Of course Dr Mather hit the nail on the head at the end of a superb recital :’Fantastic recital a wonderfully talented and charming young lady with fantastic leggiero finger work and trills to die for’.

I had heard her just a few days ago when she won a top prize at the Royal College of Music where she is perfecting her artistry with Norma Fisher.I had heard Norma Fisher playing the Schumann many times taken by our mutual ‘piano daddy’ Sidney Harrison to hear his star student when I was just starting my professional training at the Royal Academy.Diana has received her early training in France by coincidence with a pianist that Moura Lympany had spoken about to me with great admiration:Jean- Francois Heisser.There are two schools of thought in the French school of piano playing :one based on the instrumental- harpsichord technique of Pierre Sancan and the other the organ school of Alfred Cortot .The difference being that on the harpsichord you have to have fingers that are of a precision, curved like little hammers .On the organ you have never to let go of the keys which gives a limpet like weight that is never percussive but always into the key.Diana as Dr Mather so rightly said has this down to perfection with ‘trills to die for’ and a ‘jeux perlé’ of quite extraordinary clarity and delicacy.Norma Fisher has been able to show her the weight and the strength that comes from thinking up from the bass added to Diana’s superbly sensitive musicianship and fingers that could feel with kaleidoscopic precision and poetic vision.These two schools have combined in Diana enabling her to give extraordinary performances where driving energy combine with passion ,poetry and refined delicacy.All these magnificent gifts came together especially in Chopin’s Fourth Scherzo and the Polonaise op 22.It was even more astonishing in a ravishing performance of Scarlatti’s ‘Toccata ‘ sonata played as an encore which was truly the cherry on an already sumptuous cake.It does sometimes mean though that her very sensitive fingers do not feel the pulse in slower passages which can lead to an unnatural slowing down as though there are the busy parts and the less busy parts where the great undercurrent wave or architectural pulse is interrupted.Her extraordinary musical intelligence and refined tone palette though are of such sensitivity that this becomes in a way just an insignificant detail in performances of overwhelming conviction and mastery.

Her Mozart was of such elegance and delicacy with a very refined tone palette.Music making that spoke with the eloquence of bel canto such were the tonal inflections of subtlety and artistry.The last movement was rather fast and more irascible Beethoven that operatic Mozart. Of course there was her beauty of sound with extraordinary fingerfertigkeit .A slight wrong turning beautifully corrected slowed her down and she forgot about the rather scale like left hand as elegance once more reigned.

Her Schumann was played with passion and clarity combined with driving energy and poetry.I would not have slowed down or lost the sweep of the second subject which should just grow naturally out of all that precedes it .Schumann’s knotty twine that grows out of this though was beautifully manoeuvred into poetic strands of significance.There was ravishing beauty in the slow movement with a kaleidoscope of colours where more weight would have kept the inner pulse more flowing.However her impeccable musicianship brought a refined intensity to all she did.There was a scintillating rhythmic energy to the Scherzo with its capricious syncopations contrasting with a captivating duet between voices in the Trio.The last movement was played with great excitement and exhilaration with a coda of passionate brilliance.

Her Chopin playing was exquisite for its refined intelligence and ravishing jeux perlé .It is probably as Chopin himself would have played according to all reports of the very few public performances that he gave in his all too short life.A second Ballade that was beautifully shaped with a superb sense of balance and here indeed the music was allowed to flow so naturally.Rudely interrupted by tempestuous outbursts but where Diana managed to maintain the architectural line from the first to the last note ,leading to a coda of overwhelming technical and musical command played with burning excitement .A final exhilarating flourish before the beseechingly simple final bars of the poetic outpourings of a poetic genius.

As I had said before the Fourth Scherzo was written just for the jeux perlé delicacy and brilliance that Diana is such a master of, as was Chopin.The fleeting lightness and chameleonic changes of mood were mesmerising.The beautiful mellifluous central episode was played with refined delicacy and if missing a little weight it was of such beauty that it was of insignificance as the remarkable spidery jeux perlé lead back to the Scherzo and was of enviable precision and delicacy.

The Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise op 22 I had written about when she played at the RCM recently.The beautiful delicate breeze on which floats Chopin’s haunting Bel Canto was of ravishing delicacy and beauty.I have never heard the orchestra play so well as in Diana’s hands and the entry of the Polonaise lead to a scintillating display of enviable agility but even more of poetic good taste and aristocratic nobility.

Winner of numerous awards including 1 st Prize at the Brest Chopin Competition, 1 st Prize at the Halina Czerny-Stefanská International Competition in Poznan (Poland) and 1 st Prize at the Concurso Internacional de Piano de Vigo (Spain), Diana Cooper has been invited to perform in various venues and festivals in France and abroad, including the Nohant Chopin Festival , the Festival Chopin à Paris , the Salle Cortot , the Polish Embassy in Paris, the Ysaye Festival in Belgium, the Palacio de Congresos in Huesca (Spain), the Hrvatski dom Split in Croatia, the Kielce Filharmonia in Poland…In 2023, she was selected to take part in the project Un été en France avec Gautier Capuçon , for which she perfomed as a soloist and in chamber music.She was invited in 2018 to take part in the radio program Générations Jeunes Interprètes on France Musique and, in 2023, performed as a trio in the television programme Fauteuils d’orchestre , broadcast on France 5. Her activity has been enriched by solo appearances with the Orchestre Symphonique du Sud Ouest in Chopin’s 1st Concerto, the Orchestre Appassionato in Mozart’s 20 th concerto, and the Orchestre des Lauréats du Conservatoire de Paris in Schumann’s concerto, performed in 2023 at the Cité de la Musique in Paris.

L aureate of the Fondation de la Banque Populaire , the Fondation Safran and the Kathleen Trust , Diana is currently settled in London, studying at the Royal College of Music in London on an Artist Diploma programme in Norma Fisher’s class. She has recently joined the Talent Unlimited charity offering concerts in London for young talented musicians. She is, in parallel, on a second Artist Diploma course at the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMDP), where she studied formely with Jean-François Heisser and Marie-Josèphe Jude and graduated with a Master’s degree in 2018. She also spent three years at the Ecole Normale de Musique receiving the teaching of Rena Schereshevskaya. In 2022, she was selected to join the new season of the Académie Musicale Philippe Jaroussky , where she perfected her skills with Cédric Thiberghien. Following her pre-selection in 2021 for the prestigious Chopin Competition in Warsaw, she was invited the following summer by Philippe Giusiano to take part in masterclasses in Katowice as well as concerts at the Chopin Manor in Duszniki, organized by the Chopin Foundation. Diana has recently recorded her first CD, featuring works by Haydn, Chopin and Ravel, after winning in 2022 the 1 st Prize in the Concours d’aide aux Jeunes Artistes organized by the Festival du Vexin.

Diana Cooper at St James’s Piccadilly.An impeccable musician of refined good taste

Hats off …The Chappell Gold Medal has uncovered a genius