Everything you always wanted to know about classical music but were afraid to ask

Novelist, essayist, painter, poet, composer. Oh yes, and pianist: Stephen Hough does all of these things very well — and one of them superlatively.

Most of us will know Hough as a dazzling but thoughtful concert pianist, at home with almost all repertoire, but with a special affinity for 19th- and early 20th- century works. He recently played a gilded royal piano at the Proms — and before that published his first extended work of fiction. But don’t call him a Renaissance man. He flinches — and points out he’s not much cop at maths or science. That makes the rest of us feel only marginally better.

A pianist has to do something while on the road — all those flights and lonely nights in distant hotel bedrooms. Once you’ve mastered the notes and feel secure about the performances ahead, how to fill the time? Answer: write another book.

Rough Ideas has the feeling of a work written in snatches. It’s highly episodic, with entries ranging from a few dozen words to a few hundred. Many of them begin with questions — the sort of things he’s repeatedly asked, one guesses, by adoring audiences and sponsors over post-concert drinks and nibbles before packing his bag to move on to the next venue. (Pianists develop an ‘almost monastic discipline of indifference’ to cope with ‘this seesawing of emotional attachment and detachment’ while on tour, he says.)

Is classical music for everyone? Can you be a musician and not write music? Do special clothes make a difference while performing? Is there too much music? What kind of piano do you have at home? Should orchestras use vibrato? Can we clap between movements? Where do you sit to play the piano? Can atonal music make you cry? Do musicians tend to be socialists? And so on.