‘Stephen Hough in Recital’ @ Cliburn Concerts (Kimbell Museum)
—Wayne Lee Gay
Thursday night (1/30) in his Cliburn Concert at the Kimbell Art Museum, pianist Stephen Hough (AKA Sir Stephen in the United Kingdom as of 2022) showed off three of the attributes that have made him one of the world's most admired and beloved classical musicians.
First of these attributes is his ability to breathe life into neglected repertoire from the past. Early on in his career, Hough recorded forgotten concertos and shorter works by, for example, Emil von Sauer, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, and Xaver Scharwenka, establishing a firm niche in the classical recording scene. And he has continued in that vein throughout his career. On touring recital programs for this season, Hough has revived solo piano works of the French romantic-era composer Cecile Chaminade (who happened to be female), and he presented three of her many short solo works Thursday night.
Chaminade knew how to spin a good tune, as demonstrated in her Schumannesque, echt-romantic "Automne.” She likewise knew her way around the romantic harmonic language, demonstrated in the dramatic shift from the dreamy outer sections to the stormy middle section and back. Along with the requisite romantic sensibility, pianist Hough showed off a melodic voice that managed to be tender and assertive at the same time. "Autrefois" ("Another time") presents faintly pseudo-Renaissance harmonies along with gentle suggestions of a lute; "Les Sylvains" describes mythical woodland creatures with a melody that Hough managed to rescue from romantic sentimentality.
A second aspect of Hough's multi-faceted musical personality on display in the concert was his activity as a composer, in the form of the brief, three-movement Sonatina Nostalgica. The era of the composer-pianist initially died out with Rachmaninoff and Padereweski in the 1940s; Hough and few other hardy souls have, in recent decades, once again asserted that composers can perform and performers can compose. Sonatina Nostalgica evokes, in three gently modernist movements, scenes from his childhood home in northwestern England, with mild polytonality, moments of reflection, and, in the final movement, the playing of children at the center of the village.
The program, performed without intermission (as is the practice this season at Cliburn series concerts) concluded with a substantial group of Chopin works, demonstrating a third aspect of Hough's musicality: his vividly personal take on the masterpieces of the standard repertoire.
The Chopin group opened with the most famous of that composer's Nocturnes, Opus 9, No. 2 in E-flat; Hough here evoked the romantic tradition of molto rubato with constantly shifting shades and colors. Once again, an inherent energy and momentum acknowledged while rising above the sentimentality often attached to this work.
Hough moved without pause into the even more serenely romantic Nocturne in F-sharp, Opus 14, No. 2, steadfastly maintaining the authentic romantic sensibility at a steady simmer—without letting the pot boil over.
Hough then tackled larger works of Chopin, first in the form of the Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat Minor, creating a spooky landscape haunted by that insistent brief bass motif. The final work on the program, Chopin's Sonata No. 3 in B minor, rants, mourns, and sings; Hough reached a feverish rage in the final moments.
An enthusiastic audience demanded three encores. Hough initially responded with the brief "Warum?" ("Why?") from Schumann's Fantasiestücke. He then indulged his longstanding fascination for Disneyana with a rollickingly athletic take on "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" from Mary Poppins, and—also from Mary Poppins—a deliciously lounge-ish, shamelessly sentimental (and delightful) version of "Feed the Birds."
WHEN: January 30, 2025
WHERE: Kimbell Art Museum (piano pavilion), Fort Worth
WEB: cliburn.org/concerts
