SC fave Imogen Cooper's choices of "Music that changed me" not only genuinely did change her life but make glorious listening for us

[ALERT: This evocative poster isn't entirely relevant to our topic.]

We hear the implacable Rigoletto Prelude -- our formal invitation to what we'll hear Imogen Cooper describe as the opera's "dark rich vistas" -- led first by Rafael Kubelik, from his beautifully conducted La Scala-DG Rigoletto of July 1964; and then at higher voltage by Georg Solti, from his June 1963 Rigoletto made in Rome with the RCA Italiana Chorus and Orchestra.

"For some reason the Evening Standard photographer was there, and there's a photograph in the family album of me with big round cheeks, wearing a polka-dot taffeta dress, standing smiling on the steps up to the Crush Bar."

-- Dame Imogen Cooper, in BBC Music Magazine's "Music
that changed me" feature for October 2022, on attending a
Covent Garden Rigoletto in the early 1950s -- at age three!

by Ken

Yes, yes, we've got all kinds of business pending, so rest assured that everything that's "in the works" is still there, and in most cases growing even as we (and they) wait. Meanwhile, this is an idea that has been gnawing at me every since my October issue of BBC Music Magazine gasped its exhausted way into my mailbox after its arduous Atlantic crossing -- arriving, it always seems to me, about the same time the next month's issue has begun circulating on the other side of the ocean.

"Music that changed me," I should explain, is a feature that appears on the magazine page inside the back cover of each issue, where a wonderfully nutty assortment of folks -- professional musicians, folks known for work in other fields with a known side-interest in music, and folks known for work in other fields whose musical predilections are wholly unknown to most of us -- share with an assigned interviewer a selection of pieces of music that have, well, changed them. (Do I have to add that many of the folks who are bona fide "celebrities" on their side of the pond are entirely unknown to me? This can be fun too, because even as I'm learning about their musical passions I'm busy trying to figure out who the heck they are.)

I confess that "Music that has changed me" has become a feature I check out fairly early in my perusal of the magazine just plucked out of the mailbox. And certainly my interest shot up when I saw that for October the subject was Imogen Cooper, a pianist whose deep culture, musical sophistication, and passion for clear musical communication have been marked here on multiple occasions. It was a special pleasure to see her name appear in the 2021 Queen's Birthday Honours list, making her Dame Imogen (a form of address she doesn't seem to have much use for).


DAME IMOGEN'S "MUSIC THAT CHANGED ME" NOT
JUST MEETS BUT WELL EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS

Dame Imogen and interviewer Amanda Holloway fashioned it into a remarkably full and absorbing sketch of a musical autobiography, in which we can get a sense of the strands of development that developed her into such a welcoming and satisfying artist. We really get a feel for the way each of the musical encounters she shares really did change her life. Even more fun: Each of those musical encounters sets up for some really satisfying listening. It's been kicking around my head since I first read the piece that it might be fun to track it and actuallly listen to the music.

And it all begins with a young Imogen Cooper's first Covent Garden outing: a performance of Rigoletto at the ripe old age of -- wait for it! -- three!

#1: "Rigoletto was a slightly bloodthirsty choice for a three-year-old! I wasn't scared but it did open dark rich vistas and above all there was this unbelievable music"

This is where I have to partly-apologize for the post-opening graphic, of that evocative (at least to me) Covent Garden Rigoletto performance poster, promoting a new production by Franco Zeffirelli in February 1964. But as Dame Imogen makes clear, her Rigoletto dates dates back more than a decade further, to the early '50s, meaning first that what she saw was a production by Julius Gellner that served from 1947 until the launch of Zeffirelli's production in 1964. My guess is that she saw one of the five Rigolettos Covent Garden put on in December 1952, several months past her third birthday, on August 29.

At the age of three I was taken to Covent Garden to see Rigoletto, which was a slightly bloodthirsty choice for a three-year-old! I wasn't scared but it did open dark rich vistas and above all there was this unbelievable music. One of the things I most remember was the aria 'Caro nome'. I don’t know who sang it then (this was the early '50s), but if I had to choose a recording I would go for Maria Callas. For some reason the Evening Standard photographer was there and there’s a photo in the family album of me with big round cheeks, wearing a polka-dot taffeta dress, standing smiling on the steps up to the Crush Bar.

