Baroque Album
Gabriela Montero
EMI 5 14838-2 [53:07]
rec. Studio 1, Abbey Road
June-July 2007]
2008
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Gabriela Montero: “Baroque”
You’d never know Gabriela Montero’s latest album, Baroque, was issued by EMI Classics. If, that is, you had bought this album when it came out, in early 2008, when EMI still existed. It’s now in the Warner/Parlophone catalogue, not in print, but easily available. But it was notable then, that there was no trace of the venerable company’s red logo to be found and that the words “EMI Classics” could only be tracked down in the fine print. Gabriela Montero and her musical gifts were marketed more like a Diana Krall or a keyboard-playing Shakira would have been, than a classical musician. The caringly produced packaging looks looked like it might contain anything but a Scarlatti sonata. .
That’s not all that misleading, though, because the contents don’t much resemble the composers or pieces listed on the back. Bach’s Prelude, Handel’s Sarabande, or Gaspar Sanz’ Canarios et cetera are but the inspirations for Mme. Montero’s improvisations. In the liner notes, printed on the back of a folded poster of this most enchantingly looking and loving mother of two girls (she endearingly calls them her “most successful improvisations”) she goes to surprising length to stress that the performances heard on this disc are indeed improvised on the spot and not based on anything but the mentioned, familiar baroque tunes.
Apparently she thinks improvisation such a dated or dying art that people cannot anymore “understand and believe the inexplicable mystery of free improvisation”. Anyone who has ever played an instrument, though, will find there is nothing either inexplicable or mysterious about letting the fingers play what the mind hums. It’s sort of a way of ‘insta-composition’ without the fear of (musical) consequence and judgment. I, for one, faked my way through countless piano practice hours in boarding school by improvising, instead of practicing the prescribed piece (no doubt rather poorly, though very much “free”).
The beauty of this is that if the fingers can translate ably (not a question with as fine a pianist as Gabriela Montero), then we can figure out - and hear - what is going through the improviser’s mind. In the case of Mme. Montero this is apparently a happy mélange of moderately jazzy doodling, Windham Hill, and the kind of determinedly pleasant hotel-lobby pianism around Christmas time. .
Since the favorite themes (Albinoni’s Adagio, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons – piece by piece, an errant Scarlatti sonata, various slow movements from Bach and Handel) are all faultlessly pretty and lovely, there is little she can do wrong with the material in her interpretations or improvisations. Sometimes there is even what the ear would consider a distinct improvement over the original. Take her Pachelbel Canon, for example, where she rescues this unbearably trite piece by making it nearly unrecognizable and adding notes of actual musical worth. Or try the hootin’ and barn-stormin’ Handel-“Hallelujah” episode – putting the grove back into (the) Messiah. (It sure beats the misguided ritual of standing up at seemingly every second concert during Christmas time and, come the chorus, roaring along with the rest of the audience.)
A few times the music is merely ‘modded’ to meet a common denominator of “pretty”. Other pieces, like Vivaldi’s Winter, receive extensive treatment and are little improvisatory Jazz-gems. If you were to cross an idling Glenn Gould with a melancholic Keith Jarrett, infused with the mood of red-and-green M&M’s… Perhaps you get the idea. .
Baroque is not notable for its (top notch) pianism, nor the intensity or depth of the musical material. But it is notable for how unabashedly gorgeous it sounds. And for how suitable this CD seems to introduce neophytes to classical music in the least intimidating way imaginable – while still offering quality fare, instead of the horrid schlock that is so often marketed as “classical entry crossover”. (I won’t say “The Five Browns”, “Il Divo”, or “Sarah Brightman”, but you are welcome to think it.) .
And if you don’t think of this as a ‘high-brow classical CD’ (late Beethoven String Quartets these pieces ain’t) – just like it does not look like one – then you might believe me that I mean it as a compliment when I say that this CD offers, among other things, near-ideal background music. For the Holiday Season – and well beyond. For considerably more profound improvisations, meanwhile, you might like to listen to Montero’s fine 2006 release, Bach & Beyond.
