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“It’s completely thrilling, and very challenging” – A Conversation with Sir Stephen Hough
- Date:
- By: Ulster Orchestra
The 2022/23 Season is a musical menagerie for the senses. The Ulster Orchestra invites you to Immerse Yourself this Season, as we celebrate our artists, composers and conductors.
The 2022/23 Season is a musical menagerie for the senses. The Ulster Orchestra invites you to Immerse Yourself this Season, as we celebrate our artists, composers and conductors.
On Friday 23 September, 2022, our Season opens with a work of epic scale; Brahms’ Piano Concerto No.2, played by phenomenal pianist, Sir Stephen Hough. Named by The Economist as one of Twenty Living Polymaths, Hough was the first classical performer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (2001). He was awarded Northwestern University’s 2008 Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano, won the Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award in 2010, and in 2016 was made an Honorary Member of RPS. In 2014 he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2022. Sir Stephen resides in London where he is a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music and holds the International Chair of Piano Studies at his alma mater, the Royal Northern College in Manchester. He is also a member of the faculty at The Juilliard School.
We were delighted to chat to Sir Stephen to hear his thoughts about our upcoming concert (and beyond!). We are set to lose ourselves in almost 50 minutes of tempestuous drama in Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto, we asked Sir Stephen where he would begin to tackle a work of such epic scale.
“Well, you start in bar two – with a rising arpeggio answering the solo horn’s first bar. It’s a very calm beginning for, as you point out, a tempestuous drama to follow. But, unlike the 1st concerto, I feel this piece is more about a conversation between instruments, a huge piece of chamber music, more than just a symphony. It’s a work of extraordinary subtlety– yes, of great climaxes, but also of the most intimate moments of understatement and tenderness.”
How would you best describe the experience of being immersed in a work like the Brahms for almost 50 minutes?
“It’s completely thrilling, and very challenging. The pianist has to be aware always of the architecture of the form. This is not just emotional music, riding each page as it comes. One has to be aware always of what will happen five minutes later and, indeed, over the course of the whole piece. An over–bloated first movement means that the third and fourth movements can seem flimsy. It’s a work, a masterpiece, which requires the most careful judgement at all times.”
A noted writer, Sir Stephen has contributed articles for The New York Times, the Guardian, The Times, Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine, and he wrote a blog for The Telegraph for seven years which became one of the most popular and influential forums for cultural discussion and for which he wrote over six hundred articles. He has published three books: The Bible as Prayer (Bloomsbury and Paulist Press, 2007); a novel: The Final Retreat (Sylph Editions, 2018); and a book of essays: Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More (Faber & Faber and Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019).
We loved the article you wrote in the Guardian about how it’s time to ‘axe the mood-ruining, bar-scrambling interval’. What other changes would you like to see being tested in the concert hall and why?
“Thank you! I think we need to have a variety of concert experiences. We shouldn’t get rid of the tried and trusted format which has brought so much joy and fulfilment to musicians and the public for over 100 years. But I think we can experiment with different starting times, with different lengths, with different venues– not in a panic or in a search for the latest gimmick but just to display these timeless musical masterpieces to as many people in as many different circumstances as possible.
Sometimes the practicality of going to a concert can be difficult for people, and I do think we can look at food more carefully. A concert starting at 7:30 pm can be almost impossible for someone who is working and who does not live within striking distance of the concert hall. I’d like to see concert halls in partnership with restaurants, offering a package of a short concert and a meal. Even for performers it can be very difficult to find somewhere to eat after finishing a concert.”
Finally, what is coming up in your calendar that really excites you? (apart from our concert of course!)
“After a pandemic of cancellations, every concert now excites me! But I suppose the most unusual one in my calendar is on January 2 when, at Wigmore Hall, I will accompany four singers in an evening of my own songs. This will include a premiere of a song cycle for tenor I wrote during the pandemic called Songs of Love and Loss, and the great Nicky Spence will be performing them with me.”
Our thanks to Sir Stephen Hough for joining us in conversation, we look forward to a sensational new Season!
We invite you to Immerse Yourself in epic brass fanfares in Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben and the tempestuous drama and intimate moments in Brahms’ Piano Concerto at our 22/23 Season Opening Concert, September 23 2022, 19:45.
More details on how to book here.
