Hough Lurton

Just about everything about Stephen Hough’s Chopin Nocturne cycle seems ideal. His gorgeous and well-recorded sonority seduces in intimate moments, rising to the music’s dramatic climaxes with emotional force yet never losing clarity or luminosity. He applies rubato with the utmost discretion, taste, and proportion, while largely underlining the composer’s harmonic surprises through shifts of tone color and chord balances. The way in which the pianist floats soft cantabile legato lines often gives the illusion of more sustain pedal than is actually employed.

This 2008 Hyperion disc called A Mozart Album programmed and performed by English pianist Stephen Hough is a model recital. The disc starts with pure Mozart, the Fantasia in C minor, K. 475, and the Sonata in B flat major K. 333, then moves to not so pure Mozart, a Fantasia in C minor, K. 396, begun by Mozart but finished after his death by Maximillian Stadler. After that, there are three Mozartian virtuoso pastiches, Johann Baptist Cramer's Hommage à Mozart and Ignaz Friedman's Menuetto in D major from the Divertimento for strings and horns, K. 334, plus Hough's own Three Mozart Transformations (after Poulenc): the Menuet, K. 1; Klavierstücke, K. 333; and Sehnsucht nach dem Frühling, K. 596.

Piano Sonatas by Chopin (No 2) and Hough (No 4) are the twin peaks of a typically stimulating recital which—as always from Stephen Hough—spans centuries and styles with assurance. How often do Liszt’s ‘Funérailles’ and Gounod’s ‘Ave Maria’ share the same programme?Life is nothing if not unpredictable.

The three sonatas Stephen Hough has selected for this recital not only reveal Johann Nepomuk Hummel as a plausible "missing link" between Beethoven and Chopin, but also as a formidable, creative force in his own right. Maybe he's not so memorable a melodist as Chopin nor a protean architect on the level of Beethoven, but Hummel's piano writing still sounds idiomatic and invigorating to modern ears. It's also quite difficult. The F-sharp minor sonata's dramatic finale, for instance, allows little respite from its unrelenting broken octaves, taxing runs, and double notes, while the gnarly dotted rhythms, imitative writing, and thick chords permeating the D major sonata's Scherzo evoke the Schumann to come. No matter how difficult the music, Stephen Hough's effortless technique and eloquent, characterful musicality make everything sound easy. What's more, he never sacrifices power for speed. Listen for example to the way he gives the challenging, spiraling triplets in the F minor sonata's finale their full dynamic due, maintaining a full, tonally varied sonority with virtually no help from the sustain pedal. In sum, it will take a heap of work and tons of inspiration for future pianists to match Hough's reference standards here. This is a valuable release and a joyous listening experience all in one: don't miss it.

Listeners who are sick of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, its bombastic opening, its pretentious ending, and all its pointless filigree in between, should hear this recording of that concerto plus the composer's other works for piano and orchestra by English pianist Stephen Hough, because they will be totally, completely, and utterly blown away. It's not just because Hough nails the notes technically or plumbs the depths interpretively, although he does both with a mastery and a dedication that rival Richter.

This recital by British pianist Stephen Hough is precisely what the title suggests: a collection of "Night Music" for piano. The program features some very familiar pieces including the most famous night piece of all (even if it wasn't originally intended as such), Beethoven's Piano Sonata in C sharp minor, Op. 27/2 ("Moonlight"). Robert Schumann's Carnaval, Op. 9, refers to a night activity, a masked ball, rather than being an evocation of the night itself, and Hough's reading of these portraits are distinctly on the reflective side. In fact, taken individually, Hough's performances may be too restrained for some listeners, but the cumulative effect has the kind of spell he intends.