NO WAY!! I've searched for years for that first improvisation!! I recorded it from a radio broadcast in Portugal on a cassette back in the 90's but didn't know what it was!! I thought it was Chopin but couldn't find it... Now i know what it is... I even hummed it to Shazam!!!
I have listened to Gabriela for years. And I would love to have just an ounce of her talent and musical intuition. Thanks for sharing this with the world - especially the “lost” tapes! What a treasure.
Gabriela is simply amazing. I studied with her and it was a once in a lifetime experience to be close to such a genuine human being. Thank you for sharing these rare improvisations from competition!! 🤩 a fantastic episode and interview!
This marvelous series you've been creating on Chopin has made me appreciate Chopin more as both a composer and an improviser. You've made me much more keenly aware that so many of his compositions seem to capture a moment he was at the piano, thinking with his fingers, and realizing some passage of incredible melodic and harmonic genius. Hearing Noam Savan and Gabriela Montero has been enlightening and thrilling: they produce music as if they're speaking in their native tongue. This seems to require a combination of early exposure, native talent, and enough love for music to be endlessly curious about it. Thank you so much for all the work you're doing to make beauty and knoweldge accessible to a wider audience!
Gabriela Montero is a GENIUS. Such a pity she is still so underrated, even with all the acknowledgement that she has. And, as most geniuses, all with such humbleness and ingenuity/truthfullness… People just want to tick standard boxes, unfortunately…
Part of the problem is that it takes a great musician to recognise one, and most concert halls today are not run by great musicians - or musicians at all - but by bean counters and marketing execs. It takes someone like Ben Laude to zoom in on a story like this, to do the research, and to dig down on the musical details.
She is amazing!!!! I've been improvising for 50 years but it's all either stream of consciousness or jazz standards. She improvises with form and style like a Chopin piece! Superhuman abilities!!!! 👍👍👍👍👍👍
What an incredible talent! What strikes me most is her ability to give a form, a structure, to what she is inventing on the spot, without having to think about it.
Thanks for doing this little mini-series on improvisation in this context. I've discovered that most of my favourite classical musicians also secretly (or not so secretly) had an improvisatory side to their musical expression, and I hope we hear more of it in the future.
Yeah. If the melodies and phrasing and form weren’t startling enough, there is a harmonic dimension with delicious chromatic voice leading and inner motives cropping up throughout. Unbelievable.
I learned a few of her improvisations from some Scribd transcripts (the Toccata and Invention in D minor) from her Bach and Beyond album and they're still some of my favorite things to play. Had the pleasure of seeing her preform her concerto from the front row. Absolutely amazing.
I saw her live playing the 1st Tchaikovsky concerto last year. She improvised on a theme as an encore, it was amazing and I was flabbergasted, lol. What an amazing pianist
I met Gabriela Montera once in Montreal, several years ago. What an incredible soul and an hypnotic yet alluring musician. That kind of talent is rare, very rare.
I discovered Gabriela Montero earlier this year after listening to her piano concerto live - she performed us some improvisations on a theme from the audience Such a wonderful discovery, I listened to many of her recordings and interviews afterwards. Her improvisation approach is really one of a kind, combining more formal and rigid classical teaching with her own naturalistic style too - nothing is ever forced. And she’s a master of picking up outside styles - latin, jazz, minimalist - and integrating these within, she’s really a genius
I absolutely love that this lady tells is like it is by saying of her own improvisation that it's beautiful. A breath of fresh air. Thank you for that.
2:10 - Improvisation 1 in A minor 6:34 - Improvisation 2 in A minor 10:43 - Improvisation 3 in C major 16:38 - Improvisation 4 in C-sharp minor Timestamps to just the music, for those who want to re-listen. Montero's more recent improvisation on two themes is at 23:23.
I always love hearing Gabriela play ever since I first heard her in 1995 (we were both in the American Chopin Competition together). She stood out, in my opinion, from everyone else as a very special musician. She’s a genuinely nice person too! What a wonderful interview, Ben! ❤❤❤
Gabriela Montero is an outstanding pianist and improviser! My wife had the opportunity to listen to her once when she was improvising upon acclamation - a magnificent talent and a very charming personality!
Wonderful work! I was surprised she attended the Chopin competition. She is the kind of artist who doesn't need to win a competition. Always love her improvisations and compositions. Most of all, her piano concerto. I wish to hear her live in Salvador, Bahia someday. My best wishes for her and you Ben.
Given the history of Chopin as an improviser, perhaps it would be appropriate for the Chopin Competitions to include a spontaneous improvisation upon various randomly chosen themes provided by the Judges as part of the evaluation. This could add a whole new dimension to such Competitions. I would find it particularly interesting, and probably quite entertaining.
so many people would give their right arm to hear Chopin play and improvise but are not really interested in people like Gabriela. To me that is unbelievable, because it is clear that she is tapping into the same source Chopin was.
Are you ever right!! I'd buy this cd in a New York minute! Amazing creativity, amazing musicianship, amazing playing. And it's just great music. As you said, not only a true homage to Chopin but to Chopin's genius as an improvisor. I've enjoyed Gabriel Montero in those Argerich & Friends discs, but this is something else. Marvelous. Thanks so much.
Amazing how she just improvised four pieces on the spot. Some composers would take days or weeks just to come up with 1 song. I would love to be able to improvise like this.
I've been enjoying this entire Chopin series but this is a treat. I've been aware of Gabriela Montero since CBS featured her on "60 Minutes" two deacades ago or so (by pure coincidence, I have to stress!). I immediately became a fan and have listened to a lot of concerts here on youtube or TV broadcasts since then. I also have some of her records (both solo records and the Lugano collaborations). I've never had the chance to experience her live though. This interview or video talk was absolutely amazing to listen to. And her '95 improvisations were stunningly beautiful with that underlying agony. Wow.