Now my guess is that Dame Imogen's Gilda was the German coloratura Ilse Hollweg (1922-1990), who sang all five Rigoletto performances Covent Garden offered in December 1952, some three months after Imogen turned the Big Three, on August 29. My attention is directed to those performances by process of elimination. Covent Garden had served up three Rigoletto in June 1952, but even at the time of the last one she was more than two months away from her third birthday, and wouldn't you think the occasion would be remembered in Cooper family lore as an outing of the two-year-old Imogen? After that there were no Covent Garden Rigolettos until a single performance on Nov. 5, 1954, when Imogen was a grown-up five-plus, which is really different from three!

If it was one of the December 1952 performances young Imogen saw, the cast was headed by the reliable Italian baritone Paolo Silveri (1922-2001) in the title role -- though the performances were in fact in English -- along with Hollweg and the British tenor William McAlpine (1922-2004) as the Duke of Mantua. The conductor was someone who would soon enough become well-known in the music world: John Pritchard, then 31.

The last of the December 1952 Rigolettos, by the way, took place on the 31st. (And by the way, whichever performance it was young Imogen attended, it was definitely at night. All 31 performances of the Gellner production between 1947 and 1962 were evening performances.) Might not New Year's Eve have been an occasion when an Evening Standard photographer might turn up at Covent Garden? Clearly, whoever it was Imogen saw as Gilda, she left some sort of impression, though I find it interesting that choosing a recording now, Dame Imogen went to Callas -- no coloratura chirper. Let's hear her "Caro nome."

VERDI: Rigoletto: Act I, Scene 2, Recit. and aria, Gilda, "Gualtier Maldè, nome di lui sì amato" . . . "Caro nome che il mio cor"

GILDA, sheltered daughter of the court jester RIGOLETTO, after an unexpected, giddy-making encounter -- in the enclosed courtyard of her own home! -- with a dashing young man who has followed her home from church, passing himself off as a poor student named Gualtier Maldé, but in reality the lecherous DUKE OF MANTUA, has had her nurse GIOVANNA escort him out through the house. She remains on the terrace.

Recitative: Gualtier Maldè . . . name of him so loved,
be engraved on my enamored heart!

Aria: Dear name which first
caused my heart to leap,
you must always recall
the delights of love to me!
With my thoughts my desire
will always fly to you,
and my last dying breath,
dearest name, will be yours.
With my thoughts my desire &c. . .
[She continues in the same strain.] Gualtier Maldè!
[The courtiers of the DUKE OF MANTUA, masked and headed by RIGOLETTO's neighbor COUNT CEPRANO, gradually gather outside the house.]
Dear name which first &c . . .
[Her voice can be heard singing throughout the dialogue that follows.]
BORSA: There she is.
COUNT CEPRANO: Just look at her!
COURTIERS: Oh, how beautiful she is!
MARULLO: Like some fairy or angel!
[As GILDA retires to her room, her voice gradually fades away, repeating the name Gualtier Maldè.]
COURTIERS: She's the mistress of Rigoletto.
BORSA, MARULLO, CEPRANO, and the COURTIERS:
Oh, how beautiful she is!

Maria Callas (s), Gilda; Renato Ercolani (t), Borsa; Carlo Forti (bs), Count Ceprano; William Dickie (b), Marullo; Chorus and Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Tullio Serafin, cond. EMI, recorded at La Scala, Sept. 3-16, 1955

It believe Ilse Hollweg did record "Caro nome." I know she was featured on a seven-inch LP of German-language Rigoletto excerpts. But I don't have it. So much for the thought of setting her recording alongside Callas's. One thing we could hear -- indeed, have heard -- is Zerbinetta's showpiece aria from Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos in its original, even-more-difficult version.

R. STRAUSS: Ariadne auf Naxos (original version), Op. 60:
"Grossmächtige Prinzessin" (Zerbinetta's aria)


Ilse Hollweg (s), Zerbinetta; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham, cond. Live performance at the Edinburgh Festival, Aug. 23, 1950

(Hollweg made a number of recordings with Beecham, like the soprano solos in Grieg's Peer Gynt incidental music and Beecham's own Handel suite Love in Bath, and Blondchen in EMI's 1956 Abduction from the Seraglio.

