Since we last regarded Stephen Hough in these pages, the out pianist has become Sir Stephen, and his work as a composer has come into its own. He now has more that 70 recordings to his credit, the most recent bridging the span between his work as a soloist and chamber musician and his emerging identity as a composer of consequence.
There's more than a little sense of homecoming in his latest release, his 2023 Piano Concerto and two solo-piano suites (Hyperion). On it, Hough is met by The Hallé (the British orchestra's name) under the baton of its outgoing music director, Sir Mark Elder, in the concerto –and meets bits of himself in the 2019 compositions 'fostered by" the pandemic. It was, he says, the erasure of his concert schedule that soon made time and space for his compositions.
This must be seen in context. A long-ago recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant, Hough has always been an active polymath. He has seasoned his core concentration on the vast body of music for his instrument with lively, penetrating musical criticism, a poignant memoir ("Enough"), and a highly regarded novel, "The Final Retreat." And this is not to mention the paintings.
He moves in the ranks of the writers and musicians for whom a long-haul flight is the opportunity for creativity and, crucially for him, productivity. Fans who follow him on social media also enjoy his travelogues, indulging his proclivities as a fine photographer.
He entitled a collection of his reflections on music (the industry as well as the repertoire) "Rough Ideas," which a less modest scribe might have called "Thoroughly Thought Thoughts." If Hough has any "idle thoughts," hard to imagine, he's keeping them to himself.
The challenge for an arts writer at a weekly is simply keeping up. There are certain out musicians, the French early-music wizard Christophe Rousset among them, who are simply so productive that to comment on their every project would require ongoing special editions. These creators and co-creators have daunting performance careers allied and spiced with almost aggressive recording schedules, not to mention the research –and practicing. What emerges behind the headlines is that other musicians really like working with them, and so do audiences.
The Piano Concerto
In his booklet note, Hough predictably points to the historical keyboardists (Beethoven to Bartok, let's say) whose concert work was augmented by their own compositions. His point is that these performers didn't just add musical composition to the fare but who would have thought it their responsibility to compose as well as play, to make "calling-cards" as all-around musicians.
Here he joins them. The subtitle of his new piano concerto is "The world of yesterday," recognizing and expanding upon the historical nature of the concerto as a form and, yes, its stars. Audiences disinclined to subsidize "new music," fearful of its noise, have nothing to fear here.
The concerto is hardly off the starting block before the words "movie music" occur to the listener. Hough the artistic democrat would not take that as a knock and would have to go no farther than composers Eric Korngold and Bernard Herrmann –and Leonard Bernstein and Dmitri Shostakovich, closer to our day– to cite as fellow practitioners.
Crowd-pleasing is only the icing on these music desserts. Skillful composition always allows for displays of instrumental virtuosity but favors its listeners with music of substance beneath the filigree.
If anything perplexes about Hough's new concerto, it's that opening. The orchestra noodles on for several minutes before the piano makes its stealth entrance, prompting the question, Why? This is not, after all, a revisiting of Brahms' Second Concerto, with its long, symphonic intro, or Beethoven's Fourth, where the pianist makes an arresting solo entrance before being swallowed up by yet another symphony.
I don't know why, but I'd be less than candid if I did not say that Hough's orchestral intro left me impatient for the piano's arrival. It's even more puzzling that when the piano does enter, it's with a cadenza-level fanfare.
Once underway, the concerto, with its more traditionally aligned resources, scurries along with its own unflagging energy. At its core is a waltz both immediately charming and capable of extravagant elaborations, of the kind heard in Ravel's "La Valse," both orchestral and solo-piano versions.
Like the concerto itself, its three movements have titles, "Prelude - Cadenza," "Waltz Variations," and "Tarantella appassionata." What it accomplishes is nothing less than a charting of the emergence of a distinct artistic profile through an orchestral soup that threatens to drown it. The release into that "passionate devil dance" is palpable, and, perhaps predictably, Hough does not stint on the prestidigitation.
There's an idea out there that the success of a new concerto depends on its being picked up by other virtuosos. But in our time, when most music charts movement from dark to light, that's a less determinant factor. Will other pianists take up their colleague Daniil Trifonov's daunting exercise for piano and orchestra?
Time will tell. New piano concertos by Thomas Adés and John Adams have inspired multiple new adherents. Hough's "calling-card" concerto is a beguiling invitation.
Five not-so-easy pieces
The recording concludes with "Partita," which poses technical challenges signaled by the Toccata that comes as the last of its five movements. It's awe-inspiring in a non-distracting way. The Hough faithful would not excuse any departure from the brilliantly playful aspect of his musicianship.
The "Sonatina nostalgica" fulfills Hough's knack for memoir. Hough composed it for the 70-year-old pianist Philip Fowke, and it reflects the composer's own growth – literally– from unlikely if promising beginnings to a mature appreciation of paths traveled. It's sentimental in all the best ways.
Hough's second keyboard is on the iPad, and his multifaceted writings thereupon have sometimes been eclipsed by the music composed and performed. But his irrepressible intelligence finds some of its finest outlets in the written word, his written word, that is. And Hough's own words about the Sonatina can stand as a kind of motto for this disc overall: "It deliberately utilizes a romantic musical language of yesteryear."
Stephen Hough, Piano Concerto, "Sonatina nostalgica," and Partita, Stephen Hough composer and pianist, CD and streaming, Hyperion Records. www.hyperion-records.co.uk
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