Exquisite. Perhaps we need to tweak the way we talk about musicians to discern between those who work the piano and those who play the piano. This was play, pure, wonderful play.
@@benlawdy Improvisation - any improvisation had too long been an unopened black box for me. I worked the piano (but nothing like on your level and without tuition), tried to reheat, memorise and repeat exactly what Chopin/Mussorgsky/Brahms/Franck thought and wrote down at 4:15 some distant Wednesday afternoon. 2020 brought an alignment of the stars that had us all shut in our homes for weeks during Covid - and my most precious possessions became The Real Book and RUclipsrs showing by example how to jazz any of those sparse musical instructions into journeys of insight, happiness and invention. Music which by definition could never be the same twice (something of a solecism in repertoire playing). I set myself the life challenge to watch and learn, break open the black box. I'm a noisy advocate of impro. My piano playing before and after is like dark and light, drill versus dancing. Before I never dared take on the 4th Scherzo - these days it's a favourite piece. My (impossible) dream is to open a bar with a piano, open to the passing world - the next Ray Charles could be living just round the corner for all we know, but simply have no access to an instrument.
Another great episode in this series, and this one ranks among the very best. I have been aware of Gabriela ever since I saw a documentary about her some 15 years ago on the public service TV channel in the country that I live in, but I admit that I had somehow forgotten about her and her wonderful art. Great to see her receive some well-deserved love. Her advice on not relying solely on talent but working hard on the craft and finding one's voice without getting in the way of the message is pure gold and it applies not just to improvisation but to many facets and areas of life. I am reminded of a gem of a documentary about the great jazz pianist Bill Evans, called The Universal Mind of Bill Evans. What Bill Evans has to say in that documentary about improvisation and the importance on building a solid base before advancing to the next step aligns very well with what Gabriela is saying here and with what Noam Sivan says in other episodes in this series. And as is well known, Bill Evans was trained as a classical pianist before he moved into jazz. He was respected even by Glenn Gould, who famously disliked jazz.
I am so much in awe of Gabriela. I am a serious jazz amateur musician on alto sax, and I see improvisation as very well-prepared spontaneity, which allows you to go to places beyond your socially constructed identity limits. I totally get Gabriela's point about the sweat that is needed to go along with your talent to keep on realising a greater self through your music.
Another commenter said something I immediate felt: "Her waltzes sound like Venezuelan salon music," and I agree. I am Puerto Rican and our waltzes sound very similar to her idiom, too. It has that Latin American pain-in-the-soul sound. Also, to my ears at least, it has very particular Latin American go-to harmonic clichés and melodic twists (good ones, mind you) that immediately made me feel warm inside. If Chopin were Venezuelan, he would've probably sound like this. Brava!
Beautiful interview. Thank you for allowing the space to discuss improvisation and creativity as well as the psychology of music making (music living?) Gabriella Montero is a wizard and her individual path should be an inspiration to us all.
I love Gabriela's music and the possibilities that it represents so much. The classical world needs more people like her who are brave enough to be their full selves on stage, rather than feeling that they must conform to the standard way that things are done. One extremely valuable life skill that I got from studying the violin as a child is the strong work ethic that pervades the classical world's culture, convincing students that if they work hard enough for long enough, they will get better at playing the music that they love. At the same time, pretty much every lover of classical music who hears what Gabriela can do reacts with the same astonishment expressed in the comments here, and many say they wish they could do what she does. So I find it odd that the work ethic that motivates so many musicians to develop their technique doesn't motivate more to develop their creative abilities. I don't know if Gabriela was a child prodigy or not, but that's irrelevant -- the fact is that anyone who seriously devotes themselves to mastering the art of improvisation for long enough _will_ get better at it (after all, many other genres are full of great improvisers, like jazz, Indian classical music, Arabic maqam, etc., and they can't all have been prodigies). Why do you think it is that so many say they wish they could do what people like Gabriela can do, yet so few try, despite the fact that they do have the right general attitude towards hard work? Is it that there aren't enough role models, or that there isn't enough encouragement, or is it something else?
I always dreamed of being able to listen to Bach's, Mozart's and Beethoven's improvisations. I felt cheated by the fact that they were not my contemporaries and those musical moments were gone forever. Then I discovered Gabriela. I was in total disbelief of what she could do. The polyphony, harmonic sophistication, complexity of textures and an incredible left hand that seemed to have a brain of its own. All of this without the slightest hesitation and without the space needed to think any of it. I was grateful to see that a human being was able to accomplish this extraordinary feat. She could have given the three masters a run for their money. The frustration came when I tried to awe my students with this incomprehensible talent, only for them to not be very impressed. They just heard another pianist playing another classical composition, so what's the big deal? They couldn't see that what they were hearing was coming from a mysterious part of the brain that not even she can totally understand. Thank you Gabriela for making the myths of the great masters come to reality.
What's great about improvisation, especially when given a framework under Chopin's style for example, you have such nice representation of the improvisor's own experiences. She brings so much Latin and Spanish charm while still Chopin-like!
I would agree. I am Puerto Rican and our waltzes sound very similar to her idiom, too. It has that Latin American pain-in-the-soul sound. Also, to my ears at least, it has very particular Latin American go-to harmonic clichés and melodic twists (good ones, mind you) that immediately made me feel warm inside. If Chopin were Venezuelan, he would've probably sound like this. Brava!
