Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Hough, Lang Lang and Hamelin

I had the pleasure of seeing Stephen Hough on Friday, playing the Paganini Rhapsody with the Singapore Symphony. Let's just say that it was amazing!! Irrespective of how fff the orchestra played, the piano was ALWAYS audible. Superb control, with lots of new nuances to refresh the music. The octaves at the end were SO fast, accurate and his hands were SO SO high... Absolute control.
His encore was a Mompou piece, whose name escapes me at the moment. Exquisitely refined ppp. Unbelievably, 2 rows behind me, a lady, (and I use that term loosely, as my language is not for the faint-hearted), started a text message on her handphone, which lasted the whole of the encore. Click click click... If I was sat next to her, then I would have been arrested for assault...

I had dinner and drinks with Stephen afterwards, and he is SUCH a modest guy. He was saying the piano was too muffled and did not have enough upper register projection. This was NOT apparent during his playing. A mutual friend of our's told him not to worry, as his fingers would be strong enough to deal with it. And they were!!! He is also in the process of learning next season's rep, and has been asked to prepare rep for 2006/07. He admitted to having problems learning his current pieces, but I think his idea of problems, and MY idea of problems are So far apart to be incomparable...

I was asked a short while baack to alert Stephen to this site, so I'll send him the link, and maybe he'll drop in. It is worth noting that he gets a LOT of questions from pinists, so he may not have the energy...

On Saturday it was Lang Lang with the Phil. orchestra and Eschenbach, (who looked like a cross between Jean-Luc Picard and Dr Evil), playing the Tschaikowsky 1st... Needless to say it was a full house, with the first 5 rows crammed with 'Lang Langettes'. I was anticipating lots of expression and divine soul-searching, but, and this may come as a surprise, there was hardly ANY!!! LL was the picture of perfect posture, with little body movements to distract from an AMAZING performance. He found new shadings and inflection in the old war-horse, and it has to be said, played one of the best I've heard. It was poles apart from his Barenboim recording, and, if he ever recorded it with Eschenbach, I would not hesitate in buying it. My friend and I were wondering if Eschenbach has given him some fatherly advice...
There was indeed an encore, but, thankfully, his father didn't make it on stage. We were given a chinese folk song, and it was very controlled.
I honestly enjoyed this concert...

In September, we have Hamelin coming over to play the Rach 3... THAT is going to be interesting. We also have another superb pianist booked in January - Simon Trpceski. He's doing the Prok 3, and if his World Piano Competition Final is anything to go by, (which he SHOULD have won - he received a standing ovation for an Argerich inspired performance), it will be just as thrilling...

What is Stephen Hough going to be playing next season? :p

I sure hope he stops by. I haven't heard much of his playing, actually, but it would be great to have a concertizing pianist participating in our forum! (We've already got Koji and Brendan, and I'd hope they will someday both be on the platform of somone like Stephen Hough) It'd be interesting not only to see how he would answer some of our technical/curious questions but how he would respond to some of our other discussions, and how he might add some of his own (non-technical) ideas.

Great news regarding Lang Lang. He's so young, and I hope this is a big turning point in his musicianship towards the better!

Eschenbach is a wonderful pianist and an even better conductor. I'm not surprised that he was able to get some inspired playing out of Lang Lang.

My brother's got Eschnbach's recording of the complete Mozart sonatas. It's pretty good!

That's a great recording. Also good are his Schubert D960 and Beethoven Op. 106.

Yes!!!

Inspired playing AND the ability to tone down the 'grimaces'...

I hope this is the start of the 'new' Lang Lang. He really is a good pianist, (he seemed to have hands made of rubber, and the most amazing octaves this side of Argerich), and it would be a shame if his physicalities got in the way of his music...
I honestly expected to spend most of it with my eyes closed, but, thankfully, I was proven wrong. I shan't be rushing out to buy his cds, but if Eschenbach and he do something, then that will be worth looking at...

