EMI Classics
2006
Bach & Beyond - Gabriela Montero
About This Album
Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero scored an artistic success with her previous EMI disc Gabriela Montero: Piano Recital, consisting of two discs, of which the second consisted entirely of improvisations. With Bach and Beyond, Montero dives into her first all-improvisation disc, and while it is not a completely unqualified success artistically, it can be a refreshing swim. The Johann Sebastian Bach works listed in the contents are really only utilized as a point of departure, and in some cases the presence of Bach's tune is not apparent until the listener is into the improvisation 45 seconds or more. Montero is a very imaginative and skillful improviser -- in the enclosed interview Montero cites her unfamiliarity with the discipline of improvising to a jazz rhythm section, and clearly Bach and Beyond is not jazz. But nonetheless, Latin jazz and indigenous South American dance music informs her style of improvising to a great degree -- check out her tango-like transformation of an unspecified Air in G and the Boléro-like underpinnings of the Toccata in D minor. Of course, improvising is like stepping off a steep cliff with a parachute and hoping that you will reach the ground safely. Montero has no net here; in some cases she encounters some bumpy stuff on the way down -- some confusion among the hands here, some excessively busy textures there.
Track List

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