The outspoken Venezuelan pianist also criticises El Sistema, José Antonio Abreu and Diego Matheuz.

The pianist Gabriela Montero has hit out at Gustavo Dudamel accusing him of “collaboration” with a corrupt Venezuelan government regime. In an interview with the German newspaper Die Welt she takes aim against the famous El Sistema education programme, its founders and its current figureheads. “Today, El Sistema has become a corrupted instrument of power and also a lie,” she says.

The Caracas-born pianist, who was in Sydney last week for a sold out concert at the Opera House’s Utzon Room, has been one of her country’s most vocal critics in recent years. Montero, who now lives in Los Angeles, left Venezuela in 2006 as a result of what she describes as feeling unsafe “because of the threat of kidnapping and murder”. Although she wasn’t a Sistema student, her debut as 8-year-old pianist took place with the Simon Bolivar Orchestra conducted by the organisation’s founder José Antonio Abreu, who she describes as “a very good conductor, no matter what you think of El Sistema”. Since then, however, she feels the organisation has become overly politicised. “When El Sistema was...