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

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

Radu Lupu (1945-2022) [3]: We are going to hear more Lupu, but I'm afraid we're sticking awhile longer with the "opening sections" of Schumann's Humoreske

SCHUMANN: Humoreske, Op. 20: opening sections --

i. Einfach (Simple)
ii. Sehr rasch und leicht (Very quick and light)
-- Noch rascher (Still quicker)
-- Erstes Tempo (First tempo)
-- Wie im Anfang (As at the beginning)
iii. Hastig (Hurried)
-- Nach und nach immer lebhafter and stärker (Bit by bit ever livelier and stronger)
-- Wie vorher (As before)

[i. 0:01; ii. 1:59, 2:53, 4:19, 5:07; iii. 5:57, 7:51, 9:09]
Radu Lupu, piano. Live performance in Amsterdam, May 29, 1983

[i. 0:01; ii. 1:59, 2:53, 3:55, 5:11; iii. 5:55, 7:38, 8:44]
Vladimir Horowitz, piano. Live performance in Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C., Apr. 22, 1979

[i. 0:01; ii. 1:31, 2:25, 3:55, 4:43; iii. 5:18, 7:24, 8:50]
Alicia de Larrocha, piano. RCA, recorded at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York City, Nov. 8-9 & 11, 1994

[i. 0:01; ii. 1:15, 2:03, 3:15, 4:00; iii. 4:28, 6:09, 7:30]
Imogen Cooper, piano. BBC Music, recorded live in Wigmore Hall, London, May 28, 1994

A TIP: If you continue reading, a feeling may gradually overtake you that we're never going to come back to these musical examples. Surprisingly, this is not true! At the end, there's a section suggesting kinds of things to consider in listening just to the 38-bar "Einfach" section reproduced in its entirety up top.

by Ken

Some of you may have noticed that the rendering by the fine English pianist Imogen Cooper of what I'm calling "opening sections" of Schumann's Humoreske which we heard earlier today in "post under construction" form ("Before we hear Schumann's Humoreske, might we wonder: What the heck is a 'Humoreske'?") was a Sunday Classics "encore presentation," dating back to last summer, when the news of Imogen C (born August 1949) becoming Dame Imogen occasioned a series of posts -- specifically, in the July 25 "post tease" "A special artist finds her way into our Brahms piano party."


UM, WHY (AGAIN) ARE WE LISTENING TO THE HUMORESKE?

[post under construction]Before we hear Schumann's Humoreske, might we wonder: What the heck is a "Humoreske"?

The "Einfach" ("Simple") opening of Schumann's Humoreske

SCHUMANN: Humoreske, Op. 20: opening sections

i. Einfach (Simple) [at 0:01]
ii. Sehr rasch und leicht (Very quick and light) [at 1:15]
iii. Hastig (Hurried) [at 4:28]

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

Humoreske [humoresque]. Term used by Schumann as the title for an extended piece (op. 20) and by later composers for pieces of a relaxed and genial kind.

-- Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music, 1st ed.

humoresque  n.   Music.   A whimsical or light-spirited composition.   [German Humoreske, from Humor, Humor, from English HUMOR]

-- American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd ed.

by Ken

Readers who've been around for a while may recall that I don't turn to The Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia for elucidation of musical forms with great hope, and once again I think my trusty old American Heritage Dictionary (3rd ed.) does better.

Basically, what Norton/Grove has to offer is this: So Schumann wrote this Op. 20 Humoreske, by which he meant, well, whatever the heck he meant, and some later composers composed Humoresken and they seemed to think the term referred to a piece "of a relaxed and genial kind." Note that N/G doesn't exactly commit Schumann to this understanding of the term, which is just as well, because even in Imogen Cooper's performance, which is unusual in honestly honoring Schumann's "Simple" and "Very quick and light" markings for the previous sections (you get the sense that she knows quite well that in the course of the piece's 25-30-minute duration it will encompass all sorts of music that isn't remotely "simple" or "light"), by the time we reach the "Hurried" marking at 4:28 we're in musical terrain that surely isn't fairly described as "relaxed," and almost surely not as "genial" either.

AHD too wants us thinking in "light-spirited" directions, but kudos to the AHD definer for giving us "whimsical," almost always a good descriptor for the musical imaginings of Schumann, who tapped so freely and abundantly into one of music history's most fantastic and diverse imaginations, so often allowing his inspirations not only to contrast but to transform and overlap in the most, well, imaginative ways.


NOW POSTED: "Radu Lupu (1945-2022) [3]: We are going to hear more Lupu, but I'm afraid we're sticking awhile longer with the 'opening sections' of Schumann's Humoreske"

#

Still not ready for the imagined "regular post," so here's some more-substantive post-teasing

"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)

by Ken

Like it says in the title, I'm still not where I need/want to be for the post I was projecting ("Post tease: A special artist finds her way into our Brahms piano party"). I thought I knew what I needed to do, and I sort of did. I may, however, have underestimated (by several thousand percent?) what I would have to do to get there. So I thought I'd tease you all a bit more with some of the audio files that have been waiting patiently for public airing.

And an obvious way to start, since as I mentioned I first encountered Imogen Cooper as a song accompanist, so good that I was riveted -- meaning not that she was stealing attention from her partner, specifically the fine baritone Wolfgang Holzmair, but that she was supporting him so ably while digging out everything she could about what the piano part could do to further the experience of the song. We also learn above that she doesn't much like the word "accompanist," much preferring "partner" -- and while I've got a whole bunch of Holzmair-Cooper song clips ready to go, I thought we might start this round of post-teasing with two songs that are especially challenging and exposed for the pianist.


FROM SCHUBERT'S GREAT NARRATIVE SONG CYCLES,
LET'S HEAR THE END OF NO. 1 AND THE START OF NO. 2

Post tease: A special artist finds her way into our Brahms piano party

Imogen Cooper (as of June "Dame Imogen")  [photo by Benjamin Ealovega]

SCHUMANN: Humoreske, Op. 20: opening movements --
i. Einfach (Simple) -- Sehr rasch und leicht (Very quick and light)
ii. Hastig (Hurried) [at 4:28]


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

by Ken

It's funny how things come together. As I'm going to explain in the main post, when I started thinking about Imogen Cooper, it had nothing to do, at least nothing directly to do, with our present exploration of Brahms's path to and through the intermezzo genre (most recent installment: Wednesday's "'It's a gift' (cont.): A bit more about operatic intermezzos, and a lot more about 19th-century-style instrumental ones"). And then, somehow, it did. With a minimum of intention on my part, it practically crashed into our Brahms piano party.

When we get to something more like a proper post, you're going to be presented with something I happen to have written a few days ago recalling the experience of picking up almost much at random a CD I've had for goodness-knows-how-long, "of several sets of short piano pieces by Schumann and Brahms played by Imogen Cooper -- a British pianist I've always enjoyed, having first encountered her on records as a song accompanist, and such a good one that she grabbed my attention." After which --

I fired the disc up, starting with Schumann's Humoreske, a suite of humoresques, and from the first note there it was: the direct outreach of a human spirit reaching out to whoever might be at the other end of the electronic pathway. It was the very thing, I realized, that had attracted me in everything I'd heard her play."

And those opening numbers of Schumann's Op. 20 we've just heard are the very thing I heard.


SO HOW DID THIS COME TO CONCERN US TODAY?