A peerless interpreter of Classical and Romantic repertoire, Imogen Cooper is a world soloist, a distinguished accompanist and a dedicated chamber musician. Her most up-to-date public efficiency was as a part of a Schubertiade on the London Piano Pageant at Kings Place on 7 October. The night of piano duets noticed Imogen Cooper carry out with Katya Apekisheva, Charles Owen and Dominic Degavino, all three of whom have been taught by her up to now.
Right here, Imogen discusses the music that has formed her.
‘On the age of three I used to be taken to Covent Backyard to see Rigoletto, which was a barely bloodthirsty selection for a three-year-old! I wasn’t scared but it surely did open darkish wealthy vistas and above all there was this unbelievable music. One of many issues I most bear in mind was the aria ‘Caro nome’. I don’t know who sang it then (this was the early ’50s), but when I had to decide on a recording I might go for Maria Callas. For some motive the Night Normal [itals] photographer was there and there’s a photograph within the household album of me with massive spherical cheeks, carrying a polka-dot taffeta gown, standing smiling on the steps as much as the Crush Bar.
‘It might have been round then, as I used to be clambering on the piano stool and enjoying tunes with one finger, that I made a decision to be a pianist. My older siblings performed devices however all of them gave it up after some time, significantly once I nailed my colors to the mast. I doggedly caught with it and right here I’m in any case these years.
‘Subsequent, we bounce ahead to my years learning in Paris, from 12 to 18, once I lived in a hostel for ladies coaching to be engineers, run by nuns. In addition to an upright piano in my small room there was a wind-up gramophone with a stack of LPs within the eating room. When meals had been completed for the day I took it out of the cabinet and listened to no matter I might. That’s the place I found the Beethoven String Quartets, significantly the sluggish motion of Op. 132 in A minor, ‘Heilige dankgesang’, performed by the Amadeus Quartet, which actually hit me amidships.
As a result of my father was a critic he was despatched new recordings to evaluate each month, and at some point he acquired a few of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies by a fellow referred to as Alfred Brendel. I heard the Second and thought immediately, ‘I’ve obtained to discover a manner of working with this man.’ I should have been 19 – I’d completed the conservatoire, I’d performed to folks together with Rubinstein, and I wanted one other spell of being with a trainer and being carefully overseen.
‘It occurred that Brendel was coming to provide a live performance on the Austrian Institute and I went to listen to him play Chopin and Schubert. Afterwards I mentioned to him, ‘I’ve started working with you or I’ll die,’ and he mentioned ‘Effectively don’t die, why don’t you come to me in Vienna?
‘I obtained on the practice to Vienna, an extended in a single day journey in 1970, and I went to a live performance within the night within the Brahmssaal. I heard the Janáček Quartet enjoying Janáček’s Second String Quartet, ‘Intimate Letters’. This quartet, not of their first youth, performed with out scores; they sat there having a dialog with one another. It was extraordinary and the expertise marked the start of the interval of labor I did with Brendel.
‘I used to be there for seven weeks that 12 months and 6 weeks the subsequent 12 months, after which he got here to dwell in London. However by then I had carried out most of my work with him. He was a really intense trainer and I used to be like a sponge – I took on as a lot data as I might however shortly realised that I wanted to digest it and make it my very own.
‘I used to be introduced up Catholic and in my early twenties I used to be nonetheless going by means of an intense section of perception. Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers had been vastly vital to me then – they linked my religion to Europe, versus what was successfully an opposition religion in an Anglican nation. Satirically I’ve chosen an English recording by John Eliot Gardiner, however filmed within the Basilica di San Marco in 1990. I really like this DVD as a result of there’s an exquisite sense of play and thriller amid the grandiosity of that extraordinary constructing. I nonetheless dream of listening to it dwell in San Marco some day!’
Imogen Cooper’s selections
Verdi Rigoletto
Callas, Gobbi, Di Stefano et al; Orchestra and Refrain of La Scala Milan/Serafin
Warner Classics 2564634095
Beethoven String Quartet No. 15, Op. 132
Amadeus Quartet
Audite AUDITE21424
Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody, S244 No. 2 in C sharp minor
Alfred Brendel
Vanguard Classics ATMCD1213
Janáček String Quartet No. 2 ‘Intimate Letters’
Janáček String Quartet
Centaur CRC3809
Monteverdi Vespro della beata Vergine (1610)
English Baroque Soloists; Monteverdi Choir/Gardiner
DG 483 8464 (2CD/1DVD)
