Catalogue # AV2156

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Imogen Cooper returns to AVIE with the first in a series of 3\ndouble CDs, recorded live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, exploring\nthe late piano music of Schubert written between 1823 and 1828. The\nfirst volume includes the A minor Sonata D845, the D major Sonata\nD850 and the A major Sonata D959.

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Imogen says: “I’m not afraid of being described as a Schubert\nspecialist,” even though her active repertoire ranges from Bach to\nThomas Adès. “He has taken up a lot of my waking time for more than\n30 years. In fact, you could say that his songs and his piano music\nhave sometimes been close to an obsession for me.” It is more than\n20 years since Cooper made a live and recorded survey of all the\npiano music Schubert composed from early 1823 until his death in\n1828 at the age of 31. “One of the reasons I’ve taken it all up\nagain is that I feel it ten times more strongly than I did 20 years\nago: the message has become more direct to me. Schubert has become\neven more necessary to my well-being, and I sense strongly that he\nis important for an audience’s well-being too.

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Imogen Cooper has established a reputation as one of the finest\ninterpreters of the classical repertoire. Having spent several\nyears at the Paris Conservatoire in her teens, Cooper went to\nVienna to study with Paul Badura-Skoda, Jörg Demus and the pianist\noften seen as her mentor, Alfred Brendel. She has appeared with the\nNew York Philharmonic Orchestra and Sir Colin Davis and the Vienna\nPhilharmonic Orchestra with Sir Simon Rattle among many others.

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