@@Jantsenpr777 Beautifully expressed! I also hear some cross-rhythmic magic--as though a culture of syncopation chases the esthetic sensibilities of Latin-American music. It's an impulse I admire and try to emulate.
Mrs Montero’s gift is one in a billions and centuries. Totally unique and beyond imagination. To produce in the moment with such finesse, flow, structure and polish is just border miraculous. Personally, I think even the greatest composers were not able to produce such complexity and finish within a moment- on a given theme. Maybe Bach, Liszt…
Her improvisation #2 was reminiscent (to me) of a piece I’m currently working on (Waltz in Bm, Op 69 no 2). Almost as if the notes were inverted - in some sections at least.
Gabriela is incredible, a singular talent who from her own account just improvised naturally without studying how to do it. It's great these days that there are a few classical improvisers who embrace this tradition that existed prior to the 20th century. Robert Levin is obviously the guru in the area, improvising his own cadenzas and fantasias in the styles of Mozart and Beethoven for decades.
Same! Incredible, and weirdly moving improvisation on 'Ye cannae shove yer granny off a bus' 😂 And for a genius she's so normal, in the best possible way. And humble. She came out and chatted to the audience during the interval, and stayed to watch the second half. Such a great human being 😍
That is fabulous! Any chance there could be some transcriptions that folks could purchase? I would love to stumble through such beautiful music, even though I cannot improvise. Thanks so much for bringing this gorgeous music to light!
When I die, I've always wanted an afterlife just to go to the past and hear Chopin improvising with my own ears. I've always wanted to hear the music we lost from him doing what he knew the better: improvising. Today, I had the chance to listen exactly that (without dying to my afterlife). Thanks you so much. This is exactly how I imagine Chopin improvising in my life. It amazed me why I didn't hear this before. I'm a composer myself and also an improviser, but I always based on whwat Chopin WROTE (he is the love of m y life). Now I know that his sheet music is only the tip of the iceberg and he may with no isssue had sounded just like this. He just didn't had the time to write everything exactly as he played it. He wrote music only for money (he wanted all of it to be reduced to ashes), so we can presume that his improvisations were full of nuances and intriguing passages "impossible" to be writen during his historical context. Amazing. I will try to flow with the improvisation instead of limit myself with the common practice of classical music. I would like to invite you to hear my videos. You can try my recent Mazurka published on my channel :) Greetings from Chile!
Lets champion another (optional) category in the competition, where the contestants are allowed to improvise/write a piece that has a bit of chopin in it. I mean ppl cant do this, cause they aren't being taught to, lets make it mainstream!
The first one is nice, but very repetitive with the short constantly repeated motif. She's clearly a talent. I like the second one more. It still seems to be based on a repeated fragment. It is very much in the style of Chopin. To be able to sit down and improvise so skillfully is truly amazing. Her statement of being a caged animal is quite appropriate. It sums up almost the entire school system. The mood of the 3rd one is quite compelling once again it seems to stuck on the same fragment used in Improvisation I. Again the playing is quite extraordinary. These are the only improvisations I'm aware of where Gabriella attempts to mimic Chopin. Each one gets better and more complex. It would be interesting to have heard Chopin improvise. His published compositions are extremely well structured. Gabriela's certainly have the feeling of genius. I do feel she has improved greatly over the years as an improviser, which one would expect. Ben Laude is correct about the flow. It is very polished. The Ballade that follows the competitions is absolutely knockout. There is nothing to criticize. It can only be praised., or perhaps worshiped. The creator of the Universe is playing through her hands. She's right about the hard work. I notice many people have no idea how much work it takes to become a skilled musician. You can only be yourself within your own limitations. You cannot be someone else.
She’s brilliant Chopin would’ve loved her, a Moment in history. Beautiful LH Melody on the second one channeling Chopin, for sure, absolutely astounding I don’t know that I’ve heard anyone who understands Chopin as well as she does How is this possible? Jumping between this and her channel, her Steinway is magnificent BTW Did she have anything to say about that new snippet of Chopin’s that was found? I’m sure she would know if it was authentic immediately So glad she mentioned how girls approach their music, she gives us permission to takes risks. Yea! Thank you Ben this was fantastic,, feather in your cap 🪶
Owing to a notion this is not first-time improvisation attempt, similar types must have been made in like fashion of complexity. Hearing no wrong notes played or partial misses is awe-inspiring, and in a particular musical style not necessarily of her own essence. Liberace did similar improv's medly's but no where near as deeply expressive in style. Live jazz musicians do this every day but their crutch here is that there is no such thing as a wrongly played note. They can't really do a miss. They follow patterned lines of ostinato rhythm and jazz scale modes as service riffs. What this young lady does appears above all else as improvisation appears. Really much more the sense of "composing as you go." But, the next note or movement pattern is not more important than the last. No precidence here. Totally in the present moment where illusory time itself stands still! I can only conclude with having such a gift, why would one ever want to read a scored note again?
"Chopin Competition" and "improvisation"... This reminds me of a scene from the Japanese comic "The Forest of Piano: The perfect world of KAI". The protagonist "Ichinose Kai" used to practice on the piano with heavy keys in the woods, so he broke piano wires several times in competitions. However, he was a genius in improvisation, so he altered the whole piece to avoid the broken keys. The result was "Special Prize" without a winner, like Chopin Competition 1990 and 1995. (However, Kai didn't break any piano strings when he grew up, and finally won the Chopin Competition.)
