Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert
Imogen Cooper (Steinway piano) with reflections about Bösendorfer, Fazioli, Stoddart and Hubert
Queen Elizabeth Hall, 26 February 2003

After Helen Reid's exemplary recital on Blackheath's Bösendorfer the previous evening, this was a disconcerting experience. Imogen Cooper is a renowned Schubert specialist, and the programme book highlighted quotes from reviews of 'The Famous Schubert Recordings', so afterwards there was a queue for the now entrenched ritual CD signing. We found ourselves at odds with the enthusiasm of the capacity QEH audience.

Part of Imogen Cooper's Schubert Master Class, which I had been able to attend the previous week, had been enthralling in her detailed exposition of the first movement of the D major sonata D850, attending to every dot and sign on the page, and giving new ideas to an experienced Japanese post graduate student, with whom she swapped Steinways with her pupil for particular passages, because 'no one piano can meet all Schubert's needs'.

Yet at the recital some of this seemed to go by the board. Imogen Cooper applied a generalised sound and manner of playing to Haydn, early Beethoven and late Schubert. Too much was smoothed out by controlled yet (to my taste) excessive pedalling, which tended to overlay staccato markings, and by insufficient emphasis for sforzandi and dynamic contrasts; these clearly were decisions she had taken after long study and recording most of Schubert's piano music. It was more like a transcription for Steinway and the QEH than a recreation of these composers relating to their own times. Perhaps my response was idiosyncratic because I have been listening so much to different and older pianos and it was hard to adjust to the sound in a large and full hall?

The programme was overloaded, with the second of two of Schubert's largest and longest sonatas taking us to after 10 p.m. Beethoven's neglected Variations Wo073 on a tune from Salieri's Falstaff were athletic but dull, which the Salieri opera is not! Imogen Cooper thinks they are witty, but did not demonstrate that in performance. Beware of the early 'Werke ohne Opuszahl' (works without opus) as they rarely show the composer Beethoven was to become. Haydn's marvellous Variations were softened and romanticised, and the terrifying, indeed almost psychotic, outburst in the slow movement of Schubert's late, great A major sonata D959 went for little.

I am not opposed to Steinways for earlier piano music in large halls (q.v. Grigory Sokolov at Lucerne) but like to hope that pianists nowadays will want to have experimented with playing those works on earlier instruments, or modern copies of them, and that this will inform their performances.

RECORDINGS SUGGESTIONS
Collectors will be familiar with Schnabel, Brendel, Uchida etc in this repertoire, but a few off-beat and very personal recording recommendations, with links to some previous reviews, may be appropriate:

Haydn:
Thalia Myers has recorded all the Haydn Variations on a Fazioli (USK 1217) and a sample can be heard on her website
Joanna Leach, a devotee of sensitively restored authentic instruments, has the F minor Variations and three sonatas on a very desirable Haydn CD, played on a Stoddart square piano: Athene 22
Marcia Hadjimarkos plays a copy of a Hubert and makes a good case for playing Haydn sonatas on the clavichord ZigZag ZZT990901

Beethoven:
Hear Arturo Pizarro play the first movement of the Tempest sonata, and explain in interview his choice of a Blüthner, for his persuasive new recording of Beethoven sonatas LINN CKD 209

Schubert:
My 'bench-mark' performances, to which I often return, are Gabriel Schuchter's of the complete solo piano works on a Bösendorfer: Tudor 741-752. Back at home, the first few bars of D850, listened to again over a cup of tea, said it all!

See my Seen&Heard report on most of those and, finally, treat yourself to what for me was an unexpected pleasure, the splendid DVD of Salieri's Falstaff on ARTHAUS 100 022, its under-rated composer best known for having not murdered Mozart.

Peter Grahame Woolf

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