#2: "In the girls' hostel in Paris, when meals were done for the day I took the wind-up gramophone out of the cupboard and listened to whatever I could. I discovered the Beethoven String Quartets, particularly the slow movement of Op. 132, 'Heilige Dankgesang' "

It's funny how life has a way of overlapping and crisscrossing. One of the other projects I'm working on for the blog involves Otto Nicolai's operatic rendering of Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, and at one point I was perusing the long and interesting booklet essay supplied for Decca's recording conducted by Rafael Kubelik by the well-known music critic and musicologist Martin Cooper, and I must have segued back into Imogen Cooper activity and was reminded -- as we all will be in a moment -- that she tells us that her father, being a working music critic, regularly received records for review.

Yup. I never realized! Now I'm quite charmed to reread to read her BBC Music Magazine recollection of the period following her Rigoletto outing.

"It may have been around then, as I was clambering on the piano stool and playing tunes with one finger, that I decided to be a pianist. My older siblings played instruments but they all gave it up after a while, particularly when I nailed my colours to the mast. I doggedly stuck with it and here I am after all these years."

After which, she tells us,

"we jump forward to my years studying in Paris, from 12 to 18, when I lived in a hostel for girls training to be engineers, run by nuns. As well as an upright piano in my small room there was a wind-up gramophone with a stack of LPs in the dining room. When meals were finished for the day I took it out of the cupboard and listened to whatever I could. That’s where I discovered the Beethoven String Quartets, particularly the slow movement of Op. 132 in A minor, ‘Heilige dankgesang', played by the Amadeus Quartet, which really hit me amidships."

I think it's safe to venture that the Amadeus recording that hit her amidships was the performance in their catalogue-staple DG Beethoven quartet cycle. So, let's hear the "Heilige Dankgesang."

BEETHOVEN: String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132:
iii. Heilige Dankgesang eines Genesenden an die Gottheit (Holy song of thanks of a convalescent to the Divinity), in Lydian mode: Molto adagio et al.


Amadeus Quartet (Norbert Brainin and Siegmund Nissel, violins; Peter Schidlof, viola; Martin Lovett, cello). DG, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin, April 1962

By the way, if you want to hear the extraordinary Op. 132 in its entirety, there are a slew of complete performances on YouTube -- for example, a 2014 live video performance by the Ariel Quartet; another video performance by one of my favorite quartets, the Alban Berg, and beautiful recordings by the Quartetto Italiano and the late-reflowering Borodin Quartet.

#3: "Because my father was a critic he was sent new recordings to review every month, and one day he received some of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies by a fellow called Alfred Brendel. I heard the Second and thought instantly, 'I have got to find a way of
working with this man' "

As I was just noting, Dame Imogen clues us in that her father, as a critic, had a constant stream of records coming in, among which, now well along in her musical education and pianist training, her curiosity about an LP's worth of Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies "by a fellow called Alfred Brendel" would really change her life.

LISZT: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor


Alfred Brendel, piano. Vanguard Cardinal, recorded in Vienna, 1967

"I must have been 19 -- I'd finished the conservatoire, I'd played to people including Rubinstein, and I needed another spell of being with a teacher and being closely overseen.

"It happened that Brendel was coming to give a concert at the Austrian Institute and I went to hear him play Chopin and Schubert. Afterwards I said to him, 'I've got to work with you or I'll die,’ and he said, ‘Well, don't die. Why don't you come to me in Vienna?' "

And as we'll see in a moment, she did.

I think we can hear what so grabbed her in Brendel's playing of that supreme Hungarian Rhapsody. Clarity and logic are the qualities we might most expect to hear, and they're here in abundance, but there's still a fair amount of "rhapsody" in the playing -- and the technical clarity cleans out the gunk that so easily accumulates in this sort of music, leaving him lots of room for unforced, unexaggerated personal expression.

We've already heard Brendel's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, by the way, and also a couple of still earlier recordings of related works. First, the intimate, haunting Second Piano Concerto.

LISZT: Piano Concerto No. 2 in A


Alfred Brendel, piano; Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Michael Gielen, cond. Vox, recorded 1975

And then Liszt's storming arrangement for piano and orchestra of Schubert's grand solo-piano Wanderer Fantasy.

