“Give me a tune,” said the Venezuelan-American pianist Gabriela Montero, glass of wine in hand as she perched on her piano stool and beamed at the enthusiastic audience at Joe’s Pub on Thursday.
Jennifer Taylor for The New York Times
The Venezuelan-American pianist Gabriela Montero performing Rachmaninoff with the New York Philharmonic under Lorin Maazel.
From the many shouted suggestions, she chose “I Will Survive,” picking out the first bars of Gloria Gaynor’s disco hit and feminist anthem on the piano. Then she took it for a fantastic ride, threading the melody through an improvisation that dazzlingly (if improbably) morphed from Baroque counterpoint through jazzy syncopation to Mozartean Classicism.
This extraordinary ability as an improviser, rare in the classical world, is fast becoming a trademark of Ms. Montero, who first came to wide attention here in March, when she played Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic.
Improvisation used to be an integral part of performing. Mozart, Beethoven and Liszt were all virtuoso improvisers whose concerts often included ad-lib fantasies and spontaneous variations on themes called out by adoring audiences.
But in the 20th century, apart from the chance music of composers like John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Gyorgy Ligeti and Pierre Boulez, which includes improvisatory elements, it was largely a lost, or at least ignored art in classical music, practiced by organists but few others. There have been notable exceptions, like the pianist and scholar Robert Levin, who champions stylistically faithful improvisation in cadenzas.
There is certainly nothing stylistically faithful about Ms Montero’s new EMI Classics recording, “Bach and Beyond,” in which her improvisations on popular works of Bach, like the gentle “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” and the fiery Presto from the “Italian Concerto” meander from Chopinesque to Latin. Skeptics may wonder whether the improvisations are entirely spontaneous, as stated in the notes. It is impossible to know, but given Ms. Montero’s unflinching ability to improvise brilliantly in public on a gamut of unlikely tunes, there is no reason to suspect otherwise.
Ms. Montero is by no means the first to use the music of Bach (himself a master improviser) as inspiration for improvisation. The jazz pianists Keith Jarrett and Jacques Loussier began doing so decades ago. Another jazz pianist, Uri Caine, has written wildly diverse variations on Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations, ranging from mambo to klezmer and drum-and-bass. Beethoven and Chopin have also provided fodder for jazz improvisations.
But Ms. Montero, 36 and now living in Brooklyn, comes from a strictly classical background and makes her living as a classical pianist. She has not studied jazz or composition, nor has she played with jazz musicians. She says that improvisation is a natural gift that took root in early childhood, a claim borne out by her utter ease and confidence at the keyboard.
But her remarkable gift, which has been encouraged by Martha Argerich, wasn’t always popular with her teachers. “For many years I kept this aspect of my playing secret, “ Ms. Montero has written, “then Martha Argerich overheard me improvising one day and was ecstatic.”
While improvisation is integral to jazz and to classical music in countries like India and Iran, where performers are taught the art, much of Western classical education stipulates that practicing should consist largely of repeating phrases endlessly, until dreaded wrong notes are vanquished. Students are groomed to conform and compete, not to do something as inherently risky as improvising in public.
The passion, poetic musicality and sense of structure Ms. Montero brings to classical works translate to her classy improvisations. And no matter how complex the variations, the original melody always emerges triumphantly from a musical tapestry that might weave blues, jazz, tango and Debussy into a multihued framework.
Ms. Montero says she can improvise on anything, although at a session this year at Sony studios in Manhattan, she admitted to being momentarily stumped by a request to improvise on an atonal work. But she wasn’t remotely stumped by a request for an atonal spin on Bach. Anton Webern, who preserved Baroque style in his modernist orchestration of the Ricercata from Bach’s “Musical Offering,” would surely have been impressed by her spiky modernist flights of fancy on the Aria from the “Goldberg” Variations.
During that session Ms. Montero also offered a clever improvisation on Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, weaving its famous opening theme over a sultry syncopated bass line that echoed the habanera from Bizet’s “Carmen.”
Ms. Montero began her show at Joe’s Pub, where patrons dine and drink during gigs, in a more traditional way, with unembellished classical pieces. But in keeping with the spirit of the evening, as she played Chopin’s dreamy D flat Nocturne, she was spontaneously accompanied by a rumble from the nearby subway and by the gentle clinking of wine glasses and silverware.
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