From the archives
Andrew Mcgregor reacquaints himself with a younger Stephen Hough thanks to a new collection from Erato
What was your first Stephen Hough recording? Mine was a Liszt recital for Virgin from 1987, where he’s pictured sitting backwards on the piano stool, outstretched arms covering the keyboard. And I can still remember my delight at the delicacy, intimacy and gentle radiance of the playing. No virtuosic showboating – Liszt as pure poetry in his Bénediction and St Francis preaching to the birds. Special playing, and a musical maturity beyond Hough’s 26 years. Stephen Hough: The Erato Years 1987-1998 (Erato 9029672918; 9CDS) is more than a glimpse of things to come – ‘An Italian Recital’ of Liszt followed four years later, in a reading that manages to be sensuous as well as sulphurous. The two ‘Piano Albums’ offer encores and album leaves from a previous age of great pianists – Paderewski, Friedman, Rosenthal and Godowsky, as well as Hough’s own arrangements of Rodgers and Quilter.
Two favourite Mozart Concertos with Bryden Thomson and the Hallé, the Jeunehomme and Elvira Madigan, are played with elegance and self-effacing simplicity. Contrast with the two Brahms Concertos with Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1989; there’s power and passion here, the muscular virtuosity they need, but also the sensuous lyricism that seems to desert some pianists when tackling the huge demands of these Romantic masterpieces. But I prefer Hough’s 2013 recordings with Mark Wigglesworth in Salzburg because there’s a more rewarding conversation with the orchestra. His recent Hyperion recording of Schumann shows him to be better attuned to the subtly disturbing duality of emotions than he was in the 1980s, but Britten’s Holiday Diary and music for two pianos is full of delights.
I wonder what he would make of his younger self? I hope he’d be as happy to meet him as I’ve been; an intellectually curious, serious, passionate pianist, well on the way to becoming the consummate artist we admire today. No hats yet. Give it 30 years.