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Pictures at an exhibitionPainting, 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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It is rare for an interview with a classical pi-anist 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 burst-ing with concerts in the world’s !nest 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 !t into the mix? ‘I !nd it a great release from the tension of practising,’ Hough says. ‘I have a little room in my studio with natural light, so o"en 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. #en, when I come back to the piano I !nd I’m ready for a di$erent kind of artistic expression.

‘On the keyboard, I love thinking about colour and transparency of texture: how you can hear di$erent lines through the use of the pedal and the tone, and how those di$erent lines each have an independent rubato, an independent life. It’s similar with paintings: I’m interested in abstract art where you see many di$erent 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 !nding 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 despera-tion of the alarm clock that’s shining in the night when you can’t sleep, or the single bulb in a bedsit. #ere’s an unease to it: hallucina-tions, the irrationality of the night, the panic of the night. So the title is true, but perhaps misleading.’

#e residency involves !ve 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. #ere’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 Hum-mel’s sonata in F sharp minor.’

Some pianists incline more towards the drama of Brahms’s Concerto No 1 in D mi-nor, others towards the marathon challenge of No 2 in B %at 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 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 crea-tion by Brahms at the height of his powers. In the !rst 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. #e moment a"er the cadenza in the last move-ment when the horn comes in in D major is one of the most wonderful moments in the whole of music. I o"en 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, !e 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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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 !rst piano teacher, Heather Slade, used to play it. When I went to the house aged about seven, she’d o"en take it out and play it on her baby grand. I learned it when I was very young. Now I !nally 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 di#erent composers and I would hate to do a whole year of only one. It’s healthy: for in-stance, playing Hummel certainly helps with playing Chopin. And the di#erent 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 mu-seums that present di#erent pictures from di#erent 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 !nd that very stimulating.’

$e comparison with museums is not such a bad thing, he adds: ‘We want great mu-seums! And works like the Brahms piano con-certos 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 !nd new things and to be stunned and stimulated by them again. $at’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 o"en think of the actor in a long run who’s doing the same role night a"er night – and when you see them towards the end of the run, they’re still absolutely on !re. If you’re not constantly excited by music then you’re in the wrong profession.’

$at 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 over again.

Stephen Hough’s residency with the BBC Symphony Orchestra opens at the Barbican on 12 October. Box o!ce: 020 7638 8891

CM

Stephen Hough: ‘If you’re not constantly excited by music then

you’re in the wrong profession’

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