A Haiku for the Future

Being active in the social media, Piano Street’s Patrick Jovell entered and won pianist Stephen Hough’s Haiku contest on Twitter. As Patrick is a resident of Stockholm and the two-tickets-recital-prize was for a Hough concert in Sydney (on Liszt’s birthday the 22nd October, incidentally), Patrick asked Stephen for a fair trade:
— My Twitter Haiku contest prize for a short interview with you at pianostreet.com/blog?
Stephen accepted…

Patrick Jovell: What would be more appropriate — one month after Franz Liszt’s 200th birthday — than to approach another international pianist who turns 50, today the 22nd of November?
Piano Street wants to wish you a happy birthday!
You recently came back after a tour in Australia. Can you tell us about what happened there?

Stephen Hough: Thank you! Recital tours tend to be very busy. When you’re playing with an orchestra there are preparation days, rehearsals, extra concerts, time to live in a city – but a recital is usually just one evening.
So there is more travelling (more hotels, more taxis, more flights) and more notes. To be on-stage for nearly two hours without any support is more challenging than playing with an orchestra, but it’s also much freer. You can take an interpretation in all kinds of spontaneous directions which is less possible when there are dozens of other musicians and a conductor sharing the platform.

PJ: You played sonatas by explicit pianist-composers; Beethoven, Liszt, Scriabin and yourself namely the Sonata “Broken Branches” (2010). Can you tell us about this trip from the past into the future?

SH: These sonatas were chosen more for their unusual (strange) forms than for their link as being by composers who were also pianists. None of them fit the usual mould. The 5th Scriabin and the Liszt are circular, one-movement designs, Beethoven’s Moonlight (quasi fantasia) begins with an improvisation in harmonic colour rather than melody or motive, and my own sonata is in sixteen short, broken-down but related sections. Nevertheless playing music by composers who really play the instrument does make a difference. Everything lies well under the hand, however complex the patterns might be.

PJ: Tell us about the Beethoven-Liszt-Scriabin-Hough connection, or affinity maybe?

SH: In addition to being ‘strange’ all of these sonatas are intense and turbulent (if only sometimes an inner turbulence). They are pieces with alert, open eyes … uncomfortable … emotionally charged … poised on the edge.

PJ: Starting with Beethoven and his times and ending up in the present times, what will the future (in 50 years) look like from a composer’s and concert pianist’s perspective?

SH: wish I knew the answer to this question. I imagine, if things continue on their present trajectory, there will be fewer recital series as the years pass. This has been a pattern now for at least the past fifty years.
Electronic entertainment means that there is more to do now in our homes – we don’t need to go out to concerts to have fun; and the ease of easy music at the press of a button means that we don’t need to learn to play the piano anymore to hear music. In the past when a pianist came to town it was an opportunity for the keen amateur to hear and see something being done at a high standard with which he or she was struggling at home. That whole scenario has changed.
Only in China is there a possibility for this to be re-awakened. As far as new compositions … even less can be predicted.

PJ: You are known for your enormously broad repertoire. What will the next 50 years mean to you in terms of repertoire focus?

SH: I’m very happy to think of “the next 50 years” – here’s hoping! I will continue to learn new works which interest me, but my commitment to composition (and the writing of words) means that I have cut back a lot on further expanding my repertoire. There simply isn’t enough time and I have four commissions to write over the next few years (a 2nd piano sonata, a cello sonata, another song cycle and an orchestral piece). At this point in my life (halfway through!) writing music fires me up with greater enthusiasm than learning, say, Emil Sauer’s 2nd piano concerto or a set of etudes by an obscure 19th century Russian composer.

PJ: If you were obliged to write a 50th birthday Haiku to yourself; how would that sound?

SH:

Stephen Hough online: website | blog | twitter

Compositions by Stephen Hough: Broken Branches