Pianist Gabriela Martinez ends Santa Rosa Symphony season on jazzy note

Pianist Gabriela Martinez was born in Caracas, Venezuela, into a family boasting five generations of female pianists who trace their roots back to Spain. Learning to play piano was as natural to her as learning to tie her shoes.

“I started studying with my mom at her school,” she said in a phone interview from her temporary home in Portland, Ore. “Learning music was very interactive, and I was also learning about composers and history and theory.”

In Caracas, Martinez grew up surrounded by nonstop orchestras and classical music concerts. She played her first piano concerto when she was 6 and made her debut with the Simon Bolivar Orchestra when she was 10.

“I’m always so in awe when I go home and play with them,” she said of the orchestra named after her country’s national hero. “There is always a concert there, and it’s always sold out. Everyone wants to listen to classical music.”

Now 32 with a 1-year-old daughter of her own, Martinez will make her debut with the Santa Rosa Symphony under Music Director Bruno Ferrandis this weekend in a program that features Gershwin’s beloved Piano Concerto in F, along with two works inspired by Spain: Debussy’s “Ibéria” and Ravel’s “Rapsodie espagnole.” Three dance episodes from Bernstein’s “On the Town” musical open the “Jazzy Impressions” program, the final concert series of the 2015-’16 season.

Gershwin’s 1925 concerto, which was premiered with the composer himself at the piano keys, stirred up a bit of controversy when it was premiered by the New York Philharmonic.

“Stravinsky loved that piece, and he thought it was genius,” Ferrandis said. “But Prokofiev detested it.”

The work somehow manages to straddle two worlds, synthesizing the structure of a classical concerto with the improvisational feeling of jazz.

“This (the concerto) was commissioned in 1924 when Gershwin had no training on how to orchestrate,” Martinez said. “So he bought books on theory and became self-taught in everything that he needed to write this piece.”

Although Gershwin wrote his ground-breaking “Rhapsody in Blue” a year earlier, that work was more rooted in jazz and the orchestration was done by Ferde Grofé, composer of the “Grand Canyon Suite.”

In the Gershwin concerto, the orchestra has a very important part to play. Martinez compared the collaborative effort between soloist and accompaniment to the give-and-take of chamber music.

“It has a very special, unique freshness and poetry to it,” Martinez said. “It’s halfway between classical music and jazz ... It maintains a feeling of rubato (flexible tempo), but always has a constant blues beat and pulse to it.”

The brash first movement offers a study in contrasts, with a noisy opening that dissolves into a lyrical, delicate theme. But the heart of the work is the bluesy second movement, featuring a string of beautiful cadenzas and intricate solos for the winds and brass.

“Every instrument really gets to explore the melodies,” she said. “It’s really interesting to hear the back and forth between the orchestra and the piano.”

For the finale, Gershwin weaves themes from the first two movements together with new material to create a driving, rhythmic showpiece for both piano and orchestra.

“It’s just this energetic, huge movement,” she said. “It has lots of references to ragtime.”

The challenge for Martinez is to make sure she stays true to what the composer wrote and the spirit of the work.

“A lot of Gershwin’s music has the improvisational feeling ... but he’s very specific and writes in everything that he wants,” she said. “So it has a lot of freedom, yet all the cadenzas are written out, with tempo changes, dynamics and timing.”

Martinez and her family left Venezuela when she was 12 so that she could study piano at Juilliard in New York City.

“I did the pre-college program ... then stayed for undergrad and a master’s in musical performance,” she said. “I’m still working on a doctorate in performance from Halle, Germany. I just love learning, and I never want to stop.”

Martinez is married to an attorney and normally lives on the Upper West Side of New York, but she moved to Portland for a year so that her husband could clerk for a judge.

“It’s been a fun year of adventure,” she said. “And the food carts are amazing.”

When she arrives in Sonoma County for the first time, Martinez said she wants to explore the region’s renowned red wines and artisan cheeses.

“I’m a cheese person, but I don’t discriminate, and I love food in general,” she said.

“I recently discovered Cowgirl Creamery. I love their Mt. Tam ... It’s delicious.”

Staff writer Diane Peterson can be reached at 521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @dianepete56.