Another great video, Ben! Did you know that in most musical art forms 'improvisation' is never spontaneous 'making up' of hitherto never played-by-the-performer bits of music/ I speak of flamenco guitar (which I play) where various toques are used - but each of them has been assiduously preactised beforehand. When it comes to the 'improvised performance' all that is is a simple re-ordering of bits well-practised. Is it not like that in jazz as well? but I think this goes for other things... it seems that this is not the case for'clasical piano' and geniuses like this woman or that guy you had in a recent previous video? Or maybe it is? In that case it would be like people who say that they are 'sightreading' but actually it is NEVR a completely new piece that they have never seen before (unless it is easy). I remember putting Rach 3 (alt. cadenza mvmnt 1) in front of my Gnessin teacher (Beethoven and Tchaikovsky lineage) and she said she couldn't do it. But this was after she had just trotted off perfectly about 5 Scriabin short pieces that I ad also given her to sight-read, And also she had just done that with a Mozart fantasia.
speaking of improvisations you should invite Cyprien Katsaris to speak on your podcasts. He won the grand prix du Disque 1985 Chopin...an amazing document in Chopin performances. And also he improvises in his concerts. You should really reach out to him. And he is such a wonderful man, a true gentleman and a Giant in Pianism!
In the middle of a collaboration with the chopin foundation, to whom I pitched this podcast series that has now turned into exhaustive coverage of Chopin’s works. For a classical piano channel, not the worst topic - but I acknowledge it’s a bit much! I’m excited to move on in 2025, and have among list of video ideas on a range of other composers, performers, and topics. Which would you like to see?
Sure, but many carry the same norms into the gala concerts. It would be WILD if someone straight up improvised something unrelated to Chopin in one of the competition rounds.
Sorry - I didn't understand - what was that long piece she improvised for those two people from the audience?I thought it was going to be a mixture of some modern pop song and Chopin's ballade no.1 - did I not understand something?
The man requested a popular Latin-American melody. Someone from the audience suggested that Montero use Adiós noniño, by Astor Piazzolla, for this. The improv had bits based on that and bits based on Chopin's first ballade. Let me know if you have remaining questions.
@militaryandemergencyservic3286 Sure. She takes the 3-2-1 toward the tonic at the end of Chopin's melodic idea and uses that as the basis for the improv. In the same motive from Chopin, she changes the dissonant arpeggio through the chord tones into a turn, before the 3-2-1, that serves the same harmonic function. Here are timestamps for most occurrences of those two figures (the turn figure or the 3-2-1 figure): 23:23 - RH 23:28 - RH 23:37 - LH 23:43 - RH, tenor register 23:48 - RH 23:56 - RH 24:10 - LH, harmonically changed 24:19 - RH 24:24 - RH 24:31 - RH 24:40 - RH, harmonically changed 24:53 - RH, then left hand 25:02 - RH 3-2-1 figure, then turn figure 25:24 - RH, multiple turn figures 25:40 - RH, turn figure 25:57 - RH, new texture underlying 3-2-1 26:31 - RH, multiple times 26:42 - RH 26:53 - RH, chromaticized turn figure 27:08 - RH 27:18 - RH 27:30 - LH 27:43 - both hands 27:55
NO WAY!! I've searched for years for that first improvisation!! I recorded it from a radio broadcast in Portugal on a cassette back in the 90's but didn't know what it was!! I thought it was Chopin but couldn't find it... Now i know what it is... I even hummed it to Shazam!!!
I have listened to Gabriela for years. And I would love to have just an ounce of her talent and musical intuition. Thanks for sharing this with the world - especially the “lost” tapes! What a treasure.
❤ yes, I agree ! This video is my greatest treasure of the year!
Gabriela is simply amazing. I studied with her and it was a once in a lifetime experience to be close to such a genuine human being. Thank you for sharing these rare improvisations from competition!! 🤩 a fantastic episode and interview!
This marvelous series you've been creating on Chopin has made me appreciate Chopin more as both a composer and an improviser. You've made me much more keenly aware that so many of his compositions seem to capture a moment he was at the piano, thinking with his fingers, and realizing some passage of incredible melodic and harmonic genius. Hearing Noam Savan and Gabriela Montero has been enlightening and thrilling: they produce music as if they're speaking in their native tongue. This seems to require a combination of early exposure, native talent, and enough love for music to be endlessly curious about it. Thank you so much for all the work you're doing to make beauty and knoweldge accessible to a wider audience!
Gabriela Montero is a GENIUS. Such a pity she is still so underrated, even with all the acknowledgement that she has. And, as most geniuses, all with such humbleness and ingenuity/truthfullness… People just want to tick standard boxes, unfortunately…
Part of the problem is that it takes a great musician to recognise one, and most concert halls today are not run by great musicians - or musicians at all - but by bean counters and marketing execs. It takes someone like Ben Laude to zoom in on a story like this, to do the research, and to dig down on the musical details.
Fantastic. Beautiful and yet very punk rock to just go out there and do that unannounced.
This interview is totally unexpected but greatly welcomed. Attending one of her concerts has been on top of my bucket list for a while.
Gabriela Montero is the real-deal..her improvisations are spontaneous, yet so polished, and in the spirit of Chopin😊.
Thank you for this video Ben. She is a treasure.
She is amazing!!!! I've been improvising for 50 years but it's all either stream of consciousness or jazz standards. She improvises with form and style like a Chopin piece! Superhuman abilities!!!! 👍👍👍👍👍👍
What an incredible talent! What strikes me most is her ability to give a form, a structure, to what she is inventing on the spot, without having to think about it.
Thought about in advance.
@@pjbpiano From what she says, not thought about at all. Someone suggests a theme or an emotion and she plays at once without conscious effort.
OMG what a discovery! Your videos are such a gem!!!
