Gabriela Montero
The Immigrant
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The Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero enjoys colouring outside the lines of the stave. At her concerts she switches between inspired playing from the score and light-fingered improvisations, mainly of Romantic and 20th-century repertoire. A striking musical voice who also gets involved in politics, her temperament is on display both on and alongside the keys. In this programme she plays out all these facets of her personality. In Charlie Chaplin’s short film The Immigrant the protagonist is accused of theft during the crossing to the New World. Montero improvises live to this gem of a silent film, in which Chaplin criticised the treatment of immigrants in the US. Before this, she allows three other displaced persons to embark. Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff all crossed the big pond, fleeing the violence of the war in Europe.