Portland Piano International Opens Its 49th Season with Gabriela Montero
Scarlatti and Soler to Albéniz, Granados, Chopin, and Liszt — an afternoon in Spain that moves between blinding sunlight and deep shadow, and a fresh way into music you may think you already know.
PORTLAND, OR — Portland Piano International (PPI) opens its 49th season — “Seven Sundays of Discovery,” curated by Guest Artistic Curator Boris Giltburg — by inviting audiences into a whole afternoon in Spain. On Sunday, October 25 at 4:00 PM in Lincoln Performance Hall, Venezuelan pianist and composer Gabriela Montero performs Sunlight in Iberia, a program that follows three centuries of composers drawn to the Iberian Peninsula — its dance and its silence, its light and its shade — and offers a fresh way into music many listeners already love.
For Montero, this is the music of her mother tongue. Born in Caracas, she plays the Iberian idiom as native ground and has spent her career championing the Latin American voice in classical music. She brings the all-Iberian program to Portland as part of a season that also carries it to London’s Barbican and New York’s 92NY. One of the world’s most celebrated musical improvisers, Montero brings that same spontaneity to the written page — in her hands these masterworks sound freshly discovered, never museum-kept. The New York Times has praised her “crackling rhythmic brio, subtle shadings, steely power.”
The program’s real subject is a tension Spain has always held — between blinding external light and a quiet, sacred inner world. On the bright side are the dances: the sonatas of Scarlatti and Soler fly and leap with the plucking of a folk guitar; Albéniz turns the piano into a stomping, castanet-clicking flamenco in “Triana” and “Sevilla”; and Chopin’s Bolero refracts a Spanish dance through Parisian glamour. In the shade lie the inner voices — Granados’s Valses poéticos dreaming of Spain, and the hushed “music of silence” of Frederic Mompou and Alicia de Larrocha, the legendary Catalan pianist heard here as a composer. Liszt’s Spanish Rhapsody holds both at once, setting the brooding La folía against the exuberant Jota aragonesa — the light-and-shadow paradox at the heart of the afternoon. It is the kind of program the season is built on — a genuine reason to be in the hall.
Beyond the Concert Hall
Every recital opens with a free Pre-Concert Conversation 45 minutes beforehand, hosted by executive director Bill Crane and resident musicologist Amelia de Vaal. Montero also leads a free public master class through PPI’s Beyond the Score program on Monday, October 26 at 7:00 PM at Portland Piano Company.
Gabriela Montero, Program
Domenico Scarlatti — Sonata in C-Sharp Minor, K. 247
Antonio Soler — Sonata in C-Sharp Minor, R. 21
Antonio Soler — Sonata in G Major, R. 45
Domenico Scarlatti — Sonata in G Major, K. 427
Frédéric Chopin — Scherzo op. 39 No. 3 in C Sharp Minor
Enrique Granados — 8 Valses Poéticos
Isaac Albéniz — “Triana” from Iberia, Book II
— Intermission —
Isaac Albéniz — “Sevilla” from Suite española, Op. 47
Frédéric Chopin — Bolero, Op. 19
Alicia De Larrocha — Sueño Infantil
Alicia De Larrocha — Minué Triste
Frederic Mompou — Cançó i dansa No. 6
Frédéric Chopin — Prelude, Op. 28, No. 15
Enrique Granados — “Andaluza” from 12 Danzas españolas, Op. 37
Franz Liszt — Spanish Rhapsody
Tickets & Information: portlandpiano.org/gabriela-montero or 503.228.1388. Student and Arts for All tickets are available at the door, subject to availability.
Venue: Lincoln Performance Hall, Portland State University, Portland, OR
Date & Time: Sunday, October 25, 2026 · 4:00 PM
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About Gabriela Montero
Gabriela Montero is a Venezuelan-born pianist and composer acclaimed for the emotional directness of her playing and the breadth of her artistry. She began piano at four and gave her concerto debut at eight in Caracas, later studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where she is now a Fellow. She appears with major orchestras and in leading halls worldwide — among them Carnegie Hall, the Vienna Konzerthaus, and the Sydney Opera House — and serves on the piano faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music. A Latin GRAMMY Award winner and GRAMMY nominee, she is also a composer whose works — the tone poem Ex Patria, the “Latin” Concerto (Piano Concerto No. 1), and Babel — reflect a lifelong engagement with her homeland. A committed human-rights advocate, she is the first Honorary Consul of Amnesty International and the 2024 recipient of the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent. More at gabrielamontero.com.
About Portland Piano International
Portland Piano International has presented more than 260 pianists in recital and through outreach activities. Some of the greatest pianists in the world of music have played for Portland audiences because of this organization. While pianists have many opportunities to play the concerto repertoire, this is one of only a handful of recital series that remains devoted to the solo piano recital. Portland Piano International is a vital part of Portland’s quality cultural life and has consistently garnered praise from both the local and national media, heralded a “consistently brilliant Piano Recital Series” (Willamette Week) and “one of this city’s musical treasures” (The Oregonian).
Media Contact
Jonathan Eifert · 347.741.1913 · jonathan.eifert@goldsoundmedia.com
High-resolution photos available upon request.