Thanks for doing this little mini-series on improvisation in this context. I've discovered that most of my favourite classical musicians also secretly (or not so secretly) had an improvisatory side to their musical expression, and I hope we hear more of it in the future.
I can't believe her flawless melodic sense and even more--her astonishing harmonic progressions! They create incompressible works of beauty.
Yeah. If the melodies and phrasing and form weren’t startling enough, there is a harmonic dimension with delicious chromatic voice leading and inner motives cropping up throughout. Unbelievable.
@@benlawdy Yes! I'm breathless (and jealous!).
@@benlawdyyes
Meeting and hearing Gabriela improvise in person is one of the highlights of 2024 for me this year!
I learned a few of her improvisations from some Scribd transcripts (the Toccata and Invention in D minor) from her Bach and Beyond album and they're still some of my favorite things to play. Had the pleasure of seeing her preform her concerto from the front row. Absolutely amazing.
Thanks for informing us tht Montero has written a piano concerto !
What an amazing documentary to have archived for all of time.
Thank you Ben for acknowledging this moment in classical music history...more historical classical improvisation content, please!
I saw her live playing the 1st Tchaikovsky concerto last year. She improvised on a theme as an encore, it was amazing and I was flabbergasted, lol. What an amazing pianist
I met Gabriela Montera once in Montreal, several years ago. What an incredible soul and an hypnotic yet alluring musician. That kind of talent is rare, very rare.
You dig up so many marvels! Now, she really got me! Wonderful musician! ❤
I discovered Gabriela Montero earlier this year after listening to her piano concerto live - she performed us some improvisations on a theme from the audience
Such a wonderful discovery, I listened to many of her recordings and interviews afterwards. Her improvisation approach is really one of a kind, combining more formal and rigid classical teaching with her own naturalistic style too - nothing is ever forced. And she’s a master of picking up outside styles - latin, jazz, minimalist - and integrating these within, she’s really a genius
I absolutely love that this lady tells is like it is by saying of her own improvisation that it's beautiful. A breath of fresh air. Thank you for that.
2:10 - Improvisation 1 in A minor
6:34 - Improvisation 2 in A minor
10:43 - Improvisation 3 in C major
16:38 - Improvisation 4 in C-sharp minor
Timestamps to just the music, for those who want to re-listen.
Montero's more recent improvisation on two themes is at 23:23.
I always love hearing Gabriela play ever since I first heard her in 1995 (we were both in the American Chopin Competition together). She stood out, in my opinion, from everyone else as a very special musician. She’s a genuinely nice person too! What a wonderful interview, Ben! ❤❤❤
Gabriela Montero is an outstanding pianist and improviser! My wife had the opportunity to listen to her once when she was improvising upon acclamation - a magnificent talent and a very charming personality!
So beautiful!
Thanks so much for sharing these treasures ❤
Some of the improvisations remind me of the Scriabin mazurkas 😊
I'm in shock at learning of this - that first theme... so beautifully realised! Even she is surprised! This video is a treasure :)
Wonderful work! I was surprised she attended the Chopin competition. She is the kind of artist who doesn't need to win a competition.
Always love her improvisations and compositions. Most of all, her piano concerto.
I wish to hear her live in Salvador, Bahia someday.
My best wishes for her and you Ben.
Given the history of Chopin as an improviser, perhaps it would be appropriate for the Chopin Competitions to include a spontaneous improvisation upon various randomly chosen themes provided by the Judges as part of the evaluation. This could add a whole new dimension to such Competitions. I would find it particularly interesting, and probably quite entertaining.
The objective of Chopin competition is to find pianists who play his works well and not their pieces.
Fabulous! Crazy talent!
Thanks again, Ben. Your videos are great. I was already familiar with her, but there's always more to learn. She's a total genius!
So articulate, and dazzlingly intelligent!
so many people would give their right arm to hear Chopin play and improvise but are not really interested in people like Gabriela. To me that is unbelievable, because it is clear that she is tapping into the same source Chopin was.
Chopin has so many myths tied to his name. Hence.
I believe their is great interest in Montero 's improvising . When I heard her in Miami people were screaming at end of recital for her to do so !
¡Qué grande sos Gabriela!
Are you ever right!! I'd buy this cd in a New York minute! Amazing creativity, amazing musicianship, amazing playing. And it's just great music. As you said, not only a true homage to Chopin but to Chopin's genius as an improvisor. I've enjoyed Gabriel Montero in those Argerich & Friends discs, but this is something else. Marvelous. Thanks so much.
Amazing how she just improvised four pieces on the spot. Some composers would take days or weeks just to come up with 1 song. I would love to be able to improvise like this.
Wow! What a gift to be able to listen to those brilliant improvisations. Thank you for sharing them with us.
I've been enjoying this entire Chopin series but this is a treat. I've been aware of Gabriela Montero since CBS featured her on "60 Minutes" two deacades ago or so (by pure coincidence, I have to stress!). I immediately became a fan and have listened to a lot of concerts here on youtube or TV broadcasts since then. I also have some of her records (both solo records and the Lugano collaborations). I've never had the chance to experience her live though. This interview or video talk was absolutely amazing to listen to. And her '95 improvisations were stunningly beautiful with that underlying agony. Wow.
❤
Exquisite. Perhaps we need to tweak the way we talk about musicians to discern between those who work the piano and those who play the piano. This was play, pure, wonderful play.
Yes. I’m definitely a “piano worker.” I wish I could play like this
@@benlawdy Improvisation - any improvisation had too long been an unopened black box for me. I worked the piano (but nothing like on your level and without tuition), tried to reheat, memorise and repeat exactly what Chopin/Mussorgsky/Brahms/Franck thought and wrote down at 4:15 some distant Wednesday afternoon.
