Imogen Cooper piano
Schubert Sonata in A, D.959
Liszt Gretchen (from Faust Symphony)
Brahms Fantasias op. 116
After opening with one of the great soliloquies of Schubert’s last year, Imogen Cooper turns to Liszt’s rarely-heard transcription of the moving central movement of his Faust Symphony, where an innocent game of ‘he loves me, he loves me not’ gradually turns into erotic obsession. The recital ends in the dreamlike work of Brahms’s late piano pieces. Their dedicatee, Clara Schumann, confided to her diary that they were ‘a true source of enjoyment, everything, poetry, passion, rapture, intimacy and full of most marvellous effects.’
‘Cooper commands a dynamic and colouristic range beyond the reach of most pianists.’ – BBC Music Magazine
Pre-concert and interval bar