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DEBUSSY: Estampes; Images; Children’s Corner Suite; La plus que lente; L’Isle joyeuse – Stephen Hough, piano – Hyperion 

DEBUSSY: Estampes; Images; Children’s Corner Suite; La plus que lente; L’Isle joyeuse – Stephen Hough, piano – Hyperion 

by | Dec 19, 2017 | Classical CD Reviews

DEBUSSY: Estampes; Images, Books I-II; Children’s Corner Suite; La plus que lente; L’Isle joyeuse – Stephen Hough, piano – Hyperion CDA68139, 69:25 (1/5/18) [Harmonia mundi/PIAS] **** A potent and sonically resonant all-Debussy album attests to the spectacular technique of Stephen Hough. Having listened to the exotic, even voluptuous, sounds of the gamelan and gong (or metallophone) at the 1899 Exposition Universelle in Paris, Debussy carried within his musical imagination of vast array of potential colors, each of which finds release in his brilliant 1903 suite Estampes (Engravings).  Stephen Hough proves admirably capable of projecting the vibrant, pentatonic energy of the opening Pagodes, set on the keyboard’s black keys. Although Debussy marks the score sans nuance, the effect of ‘distancing’ does not diminish the spectacular wave-like motion—via 2-bar and 4-bar measures—of the piece, as though Balinese dancers had their sensuous reflection in a still pond. For the second of the engravings, Debussy takes us to Spain, as cross-fertilized by Moorish harmony. The lilted habanera rings with Spanish folk idioms across the range of the keyboard.  The languor of the music increases with the strumming of sensuous guitars, moving to a hazy, even lazy, sense of seductive quietude. Hough explodes with a […]

DVORAK: Piano Concerto in g minor; SCHUMANN: Piano Concerto – Stephen Hough, p./ City of Birmingham Orch./ Andris Nelsons – Hyperion

DVORAK: Piano Concerto in g minor; SCHUMANN: Piano Concerto – Stephen Hough, p./ City of Birmingham Orch./ Andris Nelsons – Hyperion

by | Apr 4, 2016 | Classical CD Reviews

The unusual combination of Schumann and Dvorak concertos certifies Stephen Hough’s mastery in music of the Romantic temperament. DVORAK: Piano Concerto in g minor, Op. 33; SCHUMANN: Piano Concerto in a minor, Op. 54 – Stephen Hough, p./ City of Birmingham Orch./ Andris Nelsons – Hyperion CDA68099, 74:11 (4/1/16) [Distr. by Harmonia mundi] ****: My own familiarity with the Dvorak Piano Concerto of 1876 derives from a recording by Frantisek Maxian and Vaclav Talich – wonderful playing of an edition by pedagogue Vilem Kurz (1872-1945), amending a “concerto for two right hands.” Rudolf Firkusny, too, performed the abridged version, recording it with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra.  So, whatever the innate fluency and often Bohemian charm of the piece, it maintained a reputation for its awkward pianism, its lack of virtuoso bravura, and its rarity in performance.  Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997) altered our perception of the work, reverting to the uncut, original edition and subsequently performing it with Kondrashin and recording it with Carlos Kleiber.  Now, the tendency is for pianists to perform the original version as a matter of course, adjusting its idiosyncratic demands to a fluent, poetic realization that makes us question why the work ever fell out […]