Schumann used to get into trouble with his landlady for extemporising loudly on his piano late at night; it would be a contrary landlady who took umbrage at Neil Cooney's gentle interpretations, which were full of romantic yearning but missed the anguished and turbulent side of the composer's character.
Kreisler, after whom Kreisleriana was named, was a half-crazed musician in the fiction of E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Schumann to some extent identified with him, especially in his sudden swings of mood from inconsolable melancholy to reckless exuberance. The performance gave no hint of this instability bordering on mania, and the playing of Arabesque as a sort of prelude to Kreisleriana detracted from both.
Arabesque is an attempt, in the words of Fridrich Schlegel, to represent "infinite abundance in infinite unity"; it is not just a decorative motif, and it deserved to stand on its own, with sufficient pause for acclaim or meditation, as the case may be.
Liszt, with two of whose compositions Cooney ended last Friday's lunchtime recital, found inspiration, like Schumann, in literature. Mephisto Waltz No 1 is based on Lenau's version of the Faust legend - one can hear the dance in an inn and a nightingale singing in the wood - and the work is distinguished by its macabre undertones.
The playing of Au Bord D'Un Source as an introduction to the Faustian drama worked well, the rippling innocence of the former counterpointing the malevolent devilry of the headlong dance and anticipating the peaceful interlude of the nightingale's song. Here the pianist seemed much more temperamentally akin to the mind of the composer.
