It was with this programme that Imogen Cooper bade farewell to her public performing career, so I can only hope that the above album will not be her last(further Mozart Concertos would be a special joy). Immediately, I would like to say that few pianists in my experience have made a more supremely distinguished departure.
True, there have been times in the past when I have felt short-changed, a sense of limitation in Cooper's playing, most notably in the Romantics where correctness—the wish to avoid exaggeration-- came close to literalness, to a lack of imaginative freedom. But in late Beethoven and Schubert, Cooper's restraint becomes a supreme virtue. Here, in this final and glorious recording there is strength without brutality, delicacy and nuance without self-consciousness. The playing is as natural as it is distilled, the fruit of long consideration and experience(I am thinking of Cooper's moving accompanying note),above all a refusal of all belittling quirks or artifice.
Never for a moment in opus 109 are you made aware of unresolved strain or tension, but rather of the resolution of what Michael Tippett so memorably called 'the great effort of interpretation.' There are poise and serenity, qualities that do not necessarily occur in the later stages of a musician's career. Again, and to an ever-greater extent there is in opus 110 a feeling of 'all passion spent' yet the playing is never less than vital. The flow of events is seamless yet finely and unostentatiously detailed and few pianists have opened the third movement 'adagio ma non troppo' with a more haunting sense of beauty.
And then there is opus 111 where you are truly taken surely and inevitably forward(Cooper's 'line' and impetus are unfailing) to what has aptly been called 'the shores of Paradise.' The exultant 'l'istisso tempo' is as musically energised as you could wish, the following high pianissimo figuration ethereal and other-worldly.
It is difficult not to add that there have been several recordings of Beethoven's final three Sonatas(together with the 'Diabelli' Variations, the summa of his keyboard outpouring) by young pianists who, without resorting to cliche, showed themselves unready for such a daunting task.
Finally, if Myra Hess responded to her audience's request for an encore after her own legendary performance of these Sonatas with a question, ';what could I play after such music?' Imogen Cooper has, if not an answer, then a special reply with the first of Bartok's Four Dirges, 'a transfiguration of the transfigured' as Nicolas Marston's note so beautifully puts it.
Finely recorded(the sound is as natural as the playing) these performances should be in the collection of every serious music lover's library, living proof of Simon Rattle's belief that Imogen Cooper ' is one the greatest musicians England has produced.
Bryce Morrison