so much for "Nothing ever happens in LE....."

Thursday saw two major concerts in Leicester and today, Friday, sees another. So much for the complaint that "nothing ever happens in LE.."

For those who enjoy these kinds of music there was a hard choice between The Sixteen singing Marian antiphons to the Mother of the Redeemer at Saint James the Greater and Imogen Cooper.

Readers will know of the winter season of Thursday lunchtime concerts held in the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery. Directed by Nicolas Daniel, the oboe player, these and the September long weekend of theme concerts are a delight. This year we have two extra piano recitals - last night it was Imogen Cooper and in July it is Steven Hough.

Ms Cooper played two of Schubert's late piano sonatas D 958 and D 960. The performances were both muscular and sometimes moving. The D 958 seemed to be ablaze before the audience was ready such was Ms Cooper's energy. The irritation of a untamed or unmuzzled mobile phone thew my concentration as did the noise of programme notes being turned. I did wonder if the recitalist was a little annoyed with her audience but she, and they, settled into two powerful performances.

For me, the opening theme of the D960 is very special as is the whole of the slow second movement.
Ms Cooper gave little of herself away other than her special grasp of the music. Not for her, the chatty self-disclosure of an introduction to her view of the music or anecdotes that currently pepper concert programmes for better or worse. I write as one who enjoys them especially if they make what follows more accessible to those for whom it is new or strange. After Mike Wheeler, the resident MC and writer of the excellent programme notes, has said his piece Ms Cooper sweeps on to the platform and, whoosh, we are off. The piece finishes. We applaud.We go for a drink served by Les Caves du Patron (the LE2 treasure house). Part two starts and ends. We applaud. Ms Cooper goes. Rather like a priest from an arcane sect who comes to perform the ritual, does it, then goes. Or a parody Kleinian psychoanalyst who says nothing for the first 48 minutes of a session then utters some interpretation and it is all over.

We are left in the car park trying to understand through what we have just been.

Tonight, the Coull Quartet play at the Richard Attenborough Centre.