The Wigmore Hall’s lockdown concerts are so life-enhancing that one straps on one’s tin helmet before offering even a mite of criticism in connection with musical events that richly deserve to live long in the memory. Nevertheless, helmet on and here goes.
It was not until Imogen Cooper’s tantalisingly brief encore in this third piano recital in the series that a single note of 20th-century solo piano music has been heard at all this June. To rub salt in the wound of what might have been, Cooper’s playing of Dobrou Noc! (Good Night!) from Janáček’s cycle On an Overgrown Path, at the end of a recital of Schubert and Beethoven, was so hauntingly atmospheric in its sense of loss that it was a cruel reminder that this was the path not taken.
All of this is unfair to Cooper, since her main recital was a highly intelligent and often beautifully executed mix of significant miniatures and one outright masterpiece from 1820s Vienna. The miniatures, Schubert’s 12 Ländler dances D790 and Beethoven’s 11 quirky Bagatelles Op 119, were deftly done. Cooper’s generous tone and enviable ability to create keyboard colour made the Schubert particularly rewarding. The Bagatelles, however, missed the last ounce of recklessness that some, like the pumped-up 10th piece, all 13 bars of it, demand.
Cooper’s treatment of Beethoven’s A flat Sonata Op 110 started as it finished, in a mood of high seriousness. This certainly helped to emphasise the tight unity of the piece. But it also felt more persuasive at the resolution of the sonata’s heavyweight Adagio, with its two fugues, than it did in the more dappled opening of the first movement, in which the sun never quite managed to shine through the sadness as it surely should – and as it did, shortly afterwards, in the Janáček.
Available to listen on BBC Sounds and watch via Wigmore Hall Live Stream. The Wigmore Hall lunchtime series continues until 26 June.
