Imogen Cooper, QEH

Even Schubert’s very earliest compositions terrify. His first songs, written when he was only 13, are unforgettably vivid, gory, messy, mangled, full of darkness and horror, like dead little birds. He never shakes off this Gothic sensibility; it’s never ironed out of him. A part of him remains untutored, untamed, right to the end, and over time his dark preoccupations gather a more and more frightening shape. Pitch blackness is reached in his Piano Sonata in A minor, D784, one of strangest pieces in the whole piano repertoire, a work of utter nightmarishness and a focal point for last night’s stunning all-Schubert recital from Imogen Cooper.

Before the sweaty nightmare, however, came sweet sleep. I’m not sure if that was the point of playing Schubert’s gentle Twelve German Dances, D790, immediately before the A minor sonata without break, but that was the effect. Wrapped up in these unthreatening dances, played completely plainly by Cooper, one felt snug as a bug in a rug. To then dive into the bleak, empty world of the A minor sonata was a pretty little shock to the senses.

Cooper didn’t sweeten the pill. The opening movement was left bitingly cold and spare. We crunched over dense chordal snow, then proceeded schizophrenically, now engaging in a gusty gallop, now in some heavy trudging. We were foreshadowing the orchestral sonorities of Sibelius, Cooper weighting the densities of each chord like a master conductor.

Emerging from the dark corners were what can only be described as paranormal activities: violent musical ideas intermittently materialising and vaporising, appearing to have almost no relevance or explanation to what was going on around them. It worked on mind and body like a horror movie. Mouth drying, eyes watering, knees jangling, palms becoming clammy, I watched Imogen Cooper’s hands pound the piano transfixed, wondering, “How? “Why?” “What the hell?”

Brilliant as this performance was, an emotional cauldron wasn't the best atmosphere in which to coolly dissect the wonders of Cooper's pianism. The four pearly beauties that make up the Op 90 set of Impromptus, D899, were much more appropriate. In these one could pinpoint her beautiful bell-like touch, her control of musical spans, the lyricism of her little finger in the Impromptu in A flat major. These works could have been enjoyed just for Cooper’s investigation of the staccato touch, with which she delivered a killer moment in the Impromptu in C minor, by holding back the driest, most absorbing staccato until the developmental climax.

What was obvious above all was that interpretation, narrative unity, drove each work. It was perhaps why I was left slightly underwhelmed by her performance of the mighty B flat sonata, D960, which took up the whole second half. For starters, it wasn’t really that mighty in her kindly hands. It felt short. She omitted the first movement repeat – like all of Brendel’s pupils – which, to my mind, robs the Molto moderato of its depth, and too often played things safe, particularly in the final movement coda, which should really be got at hell for leather, but in fact bookended proceedings all too elegantly.

Instead of being a turbulent, uncontrollable final attempt to escape from the vicissitudes of life, the work seems to come to some accommodation with reality. And that isn't how I've ever imagined this work concluding. Call me a romantic but I’m not sure the disturbed young man who composed this work could ever have made peace with the world in this way.