Janet Banks journeys to London’s Wigmore Hall for an all-Schubert performance on 8 December 2025
Could anything be more perfect than a programme of Schubert’s two piano trios with supreme Schubert player Imogen Cooper at the keyboard? London’s concertgoers obviously thought not, as the event was a sell-out.
The evening was a total joy, often feeling more like eavesdropping on some relaxed music making between friends than a performance. In the B flat major Trio the group perfectly captured the shadows passing across the generally ebullient mood. Brendel looked like a personification of Schubert with his playful interjections and whimsical expressions, and the interplay between violin and cello was a pleasure to watch.
The Andante gently rocked us closer to heaven as its bell-like chimes echoed over Vienna’s rooftops. Never have I heard the Scherzo sound so much like laughter bubbling over, and Kraggerud took us into a dreamworld in the Trio with his sweetly singing Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ violin.
Imogen Cooper, undiminished at 76, dazzled especially in the E flat major Trio with her amazingly flexible, rippling fingers and sureness of touch. Kraggerud and Brendel’s question-and-answer phrases were charmingly conversational.
In the second movement the light and shadows were again to the fore as we were transported in an instant from its ghostly theme into a folk idyll with sunlight glinting in the piano part, then back to pizzicato like a rattle of bones.
The cimbalom reference in the last movement, with its repeated four semiquavers, sounded as desolate and haunting as the hurdy-gurdy man in Winterreise, written the same year.
JANET BANKS
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