Gabriela Montero, who played piano as part of a quartet of musicians at the inauguration of President Barack Obama this month, has claimed the group made the right decision in using recorded music at the ceremony.
The Venezuelan virtuoso told the Associated Press that it was cold and windy ahead of the service, which caused several keys on her piano to stick and prevented it from producing an adequate amount of sound.
Tuning was also an issue and as such the decision was taken to have a pre-recorded version of the piece they were playing, Air and Simple Gifts by John Williams, pumped through speakers in order to drown out the live sound.
"We decided that it would have been a disaster if we went out there with that cold, with the wind and played our instruments out of tune," Montero remarked.
The quartet also featured Anthony McGill on the clarinet, Yo-Yo Ma on the cello and Itzhak Perlman on the violin.
It was not the first time that Perlman had collaborated with Williams, having worked with him on the Oscar-winning score of Schindler's List in 1993.
