TRUSTEE INTERVIEW
As a beneficiary of several awards from The Countess of Munster Musical Trust, how did this financial help contribute through your teenage years and your ambition as a young musician? It enabled me to study for 6 years at the Paris Conservatoire, there being no similarly high- level music school for 12-year-olds at that time in this country.
You have been a Trustee with The Countess of Munster Musical Trust for a number of years and have interviewed and auditioned many musicians – can you provide three key points for students to consider when they attend an audition? Be super well prepared – you are playing to professional performers. Be yourself, and play as if it were a concert. Don’t underestimate the importance of the interview!
Was there any one teacher who you distinctly remember giving you some words of wisdom and what were they? Alfred Brendel taught me how to listen with focus and discrimination, rather than just get carried away with emotions.
Were there any particular aspects of being a musician that did not come naturally and how did you overcome this? I have never known anything other than being a musician, with all that that entails – which includes much practise, in the early years overcoming nerves, much travelling – but this is just the price to pay for being able to share music from the platform.
The discussion around mental health and mental wellbeing is high-profile. What would you say to up and coming musicians about dealing with failure and success? Try to understand what is behind the failures and be kind on yourself – share it with a friend, mentor, colleague and try to be constructive moving forward. Success? Enjoy it, and keep your sense of perspective and humour!
If you were on a desert island, which three pieces of music would you take with you and why? Beethoven String Quartet in A minor op 132, because of the Heiliger Dankgesang Schubert G major String Quartet D887, + the score, as I cannot get to know it enough A compilation with voice, preferably with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Janet Baker But ask me tomorrow and there will be different choices!
What was the turning point in your career when you knew that you were going to succeed as a pianist? Strangely I never really thought about success. I thought about playing better and being able to earn my living. But the Mozart Memorial Prize in 1969-1970 reinforced the suspicion that I was doing something right, as did good reviews.
Music can evoke a strong emotional reaction – how do you channel these feelings into your performance? I see it more as music expressing human emotions, shared by us all, and it is part of my job to delve deep into these emotions as I have experienced them, so as to be able to magnify and project them through the music I am playing.
The Imogen Cooper Music Trust was created to offer mentoring and guidance to outstanding musicians in providing ‘a fresh and enriched focus’ to their musicality. How has this enriched your own life and the musicians you have coached? The days when I myself was free to start doing concerts away from the umbrella of an institution or teacher, seem not so far – and I remember it as an exciting but also daunting time, when foundations had to be solidified, beliefs reinforced, inspiration and challenge sought. Hectic lives do not always allow for this, and time away in a beautiful rural venue where music is the only focus, can be invaluable. I also learn from it, I too like to be challenged by a good argument, and that there should be more questions raised than answered. I am moved too at the changes that can take place, and thrilled to see how beneficial these days can be.