While this night's program by the pianist Imogen Cooper was mostly classics, it was a series of unusual choices that you might say brought out correspondences between them — or rather highlighted the modernity of each. Beethoven, Haydn, and Liszt are all big names but they got that way by pushing boundaries in the substance of the music they wrote, a fact that tends to get smoothed over as we hear the same hit parade. Here however we had the deceptively lovely but out-there late Bagatelles by Beethoven, a late sonata by Haydn that must have influenced Beethoven, Haydn's dutiful, benumbed Variations in F Minor that ultimately break out in a kind of harmonic anguish, a very short but arresting new piece by Julian Anderson played together with Liszt's late expermiental "Bagatelle sans tonalite", and then finally Beethoven's "Eroica Variations". The highlight for me was hearing Cooper's clear and richly colored rendition of Beethoven's Bagatelles at the start, which I had never heard live. There were moments in the program where Cooper seemed close to a memory lapse, but on the other hand can I be sure? She simply kept going, and while I wouldn't say she is a super-virtuoso, she's a real musician and projected a strong image of each piece. On the other hand this was the kind of concert I was glad to go to alone. I woudn't drag a newbie to this show, saying "you'll see, classical music is a blast!" — the audience mostly elderly, the playing dispatched regally but not with a sense of risk. It's too much of the museum, this kind of thing. I love museums, but I want concerts like these to somehow make more connection between historical music and the present. Liner notes aren't enough (plus they make crinkling noises).