I find in your playing, the role in a musician, a composer, pianist, improviser, I suppose the word is.
Gabriela Montero:
Yeah, yeah.
Michael Shapiro:
Is a healing process apart from the beauty. Because we give beauty to heal, I think. Let's talk about, um, the Latin Concerto, your Piano Concerto.
Gabriela Montero:
Okay.
Michael Shapiro:
I can understand Expatria, which is a very dynamic work. But let's talk about the Latin Concerto, because as you, as you know, we both kind, I think we both wrote piano concerti around the same time. Tell us about the, uh, the birth and development of the Piano Concerto No. 1, Latin, by Gabriela Montero.
Gabriela Montero:
Well, Expatria was about Venezuela. It was specifically about portraying the violence, the corruption, the usurpation of a whole country, an economy, a people, everything. The Latin Concerto, which came five years later, in 2016 I wrote it. It, it's an entirely different animal because I, it's not a piece that's meant to provoke, it's not, it's not a piece that's meant to inform or to awaken the audience into the Venezuelan reality, but rather it's a piece that looks to show the colors and the harmonies and the sensuality and the exotic nature of Latin America that everybody loves and connects to. You know, people think of Latin America, they think of, um, fun music and a mojito in your hand. And that is part of who we are. But on the other side, there are also many, many shadows and many, many elements about our nature and about the way that we, um, fall into certain traps that I think, um, sabotage everything that we are and our development and our potential. So, it's a piece that's a very, it's a very fun, it's a very vibrant piece, but at the same time, it's also, it also has its shadows.
Michael Shapiro:
I'm curious about your improvisation and the effect, the effect on composition. I have regards, I have regards to you by from a friend in common, Dennis Bushmitch, who's a different and it, for somebody who's very interested in improvisation and in composition and the comparison and how they work with each other. He's asked the question, when you improvise,
Gabriela Montero:
Right.
Michael Shapiro:
He said you get goosebumps, but I really think do you get kind of a floating feeling in the improvisation? And is improvisation something you've done for many years, because it sounds very accomplished?
Gabriela Montero:
It's, uh, that is a multi-layered question because I've always improvised since I was little. I, I, I just that's the first thing I would do when I would sit at the piano. And when I hear recordings of my improvisations when I was six, seven, and eight years old, um, I'm really, I'm always surprised because I was improvising in musical idioms that I had never heard. Like, it, it, some of the improvisation you, you know, would sound like they belonged in Prokofiev's world, or in Stravinsky's world, or in Ginastera's world, and, and those were composers that I had never, ever been in contact with. Um, so it's, um, it's, it's always been a, a very natural, um, relationship with the piano. I, I thought everybody improvised. And it's, it's kind of, it's always been the best way for me to tell stories and to connect to this flow. And, and like, uh, well, like I've also spoken to Dennis about actually and to everybody who asks me, it's not something that I'm conscious of. It's not something I've ever prepared. I don't think you can prepare improvisation because then it's not improvised. If it's improvised, it has to come from nothing. And that's the way that I live it.
Michael Shapiro:
Coming from nothing.
Gabriela Montero:
Coming from nothing.
Michael Shapiro:
Yeah. Let's talk about composition though. For somebody who has been a, somebody who is has great talent at improvisation, when you started to have to write notes, for example, these these mature pieces, Expatria or the Piano Concerto, did you find it's a different process or is it coming from the same place?
Gabriela Montero:
It's coming from the same place. Um, I, I suppose the best explanation is that you cannot deny who you are, you can't be something else. And in my case, it's, it's all improvisatory. So when I compose, it's, it's very much the same thing, except that I can edit, I can change, I can change my mind. I can, um, you know, assess. But usually, I'm a very visceral composer. So when I'm composing, I know exactly how it has to be. And I also know what I don't want. So if I, if I improvise a segment and I don't like it, I just discard it. I, I, I, I'm very honest with, uh, with, with everything but even with myself, you know, when it comes to what I think is, is, you know, is material that I like or that I don't. And it's really in my gut, I can feel it there.
Michael Shapiro:
Did you study composition as well, I know you studied piano but no composition studies. Interesting.
Gabriela Montero:
No, and I, I never studied harmony or theory or solfege or or even any of the basic, um, you know, uh, theory, um, musical, uh, subjects. I, I, I rebelled. I, I said I can't, I can't, it, it doesn't mean any, it doesn't make sense to me.
Michael Shapiro:
Well, your orchestration works, by the way.
Gabriela Montero:
Well, thank you. I'm, I'm glad to hear that. They, they seem to enjoy it. I've had very few musicians come to me and say, oh, this is unplayable. But I, I, I really want to write music for people to enjoy.
Michael Shapiro:
Yeah, they do.
Gabriela Montero:
To enjoy performing it as well. Yeah.
Michael Shapiro:
They know quite clearly and get it across. Um,
Gabriela Montero:
Exactly.
Michael Shapiro:
The last bit of discussion, I'm very curious about where you're going to go from here. Now, obviously, this pause has given us all time to think and to gather. And it sounds like it sounds like you're thinking and you're gathering.
Gabriela Montero:
Yes, exactly.
Michael Shapiro:
Where are you going to take this? What do you think? When, when the lights come on again all over the world, what, what are you going to do?
Gabriela Montero:
Well, I, I, I don't want to be a pessimist, but I do think that the world is changed and will be forever changed. Um, I think we'll have to learn to adapt to a very different reality. Um, and for me, this is a calling to actually start to create more, to have more time to compose and to, to realize projects that I've always wanted to do. I've always wanted to write, you know, a series of piano sonatas, maybe another concerto, maybe a two-piano repertoire that I'd love to play with friends. Um, maybe a cello sonata to play with Gautier. So I, I'm, I'm feeling much more inclined to doing creative, um, projects right now that involve, you know, my works and composing, than actually learning repertoire. So I, I, it's interesting because I, at the beginning of this, I thought, okay, I'm going to learn all the Rachmaninoff etudes tableaux, I'm going to learn, I had a list. And then I realized no, that I actually had to switch off and that I just wanted to create. So that, that I think is going to be the way that I will go. I'd also love to teach. Actually, I'd love to teach. And I haven't done much teaching except for masterclasses, and I'd love to be able to, um, connect with the younger artists in that way and, and leave them something, give them something.
Michael Shapiro:
Well, giving something to people is what Gabriela Montero does. And thank you so much for being part of Interplay. This is Michael Shapiro, your host. Thank you, Gabriela.
Gabriela Montero:
Thank you, Michael. Thank you.