Imogen Cooper | Complete Schubert Impromptus

Regarded as one of the finest interpreters of the Romantic repertoire, Dame Imogen Cooper is internationally renowned for her virtuosity and lyricism. Schubert has always been a composer close to her heart, and the emotional depth of his Impromptus — rarely heard in their entirety — captures the heart and soul of Imogen's artistry. Join us at the Holywell Music Room to hear Imogen's farewell solo recital.

"A true poet of the piano, Imogen Cooper allows her instrument to express her innermost thoughts." — Wigmore Hall programme

Schubert, famed for transforming poetry into divine melodies, did not invent the Impromptu. Free-form, improvised music had existed for centuries under the name Fantasia. As a pioneer of the Romantic movement, which prized spontaneous emotional expression above all else, Schubert called these carefully crafted improvisations Impromptus instead. His genius lay in his ability to write haunting music for the piano that encapsulates the whole span of human feeling, from hope and joy to pain and despair. Little regarded in his own lifetime, his Impromptus went on to inspire Chopin and Liszt, and the genre became one of the great pillars of nineteenth-century solo piano writing.

It was the Austrian composer and publisher Anton Diabelli — a man with an unerring ear for a good tune — who first brought Schubert's music into print. After the composer's early death, Diabelli bought most of his vast trove of unpublished works from his brother Ferdinand, and released them onto the market gradually over the next thirty years, presenting each one as a newly discovered masterpiece. Schubert composed all eight Impromptus in 1827, but only the first two of Op. 90 appeared in his lifetime. The four Impromptus of Op. 142 were not published until 1839, and Diabelli held back the third and fourth of Op. 90 until 1857 — nearly three decades after they were written.

Dame Imogen Cooper DBE is one of Britain's most celebrated pianists, renowned above all for her interpretations of Mozart, Schumann and Schubert. She studied with Jacques Février at the Paris Conservatoire and later with Alfred Brendel in Vienna, an experience she describes as seminal to her artistic development. Her long-standing lieder partnership with baritone Wolfgang Holzmair spanned two decades, and she has also championed contemporary music, commissioning Thomas Adès's Traced Overhead.

Her honours include the CBE (2006), the Royal Philharmonic Society Performers Award (2008), the Queen's Medal for Music (2019, its first pianist recipient), the DBE (2021), and the Wigmore Hall Medal (2026). Since 2015 she has directed the Imogen Cooper Music Trust in support of gifted young musicians, and she chairs the jury of the Leeds International Piano Competition.