Chopin in Paradise with Diana Cooper in Provence .
Diana bringing Chopin to this corner of France near Avignon and Marseilles ahead of her new recording of Chopin where she will present in particular the Four Scherzi by Chopin. In the beautifully secluded village of Eygalières nearby is where Imogen Cooper holds her masterclasses twice a year, Mary Orr with her newly created trust ‘Promote Our Pianists’ had invited Diana to give a House Concert in the area where for many years she too lived. Mary living permanently now in London has instigated a collaboration with the historic Kettner Concerts at the National Liberal Club which she adds to a list of venues that she personally overseas with the idea of giving a platform to artists at the start of their career.
The concert last Friday at the Liberal Club demonstrated Mary’s belief that chamber music is of fundamental importance to young musicians.
The beautiful wooden church of St Mary’s Twickenham has long been the seat for her chamber concerts and judging by the success at the NLC it will be promoted in central London more often . https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2026/05/25/viola-virtuoso-jaren-ziegler-and-kasparas-mikuzis-a-cat-and-mouse-game-of-masterly-music-making/
Having overseen the concert on Friday Mary was seen in Provence the next day ready to receive Diana and help her prepare for her Sunday afternoon try out performance before a select group of music connoisseurs.
Diana was first brought to prominence at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw last year and has since been making her way in an overcrowded profession because of her playing of refreshing elegance and intelligence. They combine to make her playing of Chopin in particular shorn of any rhetoric or adhesion to the so called Chopin tradition, with playing of radiance, beauty and simplicity. After her early technical preparation from Jean-Francois Heisser and Rena Shereshevskaya she has since been mentored by Pascal Amoyal , Norma Fisher and Philippe Giusiano and is now ready to forge her own way with a lifetime ahead of delving ever more deeply into the scores of the Great masters.
Diana looks deeply into the score with poetic intensity and follows scrupulously the ground map left by the composer as she takes us on a voyage of discovery to a wondrous land of poetry and beauty.
Opening on a not easy piano with the First Scherzo with its exposed passages of dynamic drive and a fingerfertigkeit of devilish intensity. After just two chords, a veritable call to arms, she threw herself into the fray with fearless abandon. A musical intelligence though that could show us that these notes are merely washes of moving colour with sounds of burning intensity. The central episode, where Chopin quotes a Polish Christmas Carol, was played with disarming innocence and a beauty anchored in the bass that gave great depth and radiance to the simple folk tune that was allowed to unfold with such simplicity. A coda that erupted with breathtaking brilliance and drive brought this first Scherzo to an exhilarating end.
There was a dramatic contrast to the question and answer of the Second Scherzo overtaken by a mellifluous bel canto of radiance and a glowing poignant beauty. A great sense of nostalgia imbues these melodic outbursts which Diana played with a palette of sounds of extraordinary range, from passionate outbursts to whispered insinuations. She brought great clarity to the coda building the tension with a burning intensity and extraordinary virtuosity. No matter the brilliance and excitement there was a musical mind that was shaping the music and creating an architectural whole of poetic intelligence.
The Third Scherzo opened with mysterious rich whispered sounds bursting into octaves hidden under a cloud of sounds where Diana could miraculously play with horizontal beauty rather than vertical brutality. A chorale of rich full sounds was allowed to pave its way forward answered by the glistening embellishments that Diana added with radiant clarity. A mysterious journey of repeated bass pedal notes were bathed in pedal like a Cathédrale engloutie emerging from the depths to be overtaken by a coda of fearless brilliance and breathtaking mastery.
The Fourth Scherzo op 54 we are nearing the final works of Chopin that Diana was to share with us in the second half of her recital. It is the most pastoral of the scherzi with its fleeting flight of jeux perlé that are thrown off like streams of gold and silver bursting into song as only Schubert seemed to know how. Chopin;s seemingly impishly capricious comments always tempered with poetic significance. A central episode which was played with the weight and subtle beauty that she was to find in the Polonaise- Fantaisie later, and was a sumptuous oasis of ravishing bewitchment. A coda that grew from a whisper, building to a sumptuous climax and a stream of sounds from the bottom to the top of the keyboard with the final two chords played with aristocratic poise and finality.The second half of the concert was dedicated to the last works that Chopin wrote before his death at the age of only 39 .
The three Mazurkas op 59 truly deserve Schumann’s description of ‘Canons covered in flowers ‘ and Diana played them with exquisite finesse. The first with its poetic hesitations of poignant significance with the beautiful passage to the sumptuous central episode of fleeting beauty. There was passion and persuasion to the second dissolving into etherial fragments of great beauty as the tension rose and the melody appeared so robustly in the tenor register where the beautiful etherial ending Diana threw off with timeless ease. The third was a robust dance of great elan and a spontaneous ‘joie de vivre’.
The Barcarolle is one of Chopin’s last works , a great song and a highly original form of beauty and freedom. It was here that Diana could demonstrate her complete mastery with a continual flowing movement of passion and mellifluous beauty. Simplicity and radiance combined with style and mastery, an intoxicating mix for one of Chopin’s greatest creations.
A Polonaise – Fantaisie played with strength and passion with a superb use of the pedals that allowed Chopin to create this new form in the last year of his life, where the Polonaise and fantasy were inextricable interwound. A very noble opening but I would think twice before splitting the long vibrations between the hands as it ruins the impression of an artist making one stroke with his brush. Diana however could create of this extraordinary work one great architectural shape, that took us to the beautiful central episode with such inevitability and a sense of riding on a wave of sounds always moving forward. Leading to the return of the opening declamation and with dynamic drive to the sumptuous climax of glorious exultation and aristocratic nobility.
Two encores for and audience visibly moved by such refine playing : The Berceuse op 57 and the waltz in A flat op 42
I have never forgotten a performance of the Chopin ‘Berceuse’ that I had heard from Norma Fisher in the London Piano Series at the Wigmore Hall in the sixties. I had been taken by ‘our’ teacher Sidney Harrison, who had taken me under his wing as a schoolboy and wanted to introduce the winner of the Liszt Scholarship at the Royal Academy to his prize student, now and established artist worldwide. It is Norma Fisher who has been mentoring Diana and it was this rich aristocratic sound that I was reminded of today. A refined simplicity almost a classical style ( Mozart A minor rondo comes to mind) as the variations evolved glistening and shimmering with silvery sounds of glowing beauty. The beauty of C flat floating with subtle beauty into the atmosphere creating a magic aura of sublime beauty taking us to the whispered ending.
An second encore of Chopin’s teasingly brilliant Waltz op 42 was played to the manner born. Some things cannot be taught but are recreations of an artist blessed by the Gods.
ChristopherAxworthy-MusicCommentary 