Henning Kraggerud . Adrian Brendel . Imogen Cooper

Making the piano 'sing' is a pianist's greatest achievement. Or - as Franz Schubert put it in an 1825 letter to his parents - a piano should sound like 'eine singende Stimme, … weil ich das vermaledeyte Hacken, welches auch ausgezeichnete Clavierspielern eigen ist, nicht ausstehen kann'. To Schubert, the piano was above all a lyrical and expressive instrument. You can hear this clearly in the late chamber music, and most of all in the two 1827 piano trios. In these works, virtuosity is of secondary importance. Instead, Schubert develops an extremely distinct keyboard sound which, combined with the strings, conjures up a broad spectrum of colour nuances. For instance, Schubert regularly makes the piano sing by having the melodies played by both hands in unison in octaves. We learn from letters how Schubert's friends experienced his piano playing: '… as if under his hands the keys became singing voices'. Not everyone is granted the gift of elevating the piano from a percussive to a 'singing' instrument. To the English pianist Imogen Cooper it is quite natural. She, with cellist Adrian Brendel and violinist Henning Kraggerud are the perfect players for Schubert's subtle world of light and shade in sound.