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Imogen Cooper has played Mozart and Beethoven (No. 1, No. 3) concerti with the BSO on several occasions over the past few years, both at Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood—always with outstanding success. She balanced a strong comprehension of the formal and harmonic structures underlying the compositions with a great range of touch and color, as well as a sensitivity to shifting moods with a certain authoritative detachment—all fine qualities. I wish I could say that her all-Schubert recital last week in Ozawa Hall achieved the same satisfying completeness. Although the evening was full of brilliant ideas and exquisite moments, Ms. Cooper failed to grasp the organic framework of the works, above all the late sonatas, in which it is such a crucial element. This was surprising, since one of her teachers, Alfred Brendel, excels at this aspect of interpretation, and her concerto performances showed her to be an apt pupil.
The second half of the twentieth century was a golden age for Schubert’s enormous, difficult, long-neglected sonatas. Their overarching harmonic structure was a discovery of the twentieth century. Following Artur Schnabel’s earlier example, Brendel, a pupil of the great Schubertian Edwin Fischer and the exponent of the Second Viennese School, Eduard Steuermann, took them up early in his career, already laying the groundwork for his conception of the works in his Vox recordings of the 1960’s. Brendel has continued to develop this up to his consummate statement of the B Flat Sonata, which has been part of his farewell tour program this year. Meanwhile older musicians like Wilhelm Kempff and Rudolf Serkin began to play them at later stages of their careers, bringing their own mature insight into the works. Among the younger generation Murray Perahia, Radu Lupu, and Mitsuko Uchida have done outstanding work with the sonatas, and Ms. Cooper’s own recordings are highly respected. I can’t cite statistics, but I get the impression that Schubert’s late sonatas have declined somewhat in popularity, especially among younger pianists. But of all musicians during this period, Brendel has done more than anyone in probing their depths. His astonishing swan song performance of the B Flat showed how essential the projection of the underlaying structural patterns is to these works. Whatever insight or nuance Brendel brought to his interpretation served our understanding of this structure. For Schubert’s treatment of sonata form, especially in his mature, longer works, is all about remembrance and anticipation.
Imogen Cooper’s playing showed a mature, highly developed sensitivity to the further reaches of Schubert’s psychic territory, and her pianism comprehended a great range of color and command of detail, but it failed to present the comprehensive view that the sonatas in particular demanded. Her recital seemed somehow burdened, perhaps by some extraneous concern, which made the overall mood severely weighted down, even oppressed. On the other hand her concept of the music, especially of the opening C Major Sonata fragment was deliberate and heavy; and this did not serve Schubert or Ms. Cooper well.
In his late works Schubert was especially preoccupied with flow and interruption, especially in his final movements, in which commanding octaves and chords play against an onflowing melody or ostinato rhythm with, which bring the rapid forward movement to a halt, occasionally producing hesitation, dreaminess, or pent-up energy, often overpoweringly. This accounts for the force of the last movement of the Great C Major Symphony, the B Flat Sonata, or the A Major, which Ms. Cooper played. Sometimes sharply accented off the beat, sometimes on the beat, these forceful interjections not only make their point as they are heard, but in the overall structure of the movement, just like Schubert’s fantastic modulations.
She got off to a bothersome start in the C Major sonata fragment which consists of two movements, like the more familiar “Unfinished” Symphony. Kempff’s intimacy and Brendel’s flexibility, to name two examples, prevented them from getting stuck in the starts and stops of the first movement. Schubert put the movement together, perhaps in an attempt to emulate Beethoven, of short, rhythmically distinct, phrases, alternating between the grand and the more inward mood. If a musician takes plastic approach to the marked rhythms, dominated by the triad, the movement can flow and move us as much as any of the rest of Schubert. Imogen Cooper chose to explore it as a sort of precursor of the Bruckner symphony. Instead of moving the music along from bar to bar, she emphasized the curtness of the phrases and the rests between them, meanwhile stressing the accents with an almost unbearable ponderousness. It was as fatiguing to hear as it was for her to play, it seemed. Her exaggerated accents were as misconceived in terms of Bruckner as they were for Schubert, I thought. This overall leadenness was to a certain degree redeemed by her extraordinary feeling for the sonorities of the more otherworldly aspects of the work and of the harmonic progressions that lead to them. To the totally sympathetic listener it might seem a passionate reach for transcendence, but the Schubertian—or the ordinary chap who wants to hear a good piece of music well-played—will be more satisfied by the evanescent flow of a performance which adheres more rigorously to musical form. Ms. Cooper’s louder passages also seemed like forced attempts at grandeur.
