Currently giving a series of performances in Europe, Gabriela Montero joins the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra (Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien) on February 24 as the featured soloist in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini at the Austrian capital’s Konzerthaus. The Russian composer’s orchestral variations boast familiar melodies, soaring lyricism, and astonishing pianistic virtuosity. The Venezuelan-born conductor Christian Vásquez leads the Orchestra in a concert program that will also include Manuel de Falla’s Suite No. 2, Arturo Márquez’s Danzón No. 2, and Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story.
Watch Gabriela improvise on Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto in the style of Bach.
Learn more about Gabriela’s Vienna concert and purchase tickets here.
Having made her Atlanta Symphony Orchestra debut earlier this month, Gabriela returns to the recital stage on February 22, when she appears as part of the “Klassik Sterne Rheinfelden” concert series in Rheinfelden, Switzerland. Gabriela’s recital program includes Frédéric Chopin’s First and Fourth Ballades, astonishing in their technical demands yet arresting in their lyrical beauty. The Venezuelan-born pianist also introduces Latin sounds to her audience with selected pieces by Ernesto Lecuona, Alberto Ginastera, Ernesto Nazareth, and Moisés Moleiro. You can listen to Gabriela perform several of these works on her recent EMI Classics album, Solatino.
Click here to learn more about this performance and to purchase tickets.
Next week, Gabriela makes her debut with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra with three performances of Beethoven’s magnificent Third Piano Concerto on February 2, 3, and 4. A celebrated improviser, Gabriela brings new life to the impromptu quality of Beethoven’s C minor concerto, one of the first of Beethoven’s works that made the orchestra equal partners with its soloist. The American conductor Thomas Wilkins rounds out the program with Ravel’s fantastical Mother Goose Suite and Dvorak’s exuberant Eighth Symphony.
Watch Gabriela improviser on themes from Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto.
Click here to learn more about Gabriela’s ASO debut and to purchase tickets.
This winter pianist Gabriela Montero will give solo recitals in Bermuda and in the United States. Her program for these three performances includes Johannes Brahms's lyrical Intermezzi and Franz Liszt's Sonata in B minor, composed as four movements linked together without pause. Gabriela's performance will also feature some of her signature improvisations. She travels to Hamilton, Bermuda, for a concert on January 29 presented by the 2012 Bermuda Festival of the Performing Arts. After making her Atlanta Symphony Orchestra debut on February 2, 3, and 4, she will return to the recital stage, reprising her program in Wheaton, Illinois, where she appears as part of Wheaton College's Artist Series. Her final concert takes place two days later on February 12 at the Clayes Performing Arts Center at California State University in Fullerton.
