Go figaro
Stephen Hough, Pianist
Jaqueline du Pre Music Centre, Friday 4th November 2005
From his very entrance onto the stage of the Jacqueline du Pre Music Building, even Stephen Hough’s clothing made it clear that here was no ordinary performer. Clad in black silk Mandarin jacket, head thrown back in classic virtuoso pose, Stephen Hough gave a performance of unadulterated skill and virtuosity. From his very first piece, Mozart’s bittersweet and Bachian Fantasia in C minor (K.
575), Hough showed a mastery of the full range of the Piano’s tone and, through a careful balance of wit and bell-like clarity of phrasing, brought out the subtle nuances of one of Mozart’s more cerebral pieces. It is undoubtedly true that there were instances when he appeared to be teetering on the edge of slipping into the romantic idiom, but these were only fleetingmoments that did nothing to mar the overall brilliance of the performance.
Happily, his self restraint was entirely abandoned in the following piece, Schumann’s Fantasie in C (Op. 17) where, with rich and vivid romantic tone, he conjured up the ‘Ruins, Trophies, Palms’ that Schumann envisaged as the underlying images for his three movement piece. The drama of Schumann’s music was only intensified by the grandeur and emotive physicality of Hough’s playing, Hough himself seeming as enraptured by the music as the audience was by his playing.
There were perhaps moments when this emotional quality appeared to be about to upset the precision of Hough’s playing but when this emotional element was joined with the conflation of love and heartbreak found in the elegiac but gentle 3rd movement, this became an asset rather than a fault. The post-interval Mozart Sonata in B Flat (K333) was a very pleasant piece of bonbonnerie in comparison to the turmoil of the Schumann.
Yet, even in this comparatively gentle piece Hough still managed to articulate a vein of darker emotion that is particularly noticeable in the last movement, the Allegreto grazioso. His playing was elegant and delicate, full of subtly nuanced variations of modulation and tempo. In the final scheduled piece of the evening Hough gave the audience a rarely performed Liszt gem.
Combining the wit of the original arias with a measure of the dark emotional undertone of the opera as a whole, the Liszt/ Busoni Figaro Fantasy was a piece that certainly brought an element of the grandeur of grand opera to the small auditorium of the JdP.
From thundering chords that seemed to make the piano shudder to the tender and almost childlike passion of the paraphrase of Cherubino’s “Voi che spaete”, Hough combined moments of virtuosic grandeur with equally telling moments of tenderness and subtlety. It was these latter tendencies that prevailed in first his encore a Poulenclike morceaux, whose softness and comparative calm acted as a soothing balm after the raging passion of the Lizst.
The second Encore, a jazzy feuillet d’album of his own composition, only served as a final reminder of Hough’s skills as both a composer and as a performer.
10th Nov 2005