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Imogen Cooper |
Super Cooper!
Pianist casts a spell at the second week of the Hampstead and Highgate Festival
REVIEW:
CELEBRITY RECITAL
ST JOHN-AT-HAMPSTEAD
HAVING the chance to hear a truly top-class musician play, practically on your doorstep, and as part of a small audience, is pretty rare. So the celebrity recital is something of a special occasion.
English pianist Imogen Cooper is a successful soloist who has played in concert halls filled with thousands, accompanied by some of the world’s best orchestras. Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert were her selections, composers she is renowned for giving distinctive and defining performances of Mozart’s A Minor Sonata had been scheduled to open the recital, but it was substituted by the Haydn, much to the disappointment of a lady next to me, who had come particularly because she was learning the Mozart. Her disappointment didn’t last, however, as Cooper began to play and wove the music together as if she was casting a spell.
Haydn’s habitual love of trickery features in the Sonata in C, and every unexpected pause and note thrown in was perfectly captured.
Beethoven’s Sonata in A was played with a similar depth of interpretation, highlighting Cooper’s individual ability to get to the heart of the music.
It was the second half of the recital that was strongest. Schubert’s Four Impromptus were initially rejected for publication in 1828 for being too difficult. This was not an aspect which struck the listener, such was the ease with which Cooper brought it to life.
Perhaps an even better concert could have been shaped, with possibly a touch more excitement injected into the music when appropriate, and more variation in her choice of pieces (a 20th-century piece for example). This would have allowed Cooper to really demonstrate her versatility, but, as it was, it was still flawless playing.
Poetic celebration
REVIEW: HIGHGATE FILM SOCIETY: AN AUDEN CELEBRATION
HIGHGATE LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTION
IN its second week, the Hampstead and Highgate Festival digressed from its usual musical activities to stage a unique event marking the centenary of the poet WH Auden.
Somewhat unexpectedly, this poetic celebration was laid on by the Highgate Film Society at the Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution.
The poet clearly has a following in the Highgate area because the Institution’s hall was virtually full on a rainy Tuesday night.
The event was organised by Ben Dalton, and introduced by Isabel Raphael. It consisted of poetry readings by Paula and David Swift leading up, in the first half of the programme, to a showing of a documentary film on Auden, courtesy of Bernard Clark of Clark TV productions.
The film had been made in 1996 as part of an intriguing series on great writers of the 20th century. It included interviews with writers and academics who had been influenced by Auden, set into a biographical narrative.
He was already determined to be a poet when he went to study at Oxford in the 1920s. There he fell in with Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood, the writers most influenced by him.
Most of the poems read by Paula and David Swift were from the 1930s, when Auden became one of the most widely read of contemporary poets.
In the second half of the evening, their readings led up to the musical section.
Auden had translated medieval Irish texts – including The Monk and his Cat, and The Praises of God – for a collection of poems which he called Hermit Songs.
In a setting by Samuel Barber, these two poems were beautifully sung by the very young Australian soprano Allegra Giagu. They followed this up with the better-known Four Cabaret Songs.
The performances by Allegra Giagu and Wendy Hiscocks were utterly charming.
We can all enjoy Auden’s poetry by reading it. There are fewer occasions to enjoy it by hearing it read or sung so beautifully.
JAN TOPOROWSKI |
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