Schubert’s gorgeous Impromptus were also somewhat excessively monumental and overblown, but the problems of durée were less extreme, and they proved the most satisfactory part of the program. Cooper’s sensitivity and command of color served her well here. The Andante Theme and Variations was especially finely turned, with a great variety of mood and an wide-ranging palette of colors. Her reading of the Allegro Moderato was also rich and grand, but not without moments of heaviness.
The concert concluded with a strangely mixed interpretation of the great A Major Sonata, D. 959. Miss Cooper’s playing of the grand opening phrases of the first movement seemed forced, and the hesitancy, or exaggeration of pauses, while not nearly as distracting as in the C Major fragment, impaired the forward sweep of the movement. She seemed most taken with the otherworldly pianissimi, which seemed to be the only moments in which she truly gave herself over to the music, without willing it to sound in a particular way that was not entirely essential to the music. This surpassingly beautiful sonata also had its leaden moments. That, and Cooper’s obviously deliberate—and to my mind perverse—avoidance of any pointing of the structure of the work gave her performance an entropic quality overall. I even found myself getting a little restless in places—a bewildering experience when listening to a work which as close to my heart as the A major.
On the other hand, Cooper’s rendering of the slow movement was absolutely unexceptionable. She played its poignant theme most singingly and movingly. This one movement was the emotional and musical high point of the entire evening. The scherzo was also fine. Problems began to resurface in the final movement, in which she undermined the wonderful flow set up by the strolling pace of its main theme. As before, pauses, far from building up energy, dissipated or bottlenecked it. Finally, her treatment of the final chords, which bring back those of the opening and frame to entire work, seemed almost an afterthought and pretty much failed to accomplish their purpose.
This recital was a strange and unexpected disappointment from a musician I have admired a great deal, and from whom I have consistently heard superb work in the past. If I remember well, her Schubert recordings are much better. For one thing, Miss Cooper seemed tired and in an oppressed mood that evening. I personally ascribe the anomalies of her performances to purposeful experimentation. Realizing how much her mentor, Alfred Brendel, has accomplished in elucidating the form of Schubert’s sonatas, she has decided to set off in another direction, one modeled on the Sonata in D (D. 894) with its explicitly fantasy-like first movement. The piano sonatas on the program, however, are quite different, as straightforward, if very large-scale and symphonic, classical sonatas. Such experimentation is, of course, commendable in itself, but it was not sufficiently developed to play before an American audience who only hear Cooper play once or twice a year. Personally I am skeptical of the approach. Furthermore, while it is a good thing to be aware of Schubert’s influence on Bruckner, it is anachronistic to project Bruckner back into Schubert.
Alfred Brendel’s retirement arouses in a way a nostalgic feeling, as one senses the end of an era in the performance of Schubert’s late masterpieces. Tastes change, just as human consciousness evolves. Schnabel could not see Schubert as Liszt saw him, any more than a young pianist can see him the way Brendel sees him. The oddities of Imogen Cooper’s recital reflect this generational change. Younger musicians seem more interested in what was seen as the traditional virtuoso repertory a generation ago. Now Chopin, Liszt, and Ravel are also great composers, and it is gratifying to see an interest in them among emerging musicians. It is especially gratifying to hear such superb performances of Ravel from young pianists, as I heard in Benjamin Moser’s Gaspard de la Nuit in the Colonial Theatre a few months ago and, just before Imogen Cooper’s recital, Soojin Anjou’s astonishing performances of the Sonatine and the Tombeau de Couperin. Her private recital, in fact, was the bright spot that Thursday, and it was an event that points the way many years into the future.
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