This selection of encore-type pieces (“bon-bons”, Thomas Beecham used to call them) may look unusual for a classical concert pianist. Alongside Rachmaninov, Granados, and Wilhelm Kempff’s transcription of the Minuet in G Minor, HWV434/4 by Handel, we also get Hough’s own arrangements of Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious from the Sherman Brothers’ score for Mary Poppins, Remember Me from Coco (the Pixar movie, not the musical), and Do You Want to Build a Snowman from Frozen, both by Robert Lopez.
On reflection, we may recall that Hough has long folded popular songs into the virtuoso transcription genre beloved of great pianists from Godowski and Rachmaninov to Earl Wild and Marc-André Hamelin. One of Hough’s earliest records featured his clever pianistic reimagining of My Favourite Things from The Sound of Music. Musical standards here are sky-high, as you can tell instantly from the Debussyan sound-world of Feed the Birds (also from Mary Poppins), while Hough’s tongue remains firmly in his cheek when Rimsky-Korsakov’s bumble-bee flies through the busy texture of Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious. Later, we get The Flight of the Bumblebee in full, in the Rachmaninov transcription, played with genuine character and not simply at warp speed (à la Yuja Wang.)
This recital, although light, is not all fun and games. The transcription tradition includes romantic, lyrical miniatures, and Hough plays these with his heart subtly placed under his sleeve. His Chopinesque recreation of Reflection by the American composer Alec Wilder (1907-1980) is a pure delight. (Frank Sinatra was such a fan of Wilder, he conducted a recording of the man’s orchestral music!) Hough wrings every drop of old-world nostalgia from his arrangement of Cielito Lindo by the Mexican composer Quirino Mendoza y Cortés (alias Mendoza). I could swear this tune is the same as Santa Lucia (supposedly a traditional Neapolitan song); either way, it is lovely. Grieg hovers over Hough’s version of the minor-key song Nature Boy by Eden
Ahbez, made popular by Nat “King” Cole who recorded it in 1948. The result is a very strange, enchanted transcription.
Hough has performed in Australia many times, and he pays us the compliment of including two pieces from Travel Diaries, by Malcolm Williamson: the languid waltz of Flower Sellers – Place de la Madeleine, and the gentle Broadway at Night. In more familiar classical selections, he is as sensitive and nuanced as any other pianist you can name. He shines in Enrique Granados’s Spanish Dance No. 5 (Andaluza), Schumann’s Vogel Als Prophet from Waldszenen, and three charming pieces by Cécile Chaminade (including her Ravelian Toccata). To close, he programs two encores that were ubiquitous a century ago: Edward MacDowell’s To a White Rose and Christian Sinding’s Rustle of Spring.
To summarise, this recital is musical escapism at the highest level, and right now we can sure use it!
Title: Stephen Hough’s Piano Postcards
Works: Music by Chaminade, Rimsky-Korsakov, Malcolm Williamson et al.
Performer: Stephen Hough p
Label: Hyperion CDA68469 (also download and vinyl)
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