2020 brought an alignment of the stars that had us all shut in our homes for weeks during Covid - and my most precious possessions became The Real Book and RUclipsrs showing by example how to jazz any of those sparse musical instructions into journeys of insight, happiness and invention. Music which by definition could never be the same twice (something of a solecism in repertoire playing). I set myself the life challenge to watch and learn, break open the black box.
I'm a noisy advocate of impro. My piano playing before and after is like dark and light, drill versus dancing. Before I never dared take on the 4th Scherzo - these days it's a favourite piece.
My (impossible) dream is to open a bar with a piano, open to the passing world - the next Ray Charles could be living just round the corner for all we know, but simply have no access to an instrument.
@@dwdei8815 A confession, a dare and a dream~I encourage you every inch of the way.
@@dwdei8815who were you watching to get a feel for how to improvise on the real book?
Fantastic discussion! Veers immediately away from mere shop talk. Thank you both.
Wonderful artist, such a special voice within this sometimes rather narrow classical music world.
Someone shoud film Gabriela and Marta sharing some wine and playing improv.
Can I apply for that job?
Another great episode in this series, and this one ranks among the very best. I have been aware of Gabriela ever since I saw a documentary about her some 15 years ago on the public service TV channel in the country that I live in, but I admit that I had somehow forgotten about her and her wonderful art. Great to see her receive some well-deserved love.
Her advice on not relying solely on talent but working hard on the craft and finding one's voice without getting in the way of the message is pure gold and it applies not just to improvisation but to many facets and areas of life. I am reminded of a gem of a documentary about the great jazz pianist Bill Evans, called The Universal Mind of Bill Evans. What Bill Evans has to say in that documentary about improvisation and the importance on building a solid base before advancing to the next step aligns very well with what Gabriela is saying here and with what Noam Sivan says in other episodes in this series. And as is well known, Bill Evans was trained as a classical pianist before he moved into jazz. He was respected even by Glenn Gould, who famously disliked jazz.
Beautiful conversation. ❤
I am so much in awe of Gabriela. I am a serious jazz amateur musician on alto sax, and I see improvisation as very well-prepared spontaneity, which allows you to go to places beyond your socially constructed identity limits. I totally get Gabriela's point about the sweat that is needed to go along with your talent to keep on realising a greater self through your music.
I love this. How revelatory!!!!
It’s so beautiful!!
Another commenter said something I immediate felt: "Her waltzes sound like Venezuelan salon music," and I agree. I am Puerto Rican and our waltzes sound very similar to her idiom, too. It has that Latin American pain-in-the-soul sound. Also, to my ears at least, it has very particular Latin American go-to harmonic clichés and melodic twists (good ones, mind you) that immediately made me feel warm inside. If Chopin were Venezuelan, he would've probably sound like this. Brava!
Beautiful interview. Thank you for allowing the space to discuss improvisation and creativity as well as the psychology of music making (music living?)
Gabriella Montero is a wizard and her individual path should be an inspiration to us all.
Wonderful, thank you both
She Is the person i admire the most in my Life 🎹
She's like a real Chopin embodiment, extraordinary talented
I am 75 and only recently have come with intent to the piano 🎹 previous experience was merely curiosity. Music 🎶 will not be bound.
I love Gabriela's music and the possibilities that it represents so much. The classical world needs more people like her who are brave enough to be their full selves on stage, rather than feeling that they must conform to the standard way that things are done.
One extremely valuable life skill that I got from studying the violin as a child is the strong work ethic that pervades the classical world's culture, convincing students that if they work hard enough for long enough, they will get better at playing the music that they love. At the same time, pretty much every lover of classical music who hears what Gabriela can do reacts with the same astonishment expressed in the comments here, and many say they wish they could do what she does. So I find it odd that the work ethic that motivates so many musicians to develop their technique doesn't motivate more to develop their creative abilities. I don't know if Gabriela was a child prodigy or not, but that's irrelevant -- the fact is that anyone who seriously devotes themselves to mastering the art of improvisation for long enough _will_ get better at it (after all, many other genres are full of great improvisers, like jazz, Indian classical music, Arabic maqam, etc., and they can't all have been prodigies). Why do you think it is that so many say they wish they could do what people like Gabriela can do, yet so few try, despite the fact that they do have the right general attitude towards hard work? Is it that there aren't enough role models, or that there isn't enough encouragement, or is it something else?
That is simply jaw-dropping, wow!
I always dreamed of being able to listen to Bach's, Mozart's and Beethoven's improvisations. I felt cheated by the fact that they were not my contemporaries and those musical moments were gone forever. Then I discovered Gabriela. I was in total disbelief of what she could do. The polyphony, harmonic sophistication, complexity of textures and an incredible left hand that seemed to have a brain of its own. All of this without the slightest hesitation and without the space needed to think any of it. I was grateful to see that a human being was able to accomplish this extraordinary feat. She could have given the three masters a run for their money. The frustration came when I tried to awe my students with this incomprehensible talent, only for them to not be very impressed. They just heard another pianist playing another classical composition, so what's the big deal? They couldn't see that what they were hearing was coming from a mysterious part of the brain that not even she can totally understand. Thank you Gabriela for making the myths of the great masters come to reality.
What's great about improvisation, especially when given a framework under Chopin's style for example, you have such nice representation of the improvisor's own experiences. She brings so much Latin and Spanish charm while still Chopin-like!