Ya, that video of LL on Leno showed him making very very little artificial movements. Even if he did miss a ton of notes, he didn't visually annoy me.

Stephen never offered his rep choices, and since we were all crowded round a table, and enjoying non-musical chat, I didn't want to bother with it.
I'll try and find out, though, as I owe him an email, and coffee in London when I'm there in Sep.. (name-dropping galore here - sorry )

Stephen Hough is a great guy. I was fortunate enough to attend a master class of his at the NEC while he was in Boston recently. VERY knowledgable and interesting. I didn't get to hear him play much, but I definitely hope to see him play some time soon.

He's fantastic in that concerto, isn't he? I saw him play it earlier in the year - it was an experience, to say the least. I think he's a very promising pianist.


David

double post , sorry

I saw Stepen Hough play the Rach3 about a year ago and it was probably the best concert I ever attended.

MMSGA,

How do you pronounce Hough's last name?

(There was some confusion over this in the "pronunciations" thread a few months ago - "Hyew", "Huff"...)

It's 'Huff'....

Yeah - he's pretty amazing...

I was really amazed when he didn't win the competition. The eventual winner was a guy who didn't even originally MAKE it to the final. He was a last minute substitution. The standing ovation for Trpceski was well earned. The crowd booed when he got second place...
Aanyway, along with the upcoming Piano Festival, (with Noriko Ogawa - another superb pianist who I first saw in HK in 1989) and Hamelin's Rach3, it's turning into an interesting season over here...

I have a pirate recording of Hamelin playing the Rachmaninoff 3rd, and it really isn't very good. I hope he plays it (better) for you guys.

It did cross my mind that it may not be as good as it sounds...

I have his Paganini Etudes, and it doesn't hold up against Anievas or Howard... And Bolet is the King, (or, given the current Horowitz thread), QUEEN of La Campanella...

Get ahold of his Brahms Quintet recording on DG. Great playing.

Yeah, isn't he? I also met him, albeit briefly, after a concert of the 5th Saint-Saens concerto and he was absolutely the most charming and warm person with whom I have ever had the pleasure to converse. We talked for about 3 minutes with another man about Saint-Saens and Mompou, nothing particularly significant but I was just overtaken by Hough's kindness and didn't want to stop talking! He signed my copy of his Scharwenka/Sauer concerto CD on Hyperion and told me that he hoped to hear me play some day (lol...I had been complaining about the HR6 just before we parted and he rolled his eyes and said, "oh, THAT one! Well, *everyone* has trouble with that piece!" Made my night).

Also worthy of note is that just before the second half started, he snuck back in and grabbed a seat amongst some equally admiring fans and then sat, stiff as a board as in concentration, through the Franck D minor symphony. He's the first soloist I've ever seen who's come in after the performance to see the rest of the concert! From the sounds/looks of him he really is quite a guy.


Incidentally, about Hamelin and the Rach 3 (iamcanadian), I flicked on the radio one night and heard the 2nd Chopin concerto, just as the 2nd movement began. I quickly realized it was a considerably mediocore performance and almost immediately assumed that it was a concerto competition winner with a very good college or perhaps second rate professional orchestra (though to be fair the orchestra came across as being pretty good). By the middle of the third movement I almost had had enough but I was just dying to find out what the heck was going on with the piece...technical mistakes here and there, occassionally repulsive phrasing and no rhythmical drive to speak of (not to mention it was too fast), it was a mess compared to most of the other recs I'd heard!

Yep, it turns out it was Hamelin playing a live performance with the CBC Radio Orchestra. I was quite surprised! I've always admired him, of course, but on hearing him live, and without knowing it was in fact Hamelin at the piano (and so I was unbiased), I have developed a slightly different opinion of him.

Hamelin made mistakes?!?!?!

Hehe, there aren't more than two or three finger slips in the Rachmaninoff recording. But that's not what disappointed me. The whole thing was just boring.

I'll post it if there's any interest.