COVER STORY
Pictures at
an exhibition
SIM CANETTY-CLARKE
Painting, composing blogging – when does Stephen Hough get time to play the piano? As a residency with
the BBC Symphony Orchestra beckons, Jessica Duchen takes tea with music’s renaissance man
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I
t is rare for an interview with a classical pianist in a high street cafe to be interrupted
by a fan gushing appreciation. Perhaps it’s
a mark of Stephen Hough’s unstoppable
rise and rise that our chat over tea attracts an
enthusiastic greeting from the next table. At
50, Hough has reached a stage at which some
musicians might be tempted to rest ever so
slightly on their laurels: he has a diary bursting with concerts in the world’s finest halls,
a massive and growing discography, a huge
repertoire and an enviable collection of hats.
But there is no sign that this most questing of
British pianists has any intention of slowing
down. His next spotlight is a residency with
the BBC Symphony Orchestra, across the
season from October; and, by coincidence,
around the same time the Broadbent Gallery
is opening an exhibition of his paintings.
Paintings? Well, Hough is the piano’s
prime renaissance man. He is known for his
insightful writing – his blog for the Telegraph,
his commentaries on religious topics (he has
taken a mild degree of holy orders) and issues
about being a gay Catholic – and, of course,
his own compositions. Where does painting
fit into the mix? ‘I find it a great release from
the tension of practising,’ Hough says. ‘I have
a little room in my studio with natural light,
so often if I’m feeling tired or frustrated with
something, instead of watching tv or turning
on the computer I’ll do some painting. It’s
cathartic and very refreshing. Then, when I
come back to the piano I find I’m ready for a
different kind of artistic expression.
‘On the keyboard, I love thinking about
colour and transparency of texture: how you
can hear different lines through the use of the
pedal and the tone, and how those different
lines each have an independent rubato, an
independent life. It’s similar with paintings:
I’m interested in abstract art where you see
many different layers, rather than just blocks
of colour, so there is a musical connection.’
Some of the images, incidentally, appear on
his website (stephenhough.com/).
His compositions – warm-hearted and
thoroughly thought out – have won an
enthusiastic audience; this part of his life
has become increasingly important to him,
though finding enough time for it is, he says, a
constant frustration. He is currently working
on a cello sonata for Steven Isserlis and a song
cycle for the vocal ensemble Prince Consort
and the Wigmore Hall, he says, and his
second piano sonata has an important place in
his recital programmes this season, the BBC
residency included.
It is subtitled ‘Notturno Luminosa’ – but
the Moonlight Sonata it isn’t. ‘It’s really a city
night,’ says Hough, ‘including the desperation of the alarm clock that’s shining in the
night when you can’t sleep, or the single bulb
in a bedsit. There’s an unease to it: hallucinations, the irrationality of the night, the panic
of the night. So the title is true, but perhaps
misleading.’
The residency involves five events, of which
a recital including the sonata is just one;
the rest consists of three concertos, ‘and the
BBCSO is doing my chorus and orchestra
Mass in Maida Vale, with David Robertson’.
First up is the Hummel Concerto in A minor.
It may seem a peculiar choice, but to Hough
it makes absolute sense, especially to hear
in advance of the other two concertos – the
mighty pair by Brahms.
‘Brahms played Hummel himself, as
everyone did at that time. There’d be no
Chopin concerti without this particular work
as forerunner; and when Liszt toured Europe,
he took this piece rather than one of his own.
Brahms’s Sonata Op 2 is in F sharp minor,
Hummel’s most famous one is in the same key
and Schumann wrote one as well. I can’t help
but wonder whether at the back of Schumann
and Brahms’s minds, even subconsciously, was
the idea that they’d both worked on Hummel’s sonata in F sharp minor.’
Some pianists incline more towards the
drama of Brahms’s Concerto No 1 in D minor, others towards the marathon challenge
of No 2 in B flat major. Hough loves them
both, of course, but gradually he emerges –
perhaps surprisingly – as possibly more of a
D minor man.
‘I wrote a little article about this once in
which, paraphrasing Chesterton, I said that
I find painting a great release from the
tension of practising
SIM CANETTY-CLARKE
COVER STORY
I thought Brahms Two was the better piece,
but Brahms One was the greater piece! I
think the second is better orchestrated and
better constructed; it’s a monumental creation by Brahms at the height of his powers.
In the first concerto there are some rough
edges, but what it’s reaching for and what it
gives us is ultimately more moving, because
it’s a work of such volcanic inspiration. The
moment after the cadenza in the last movement when the horn comes in in D major is
one of the most wonderful moments in the
whole of music. I often have tears in my eyes
at that point.’
It’s a long way from the rich meat of
Brahms to the slivers of Gallic magic that
comprise Hough’s latest CD for Hyperion,
The French Album: works drawn from what
he describes as ‘that amazing 30 or so years
around the turn of the 19th century’. Within
that parameter he has picked out a selection
of music anything but predictable. A few of
its delicacies include four works by Fauré,
Poulenc’s Mélancolie, a Cortot transcription
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Stephen Hough: ‘If you’re not
constantly excited by music then
you’re in the wrong profession’
of Bach and Hough’s own transcription of
Massenet’s song Crépuscule, which ballet fans
will recognise as Manon’s theme from the
Kenneth MacMillan masterpiece.
‘I love the French aesthetic in which a work
doesn’t have to be long and serious to say
important things or to convey very special
human emotions,’ Hough declares. ‘We can
celebrate the fact that some of the Debussy
Préludes are masterpieces even if they’re only
two minutes long. And there are some pieces
here that verge on being sentimental maybe
in the wrong way – such as the Chaminade
Automne, which was in everyone’s piano stool
up to the 1930s or so. It was a piece I knew
early on because the mother of my first piano
teacher, Heather Slade, used to play it. When
I went to the house aged about seven, she’d
often take it out and play it on her baby grand.
I learned it when I was very young. Now I
finally got to record it.’
Jumping about between so many activities
and so much repertoire looks like a massive
challenge – but this is Hough in his element.
‘It keeps me sane,’ he insists. ‘I think that, like
an actor, you have to be able to switch roles.
I love the challenge of entering into the spirit
of different composers and I would hate to do
a whole year of only one. It’s healthy: for instance, playing Hummel certainly helps with
playing Chopin. And the different ways you
use the muscles in Brahms and in Debussy is
good for the body pianistically, as well as for
the brain.
‘Generally I like a programme that’s very
varied and that sets the pieces in their own
space – like an exhibition. I love those museums that present different pictures from
different eras, like the Frick Collection in
New York. It’s a wonderful place because
it isn’t just a whole room of 19th-century
forest scenes, but darts around. I find that
very stimulating.’
The comparison with museums is not such
a bad thing, he adds: ‘We want great museums! And works like the Brahms piano concertos return again and again because we will
never get enough of them. But we must never
fall into a routine in the way we perform or
think about these pieces. Every time, we need
to come back hungry to find new things and
to be stunned and stimulated by them again.
That’s part of what makes a performer: that
every time you play one of these works, the
hair on the back of your neck stands up. I
often think of the actor in a long run who’s
doing the same role night after night – and
when you see them towards the end of the
run, they’re still absolutely on fire. If you’re
not constantly excited by music then you’re in
the wrong profession.’
That goes for critics, too, he adds. But
with such musicians around, ‘jaded’ just isn’t
possible. You can’t help but come away from
a Hough concert – and a Hough interview
– feeling refreshed by his vision, inspired by
his insights and ready to start exploring all
CM
over again.
Stephen Hough’s residency with the BBC
Symphony Orchestra opens at the Barbican on
12 October. Box office: 020 7638 8891
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