In last week's tracing of Imogen Cooper's "Music that changed me," I always intended to pluck some samples of Dame Imogen's piano-playing from the SC archive

by Ken

I got so caught up in arranging our musical examples to enable us to trace Dame Imogen's five choices for "Music that changed me" that I just never got around to plucking those samples out of the archive. So, here are some samples.

MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 23 in A, K. 488:
i. Allegro

Piano Concerto No. 9, in E-flat, K. 271:
ii. Andantino

Northern Sinfonia, Imogen Cooper, piano and cond. Avie Records, recorded live in Hall One of the Sage Gateshead, Gateshead (across the River Tyne from Newcastle-upon-Tyne), England, Oct. 18-20, 2005

Try listening to just the orchestral opening of each of these concerto movements, up to the entrance of the piano. Of course, in the case of the first movement of K. 488, this means the entire exposition, and just listen to the way the conductor shapes the music: so flowing yet soulful, unfussy yet singing in gripping musical poetry.

Then listen to what happens when the soloist enters, taking over the material the orchestra has just introduced us to. Isn't it devilish how uncannily the two statements dovetail, and yet they're not quite the same, because, after all, an orchestra and a solo piano don't "hear" music exactly the same way -- and so the working out of the whole movement is set up: I think the basic reason I love Mozart's piano concertos so much is that somehow or other his unique dramatic imagination oversees them in much the say it does his great operas -- and I realize that that statement of the exposition of K. 488 could be the work of a great opera conductor.

All these musical roles are being played, of course, by one person: our pianist-conductor. Of course K. 488 is a masterpiece, but it isn't one of the Mozart piano concertos I eternally hunger for. Performed this way, though . . . .

K. 271, however, is one of the Mozart piano concertos I just plain adore. It doesn't come competely out of nowhere; we can hear intimations of it in any number of works Mozart composed shortly before it, including its predecesor, the Concerto No. 8 in C, K. 246. And yet, K. 271 explodes in at least my consciousness that had never existed before and maybe would never exist again -- except that Mozart kept performing this feat over and over. There are so many great slow movements among the Mozart piano concertos, and once again in her dual role as conductor and soloist Cooper leaves no doubt that the Andantino of K. 271 can stand with any of its successors.


GETTING INTIMATE WITH BRAHMS

One of the subjects we've been pursuing over the last couple of years is Brahms's fascinating relationship to the musical forms he composed in. We tend to think of them, sloppily, as molds into which he poured music, when it's usually the other way around: Out of his imagination came music for which, each time out, he invented or at least reinvented a form. The "intermezzo" seems to have been especially precious to him; the only way I know of defining what it meant to him is by listening to the music created in its name.

There isn't much music more intimate than the sets of piano pieces Brahms created in his late return to solo-piano writing, Opp. 116-19, among which there are no fewer than 14 intermezzos -- and a sprinkling of another form, capriccios, that also mean whatever he made them. The seven "fantasias" of Op. 116 consist of four intermezzos and three capriccios, and here we hear Cooper creating little miracles of two of one bracketing one of the other.

BRAHMS: Fantasias (7), Op 116:
ii. Intermezzo in A minor

iii. Capriccio in G minor
[at 2:56] iv. Intermezzo in E

Imogen Cooper, piano. BBC Music Magazine, recorded live in Wigmore Hall, May 28, 1994


THEN THERE'S THE REMARKABLE (AND EXTENSIVE)
PARTNERSHIP WITH BARITONE WOLFGANG HOLZMAIR

"My collaboration with Wolfgang Holzmair goes back over 20 years. We got together through a joint manager at the time and had an instant musical rapport despite our different backgrounds. I was taken not only by the sheer beauty of his voice, then a rather silvery high baritone, but also by his passionate attention to text and its meaning, which ultimately dictated all his decisions. We have never needed to rehearse for long hours and have never argued. He is also not the sort of singer who needs support and advice over vocal matters, which is good because I do not know so much, still, about the process of singing -- and he always encourages his partner to really be that, a partner, not an accompanist (a word I dislike)."

-- from the "Lieder and chamber music" section of Imogen
Cooper's website (2010 photo by Benjamin Ealovega)

From Schubert's great narrative song cycles, for example, we've heard the end of No. 1 and the start of No. 2.

SCHUBERT: Die schöne Müllerin, D. 795:
No. 20, "Des Baches Wiegenlied" ("The Stream's Lullaby")

Rest you well, rest you well,
close your eyes!
Wanderer, you tired one,
you are home.
Faithfulness is here,
you shall lie with me,
till the sea drinks
the little streams dry.

I'll give you a cool bed
on soft mud
in the blue crystalline
bedroom.
Come to me, come to me,
whatever can lull,
lap and lull
my boy to sleep!

When a hunting horn sounds,
from the green wood,
I will gush and rush
all around you.
Do not look within,
blue flowers!
You will make my sleeper's
dreams so troubled.

Away, away
from the millpath,
bad girl, lest
your shadow wake him!
Throw me here
your fine kerchief,
that I may keep his eyes covered over.

Good night! Good night!
Till everything awakes,
sleep away your joy,
sleep away your sorrow.
The full moon is rising,
the mist gives way,
and the sky above,
how broad it is!

-- German text by Wilhelm Müller, translation by William Mann

Wolfgang Holzmair, baritone; Imogen Cooper, piano. Philips, recorded in the Mozarteum, Salzburg, November 1997

SCHUBERT: Winterreise (Winter Journey), D. 911:
No. 1, "Gute Nacht" ("Good Night")

A stranger I arrived here,
a stranger I go hence.
Maytime was good to me
with many a bunch of flowers.
The girl spoke of love,
her mother even of marriage.
The girl spoke of love,
her mother even of marriage.
Now the world is dismal,
the path veiled in snow.
Now the world is dismal,
the path veiled in snow.

For my journey I cannot
choose my own time;
I must pick the way myself
through this darkness.
My mooncast shadow acts
as my companion,
my mooncast shadow acts
as my companion,
and on the white meadow
I look for deer's footprints,
and on the white meadow
I look for deer's footprints.

Why should I stay longer,
until they drive me away?
Let stray dogs howl
outside the master's house.
Love loves to wander,
God made it so,
from one to the next,
God made it so.
Love loves to wander,
fine sweetheart, good night!
From one to the next,
fine sweetheart, good night!

I will not disturb your dreams:
that would spoil your rest.
You must not hear my footsteps --
softly, softly shut the doors.
I shall write as I leave
on the door for you: good night,
so that you may see
I have been thinking of you.
I shall write as I leave
on the door for you: good night,
so that you may see
I have been thinking of you,
I have been thinking of you.

-- German text by Wilhelm Müller, translation by William Mann

Wolfgang Holzmair, baritone; Imogen Cooper, piano. Philips, recorded in the Grosser Saal of the Mozarteum, Salzburg, November 1994