A leading exponent of the composer Franz Schubert, pianist Imogen Cooper not so much as played his music as brought his very spirit to life during her latest visit to the Sage Gateshead. The Four Impromtus, veering between the blazing and soothing, reflected a man of extraordinary contrasts and set the mood for musical journey to follow. It is not often that performers address the audience, but Cooper’s précis of the work to follow was illuminating and made the experience all the more richer. The Sonata in A Minor, we learned, was written in 1823; when Schubert discovered he had contracted syphilis. He would have realised the final outcome and that he faced a life of solitude. Cooper described the first movement as being set out in blocks of granite. She delivered it in aching and bleeding chunks. The final movement was played with unerring precision and poise. Cooper ended in a flourish and a glint in her eye that gave the sense she had been peering into Schubert’s troubled soul itself. The evening concluded with Schubert’s Sonata in B flat, written during a frenzy of creativity in the last months of his tragically short life. Cooper invested every note with meaning. In the sombre first movement the feeling of foreboding was never far from the surface. A lone cougher everyone must have willed to silence sadly interrupted the opening of the slow movement. Thankfully the throat tickle passed and everyone was swept away by the most exquisite passages of music. The last two movements were taken to a thrilling conclusion. Everyone left knowing the man and his music that much better.