Pianist Imogen Cooper with Britten Sinfonia
January 22, 2008
The Britten Sinfonia was formed in 1992 and alongside their established excellence in the performance of Viennese classics have premiered works by modern composers such as Harrison Birtwhistle as well as more unlikely interpretations of jazzers like Frank Zappa, Miles Davis and Gil Evans. Last year saw the company receive the Royal Philharmonic Society award “for its aspirations in presenting music countrywide in a stylish and accessible manner”.
This month they come to The Venue at Leeds College of Music with internationally renowned pianist Imogen Cooper to perform works from three centuries. Cooper was born in London, daughter of musicologist Martin Cooper, and studied in Paris and Vienna. She has performed in Europe and the US with the Boston and London Symphony Orchestras, New York, Vienna and Dresden Philharmonic Orchestras as well as the Northern Sinfonia.
Her recordings include the last six years of Schumann’s solo works and she will be performing these as part of the International Piano Series in London. Widely known for her interpretations of Schubert and Schumann she has also premiered work by Thomas Ades and Deirdre Gribbin.
Last year she received the CBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List and was featured on the BBC Radio 3’s prestigious Artist Focus series. The BBC also recorded her performance of works by Beethoven, Mozart, Ravel and Debussy at London’s Wigmore Hall.
Cooper seems equally at home when using a feather-light air touch for those quietly intense moments as she is for the extreme physicality of more dynamic and vigorous sections. Throughout there is a lustrous lucidity, displaying superb control, both lyrical and dramatic.
The current show begins with Ravel’s highly accessible Mother Goose, a musical take on the fairy tales Sleeping Beauty, Tom Thumb, Empress of the Pagodes, Beauty and the Beast and The Fairy Garden. The piece was premiered in 1910 by two ten-year-old girls and the composer admitted: “the idea of evoking in these pieces the poetry of childhood naturally led me to simplify my style and refine my means of expression”.
This is followed by a new work, Five Temperaments, by Robin Holloway, a composer who has exercised a modern take on the Romantic tradition to produce rich orchestral colours, and the Quintet for Piano and Winds by Beethoven, which is often coupled on recordings with a similar piece by Mozart.
Magic, modernism and the Master – all in one evening!
- Rich Jevons
31 January, The Venue, Leeds College of Music, Quarry Hill, Leeds
www.lcm.ac.uk
www.brittensinfonia.co.uk