Hough Lurton

Lowell Liebermann was born in New York City in 1961 and has swiftly risen to become one of the most prolific and performed American composers of his generation. Many awards and prizes have accompanied him through the first thirty-six years of life and his first fifty-six completed works, and he has written for virtually every instrument and in most forms.

One of the world’s foremost wind quintets meets one of today’s finest pianists in a work that many consider to be the best work for piano and winds: Poulenc’s Sextet, as well as works by other French composers. The composer himself called it ‘a homage to the wind instruments which I have loved from the moment I began composing’, and its cheeky character, virtuosic drive and catchy melodies are typical of his other writing for wind instruments. Poulenc also supplied the piano with a crucial – and virtuosic – part, however, including jazzy elements typical of the period as well as emotional outbursts in the manner of Rachmaninov.

Following his recent dazzling Liszt recital (CDA67085), Stephen Hough turns his attention to the finest works of the young Brahms. Brahms's three piano sonatas are early works, culminating with the epic F minor Sonata. Spanning five movements, with dramatic and wildly virtuosic outer movements, and a hauntingly beautiful slow movement (described by Claudio Arrau as "the greatest love music after Tristan, and the most erotic"), this is one of the defining piano sonatas of the mid-nineteenth century.

The 150th anniversary of Hummel's death provides a timely spur to rescue these third and fourth of his half-dozen or so concertos from unwarranted neglect: they have, it's true, been recorded before (though not for 20 years), but previously only with damaging cuts. Even more than the piano sonatas, recently issued (Arabesque ABQ6564/6, 12/86), they illustrate the exuberant keyboard virtuosity for which Hummel was famous, and in the performance of which Stephen Hough scores a spectacular success in his record debut.

This attractively priced double set is one of Stephen Hough’s most important recordings. ‘Britain’s greatest living pianist’ (The Mail on Sunday) is joined by the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg and international conductor Mark Wigglesworth in their Hyperion debut for Brahms’s Piano Concertos. These works are among the greatest in the genre, and shore up Brahms’s reputation as both a symphonist and a piano composer.

If this premiere recording of Stephen Hough’s String Quartet No 1 may be regarded as definitive—the work is dedicated to the Takács Quartet—those of the quartets by Ravel and Dutilleux are no less distinguished.

The emotional sweep of these marvellous works, reflecting the vicissitudes of Schumann’s complex personal life at the time, calls for a pianist wholly responsive to their fervent Romanticism. The artistry of Stephen Hough proves ideal.