Escaping the gilded cage has never sounded so powerfully sweet
Her waltzes sounds very much like Venezuelan salon music or folk music. I never raised that until today keyring with fresh ears.
Her new is much better than the old.
I would agree. I am Puerto Rican and our waltzes sound very similar to her idiom, too. It has that Latin American pain-in-the-soul sound. Also, to my ears at least, it has very particular Latin American go-to harmonic clichés and melodic twists (good ones, mind you) that immediately made me feel warm inside. If Chopin were Venezuelan, he would've probably sound like this. Brava!
@@Jantsenpr777 Beautifully expressed! I also hear some cross-rhythmic magic--as though a culture of syncopation chases the esthetic sensibilities of Latin-American music. It's an impulse I admire and try to emulate.
Mrs Montero’s gift is one in a billions and centuries. Totally unique and beyond imagination. To produce in the moment with such finesse, flow, structure and polish is just border miraculous. Personally, I think even the greatest composers were not able to produce such complexity and finish within a moment- on a given theme. Maybe Bach, Liszt…
@@tonynikolaos3527….ah…Chopin was a dazzling improviser case you didn’t know
What a talent ❤
Recenty heard something called Improvisation one". To quote Enobarbus: "Kneel down...kneel down in wonder!"
This video convinced me that classical music is not always old music for old people.
Her improvisation #2 was reminiscent (to me) of a piece I’m currently working on (Waltz in Bm, Op 69 no 2). Almost as if the notes were inverted - in some sections at least.
Yes, there are definitely some of the same harmonic moves going on in her improvisation :)
Incredible’! I’m speechless!,👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👍👍👍❤️❤️❤️
I would definitely buy her improvisation recordings😊
Love her!!!
Gabriela is incredible, a singular talent who from her own account just improvised naturally without studying how to do it. It's great these days that there are a few classical improvisers who embrace this tradition that existed prior to the 20th century. Robert Levin is obviously the guru in the area, improvising his own cadenzas and fantasias in the styles of Mozart and Beethoven for decades.
Beyond incredible 😮
Bravo chama. Yo estudie en la Juan Manuel Olivares. Gracias por estas maravillosas improvisaciones.
I recently heard her perform her latin concerto at the Usher Hall!!!
Same! Incredible, and weirdly moving improvisation on 'Ye cannae shove yer granny off a bus' 😂 And for a genius she's so normal, in the best possible way. And humble. She came out and chatted to the audience during the interval, and stayed to watch the second half. Such a great human being 😍
That is fabulous! Any chance there could be some transcriptions that folks could purchase? I would love to stumble through such beautiful music, even though I cannot improvise. Thanks so much for bringing this gorgeous music to light!
When I die, I've always wanted an afterlife just to go to the past and hear Chopin improvising with my own ears. I've always wanted to hear the music we lost from him doing what he knew the better: improvising. Today, I had the chance to listen exactly that (without dying to my afterlife). Thanks you so much. This is exactly how I imagine Chopin improvising in my life. It amazed me why I didn't hear this before. I'm a composer myself and also an improviser, but I always based on whwat Chopin WROTE (he is the love of m y life). Now I know that his sheet music is only the tip of the iceberg and he may with no isssue had sounded just like this. He just didn't had the time to write everything exactly as he played it. He wrote music only for money (he wanted all of it to be reduced to ashes), so we can presume that his improvisations were full of nuances and intriguing passages "impossible" to be writen during his historical context. Amazing. I will try to flow with the improvisation instead of limit myself with the common practice of classical music. I would like to invite you to hear my videos. You can try my recent Mazurka published on my channel :) Greetings from Chile!
"Talent is not enough; it's what you do with talent that's interesting and significant." -Gabriela Montero
Amazing stuff.
I'm floored
Ms. Montero is a musician's musician.
I look at Gabriela is the embodiment of the Masters. She's a god😮
Lets champion another (optional) category in the competition, where the contestants are allowed to improvise/write a piece that has a bit of chopin in it. I mean ppl cant do this, cause they aren't being taught to, lets make it mainstream!
The word is “exquisite”!
The first one is nice, but very repetitive with the short constantly repeated motif. She's clearly a talent. I like the second one more. It still seems to be based on a repeated fragment. It is very much in the style of Chopin. To be able to sit down and improvise so skillfully is truly amazing. Her statement of being a caged animal is quite appropriate. It sums up almost the entire school system. The mood of the 3rd one is quite compelling once again it seems to stuck on the same fragment used in Improvisation I. Again the playing is quite extraordinary. These are the only improvisations I'm aware of where Gabriella attempts to mimic Chopin. Each one gets better and more complex. It would be interesting to have heard Chopin improvise. His published compositions are extremely well structured. Gabriela's certainly have the feeling of genius. I do feel she has improved greatly over the years as an improviser, which one would expect. Ben Laude is correct about the flow. It is very polished. The Ballade that follows the competitions is absolutely knockout. There is nothing to criticize. It can only be praised., or perhaps worshiped. The creator of the Universe is playing through her hands. She's right about the hard work. I notice many people have no idea how much work it takes to become a skilled musician. You can only be yourself within your own limitations. You cannot be someone else.
She’s brilliant Chopin would’ve loved her, a Moment in history. Beautiful LH Melody on the second one
channeling Chopin, for sure, absolutely astounding
I don’t know that I’ve heard anyone who understands Chopin as well as she does
How is this possible?
Jumping between this and her channel, her Steinway is magnificent BTW
Did she have anything to say about that new snippet of Chopin’s that was found? I’m sure she would know if it was authentic immediately
So glad she mentioned how girls approach their music, she gives us permission to takes risks. Yea!
