The well-established English pianist Imogen Cooper was warmly received by the Steinway Society audience at Le Petit Trianon, San Jose on Sunday evening, March 22, 2009. Her recital was devoted largely to the work of Schubert, preceded by Bach in the first half, and Schoenberg in the second.
The first half of the program would have been heard to better advantage in one of the large halls in which Ms. Cooper customarily plays. Bach’s Partita No.2 in C minor, BWV 826, was firm and fully pedalled. To a listener, the biggest problem with this work is that after an interesting three-section Sinfonia, the Allemande, Corrente, and even the Sarabande, do not find Bach at his most memorable – a little more contrast in tempo between the Allemande and Corrente might have helped. But the final Rondeaux and Capriccio showed why this work retains its place in the repertory, with their spirited rhythms and leaps, and here Ms. Cooper achieved an irresistible momentum, even through the cerebral fugal writing, complete with inversions.
Schubert’s six Moments Musicaux, D.780, also sounded too heavy, with few revelations until we came to the final Allegretto, which was played altogether more softly and with a subtlety that we could appreciate as we were invited into the pianist’s world. One remembers especially the magical modulation from A flat to E major, and the serene pp of the Trio.
Surprisingly, it was Schoenberg’s Six Little Pieces, Op.19, that inspired the most completely successful performance of the evening, with delicate and fastidious attention to detail in an affectionate presentation of these miniatures, poised in the atonal no-man’s-land between the composer’s early decadent romanticism and his eventual rigorous serialism. The first piece was quiet, with a few tender melodic phrases and ppp flutterings, while the second was notable for its insistent use of thirds in an otherwise atonal composition (Alban Berg used this as the model for the second of his Op.5 clarinet pieces). The legato third piece came over well, with its forte right hand over pianissimo left hand, and the lively fourth and fifth pieces lightened the mood. Ironically, in view of the high volume level we heard in other works, the last line of number four could have been more martellato, and the final fff note could have been louder! The work closed with the funereal homage to Mahler, with soft chords in fourths, and occasional chromatic murmurs, before the final expiry of breath on a bottom A flat. This left the pianist also in an apparently expired position over the bass notes.
As we waited to applaud, it was subito Schubert, and Ms. Cooper had launched into the posthumous C minor Sonata, D.958, of which she gave an assured performance. The louder parts still tended to be played rather concerto-style, but there were many tender moments in the best Schubertian spirit, such as in the meandering melody, eventually decorated by soft chromatic scales, before the first movement recapitulation, and in the infectious skipping melody of the finale, with its delicious switch to a B major interlude.
The encore was also notable for introducing us to not one, but sixteen less familiar works of Schubert, a set of German Dances in which Ms. Cooper reveled in the variety of slow, skittish, loud, quiet, rippling, hesitating, and so forth, before the rousing climax.
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[David Beech, an amateur clarinetist, pianist and clavichordist, is a music lover of broad experience and taste, and is a frequent contributor as a guest reviewer in this column.]