SCHUBERT: Wanderer Fantasy, D. 760 (orch. Liszt)


Alfred Brendel, piano; Vienna Volksoper Orchestra, Michael Gielen, cond. Vox, recorded c1963

#4: "After the overnight train journey, in Vienna's Brahmssaal I heard the Janáček Quartet playing Janáček’s Second String Quartet, 'Intimate Letters'. The quartet, not in their first youth, playing without scores, sat there having a conversation. It was extraordinary"

So Dame Imogen was off to Vienna, a long train trip in those days. And no sooner had she arrived than, before even meeting up with Brendel to begin her work with him, she had an immediate life-changing experience.

"I got on the train to Vienna, a long overnight journey in 1970, and I went to a concert in the evening in the Brahmssaal. I heard the Janáček Quartet playing Janáček’s Second String Quartet, 'Intimate Letters'. This quartet, not in their first youth, played without scores; they sat there having a conversation with each other. It was extraordinary and the experience marked the beginning of the period of work I did with Brendel."

Some readers will recall my fanatical attachment to the Janáček Quartet -- in Haydn and Dvořák, for example -- as it existed from 1947 up to the death of first violinist Jiří Trávníček in 1973. (In that time there was only one personnel change, at second violin: when Adolf Sýkora replaced Miroslav Matyáš, in 1952.)

In the two recordings of the Janáček Intimate Letters Quartet we're about to hear, I have no doubt that Dame Imogen would recognize that group she encountered so dramatically in 1970, "not in their first youth."

JANÁČEK: String Quartet No. 2, Intimate Letters:
i. Allegro et al.
ii. Andante et al.
iii. Moderato et al.
iv. Allegro et al.


[i. at 0:01; ii. at 6:22; iii. at 13:19; iv. at 19:56] Janáček Quartet (Jiří Trávníček and Adolf Sýkora, violins; Jiří Kratochvíl, viola; and Karel Krafka, cello). DG, recorded in the Beethoven-Saal, Hanover, Germany, Mar. 8-9, 1956 (mono)

[i. at 0:01; ii. at 6:29; iii. at 13:02; iv. at 19:14] Janáček Quartet (Jiří Trávníček and Adolf Sýkora, violins; Jiří Kratochvíl, viola; and Karel Krafka, cello). Supraphon, recorded in Supraphon studios, Prague, 1963 (stereo)

Note that neither of these is the recording listed in BBC Music Magazine, which is a 2021 release on the Centaur label by the current incarnation of the Janáček Quartet. I've heard only snippets from it, which sounded nice enough, and I mean to check out what the current Janáček Quartet is like. I'd like to think there's some continuity in the traditions of Czech string playing, and presumably some awareness of what their founding namesakes stood for as musicians. I'd be delighted to be pleasantly surprised.

On a technical note, I wish I had a better mp3 of the beautiful 1963 recording, but even in this form the stereo sound frequently has telling effect.

#5: "I was brought up Catholic and in my early 20s I was still going through an intense phase of belief. Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers were hugely important to me – they linked my faith to Europe, as opposed to what was effectively an opposition faith in an Anglican country"

Here at the end Dame Imogen has what for a lot us I think is a surprise, and a fascinating glimpse of a whole other side of her -- not to mention some pretty magnificent music, which I confess is not something I listen to a lot. I've chosen the culminating Magnificat for the breatheless stream of stunningly different musical episodes, which is why I've taken a fair amount of care in preparing both the texts and the audio file so we can keep track of where we are in the sequence.

I have a number of LP versions I'll be curious to go back to, but just this one CD version, which I think is quite beautiful except that the words don't seem to matter much to the performers, which I don't think is at all what Monteverdi had in mind.

Dame Imogen's selection here is a DVD with John Eliot Gardiner leading his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists. After the comments noted above, she notes:

"Ironically I’ve chosen an English recording by John Eliot Gardiner, but filmed in the Basilica di San Marco in 1990. I love this DVD because there’s a wonderful sense of play and mystery amid the grandiosity of that extraordinary building. I still dream of hearing it live in San Marco some day!"

MONTEVERDI: Vespro della Beata Vergine
(Vespers of the Blessed Virgin), 1610: Magnificat

La Capella Reial (vocal and instrumental ensemble); with the Chorus of the Centro Musica Antica di Padova; Jordi Savall, dir. Astrée, recorded in the Basilica palatina di Santa Barbara, Mantua, Italy, November 1988

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