Thank you Ben this was fantastic,, feather in your cap 🪶
Incredible! So beautiful. The music just pours out of her. She is the instrument being played. And why did she stop playing, and for how long?
Ben, I'm looking forward to the episode about the biggest scandal of the Chopin Festival after Ivo Pogorelic's performances.
Can you post the 4 improvisations as separate videos please?
Owing to a notion this is not first-time improvisation attempt, similar types must have been made in like fashion of complexity. Hearing no wrong notes played or partial misses is awe-inspiring, and in a particular musical style not necessarily of her own essence. Liberace did similar improv's medly's but no where near as deeply expressive in style. Live jazz musicians do this every day but their crutch here is that there is no such thing as a wrongly played note. They can't really do a miss. They follow patterned lines of ostinato rhythm and jazz scale modes as service riffs. What this young lady does appears above all else as improvisation appears. Really much more the sense of "composing as you go." But, the next note or movement pattern is not more important than the last. No precidence here. Totally in the present moment where illusory time itself stands still! I can only conclude with having such a gift, why would one ever want to read a scored note again?
It has a piazza feel
"Chopin Competition" and "improvisation"... This reminds me of a scene from the Japanese comic "The Forest of Piano: The perfect world of KAI". The protagonist "Ichinose Kai" used to practice on the piano with heavy keys in the woods, so he broke piano wires several times in competitions. However, he was a genius in improvisation, so he altered the whole piece to avoid the broken keys. The result was "Special Prize" without a winner, like Chopin Competition 1990 and 1995. (However, Kai didn't break any piano strings when he grew up, and finally won the Chopin Competition.)
Didn't Chopin make use of cadenza parts in his works?
Another great video, Ben! Did you know that in most musical art forms 'improvisation' is never spontaneous 'making up' of hitherto never played-by-the-performer bits of music/ I speak of flamenco guitar (which I play) where various toques are used - but each of them has been assiduously preactised beforehand. When it comes to the 'improvised performance' all that is is a simple re-ordering of bits well-practised. Is it not like that in jazz as well? but I think this goes for other things... it seems that this is not the case for'clasical piano' and geniuses like this woman or that guy you had in a recent previous video? Or maybe it is? In that case it would be like people who say that they are 'sightreading' but actually it is NEVR a completely new piece that they have never seen before (unless it is easy). I remember putting Rach 3 (alt. cadenza mvmnt 1) in front of my Gnessin teacher (Beethoven and Tchaikovsky lineage) and she said she couldn't do it. But this was after she had just trotted off perfectly about 5 Scriabin short pieces that I ad also given her to sight-read, And also she had just done that with a Mozart fantasia.
That fourth one!!
I wished she could have made music with Chick Corea.
It sounds like they could have had some synergy.
OG musical waifu
speaking of improvisations you should invite Cyprien Katsaris to speak on your podcasts. He won the grand prix du Disque 1985 Chopin...an amazing document in Chopin performances. And also he improvises in his concerts. You should really reach out to him. And he is such a wonderful man, a true gentleman and a Giant in Pianism!
Love the shirt, Ben! Is it available for purchase?
www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/4205453-chopin-and-liszt
Thank you. Have purchased two. Not just BTW, I think that GM is one of the world's treasures.
When did this channel turn into the 24hr Chopin Network?
In the middle of a collaboration with the chopin foundation, to whom I pitched this podcast series that has now turned into exhaustive coverage of Chopin’s works. For a classical piano channel, not the worst topic - but I acknowledge it’s a bit much!
I’m excited to move on in 2025, and have among list of video ideas on a range of other composers, performers, and topics. Which would you like to see?
I don’t think it breaks the rules if it’s not within the official competition rounds themselves
Sure, but many carry the same norms into the gala concerts. It would be WILD if someone straight up improvised something unrelated to Chopin in one of the competition rounds.
@ The first one to do it might go viral 😅
Sorry - I didn't understand - what was that long piece she improvised for those two people from the audience?I thought it was going to be a mixture of some modern pop song and Chopin's ballade no.1 - did I not understand something?
The man requested a popular Latin-American melody. Someone from the audience suggested that Montero use Adiós noniño, by Astor Piazzolla, for this. The improv had bits based on that and bits based on Chopin's first ballade.
Let me know if you have remaining questions.
@@AlessandroSistiMusic what are the bits based on the ballade (timestamps, please)- thanks
@militaryandemergencyservic3286 Sure. She takes the 3-2-1 toward the tonic at the end of Chopin's melodic idea and uses that as the basis for the improv. In the same motive from Chopin, she changes the dissonant arpeggio through the chord tones into a turn, before the 3-2-1, that serves the same harmonic function. Here are timestamps for most occurrences of those two figures (the turn figure or the 3-2-1 figure):
23:23 - RH
23:28 - RH
23:37 - LH
23:43 - RH, tenor register
23:48 - RH
23:56 - RH
24:10 - LH, harmonically changed
24:19 - RH
24:24 - RH
24:31 - RH
24:40 - RH, harmonically changed
24:53 - RH, then left hand
25:02 - RH 3-2-1 figure, then turn figure
25:24 - RH, multiple turn figures
25:40 - RH, turn figure
25:57 - RH, new texture underlying 3-2-1
26:31 - RH, multiple times
26:42 - RH
26:53 - RH, chromaticized turn figure
27:08 - RH
27:18 - RH
27:30 - LH
27:43 - both hands
27:55
Bueno....es admirable y una grandisima pianista. Pero eso suena como una composición suya ya ensayada....será?
There's a hint of joropo in every 3/4 rhythm of Gabriela Montero.