Review by Gabriela Montero – a beautiful translation of a Spanish postcard and a trip to the Beatles | Classical music

MOzart did. Liszt, famous, too. You can’t stop Bach and Messiaen – even Boulez did something. But at some point improvisation disappeared from the concert platform; experimentation became something to do in private and in advance not in public but in real time. Unless you are the Venezuelan pianist, Gabriela Montero, who has made it her mission to bring this art back to the stage.

Currently Montero holds three concerts at Barbican it didn’t give a chance – not like a cadenza – so I suspect that most of the people listening in person were there expecting to hear more than the broadcast program.

They were not disappointed. But first there was the unimportant event of Iberia, the Spanish voice that received 250 years of foreign musicians and virtuosos – Chopin, Domenico Scarlatti, Liszt – together with the people of Granados, Albéniz and Mompou.

Montero is such a talented pianist; there is a clarity and flexibility in his playing that easily captures the inner thoughts of Scarlatti or Liszt. The classic Keyboard Sonata in C sharp minor (woven into a continuous major work with his G major Sonata and two others by his student Antonio Soler) had a vivid image of Zurbarán’s paint: a clean starting point, the beginning of many tours, the flamenco fans we heard holding the cow. “Triana” from Iberia and the wonderful “Sevilla” from Suite Española) and Liszt’s Rhapsodie Espagnole – bravura close, mercurial and brilliant in Montero’s delivery.

But with many short jobs it was difficult to go beyond post-Spain. Granados’s Eight Valses Poéticos was as close to a road trip as we’ve come, his list of little bits and pieces rather than the meat that this program needs. Instead, Montero offered entertainment: three changes, two on themes given – and sung – by the audience.

Unconcerned when a little girl wanted ABBA’s Mamma Mia (“I just walk away and let it happen…”), Montero turned it into a beautiful rhapsody, while the Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun became the first Purcellian number (whose syncopated rhythm in the opening words was born to be the last Scotch). It was an unexpected holiday bonus we didn’t know we needed.