Yet Another Talbot County Treasure

by Bill Peak

When signs went up several years ago announcing that Gabriela Montero would perform here in Easton, I was, to put it mildly, gobsmacked. I first learned of the Venezuelan piano virtuoso (virtuosa?) back in 2006 when I heard her interviewed on NPR about Bach and Beyond, her album that debuted that year at the top of Billboard’s Classical Charts. I don’t think I’ve ever purchased a recording as quickly as I did that one, and I have been listening to it off and on ever since. If you’ve never heard it, you should listen to it on Spotify. It will amaze you.

So, anyway, just as I had rushed out to buy a copy of the album, I now rushed home to Google the Prager Family Center for the Arts to purchase a ticket … and was dismayed to discover the price was, appropriately enough for such a world-famous pianist, beyond the means of a lowly library guy. Crushed, I moped around the house beating my breast and rending my garments till, thankfully, my poor, long-suffering wife caught the hint and promised to buy me a ticket.

It took a while for us to save up the cash, but this year, for my birthday, my best gift was a ticket for Montero’s performance this past Saturday night at the Prager. Melissa’s great at birthday presents. There was the scavenger hunt in Santa Fe, the autumn steam locomotive ride to the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the Orioles double-header at old Memorial Park, but getting to hear Montero … well, it’s going to be hard to top that.

The Prager Family Center for the Arts’ Ebenezer Theater is a small, intimate space, which many of you, I’m sure, have visited when it was the domain of the Talbot County Historical Society. I sat in the front row of the balcony with a clear view of the Steinway grand’s keyboard, its lovely, bowed lid, its hammers and strings. When Gabriela Montero sat down at the bench, I felt like one of the cherubim looking down on a saint.

And oh, the miracles that saint performed! I’m not knowledgeable enough to give you a scholarly discourse on her program (which included works by Chopin, Scarlatti, and a number of Spanish composers new to me), but I am human, with a human’s sensory apparatus, and I can at least try to tell you what it was like to have that extraordinary music wash over me.

Parts of my brain lit up that night that I’m sure had never lit up before. My body jigged against the back of my seat as if I were listening not to Classical music but Rock ‘n Roll. At the end of several pieces I couldn’t help but cry “Wow!” aloud—and in this I was not alone. Again and again such involuntary exclamations issued from the audience (that I was pleased to discover seemed just as unsophisticated as I).

Some of the glory of Montero’s performance derives from the contrast between her gentle, very human stage presence and the ungodly magnificence of the music that pours from her piano. She’s of average height. She has delicate, attractive features. But when her fingers touch the keys, she becomes something else, something possessed, passionate, as if she intended to burn herself up. You find yourself praying she will succeed, not miss a lick … and she doesn’t. There were times when the notes flew so fast I couldn’t see her hands, and then there were times when the notes came slowly, individually, a monk striking his bell, plangent, soulful.

And once, when the last note sounded on a piece so fiery and complex it left me feeling stunned, she turned to the audience and asked, “Why do we torture ourselves like this? I could be out on Chapel Road walking my dog.” That’s what’s so wonderful about Gabriela Montero, she’s so down-to-earth, so human, and yet so entirely divine.

When, finally, the concert was over, Montero had received her standing ovations and the crowd begun to exit the theater, I found myself outside in the cool night air utterly bedazzled. I don’t know how I found my car. I don’t know how I managed to get the car successfully onto Washington Street. It was when I realized I had my signal turned on for a right onto Dover—which, of course, is one-way the wrong way—that I shook my head and began trying to bring myself back down to earth.

All the long way home that night I had to keep reminding myself: Bill, you are driving. I probably shouldn’t be allowed out on the road after a night listening to Gabriela Montero play. And I felt so alive that night, and the next day too, more alive than I’ve felt in some time. That’s what great music does for you, that’s what a performance as astonishing as Montero’s does for you. And it’s so ephemeral! A precious piece of God’s glory sounds in a small auditorium in Easton, Maryland, is heard, and then is heard no more.

All of which is my way of saying it was a privilege to hear a musician of Montero’s stature play here in Talbot County. I will never forget it. And I thank the Prager family for bringing her here. I am so grateful that I get to live in a universe that produces gifts like hers.