Pianist Stephen Hough is widely regarded as a polymath. His other skills – on top of virtuosity on the concert hall stage and in the studio – include writing, painting and composing. Hough’s latest book Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More follows his debut novel, The Final Retreat, but he has been writing for years, his work spanning poetry (he won the Sixth International Poetry Competition in 2008) to articles on the tensions of being Catholic and gay – and even a book on perfume.

The title of this latest offering puns on Hough’s name, but it’s also a neat description of the work’s philosophy. These aren’t so much essays as briefly – though succinctly – sketched thoughts. Some, like reflections on the relationship between pianist and page-turner, or whether religious faith is more like a rock or a tree, are shorter than a page, while others – such as an anecdote about talking Catholicism and sexuality over lunch with French writer Julien Green – span several. (Limelight published three extracts in March 2020).

“Give me a rough idea,” Hough writes in the introduction. “Not as in a...