There was a time when the serious business of concert-giving closed down for the summer. Artists were expected to take time off – to rest, to fish, to learn repertoire. But now many of the most important musical events happen during the resting, fishing months, not least the BBC Proms. This year I was determined that vacation should mean just that, as I swapped the stage for the stalls, from Janacek’s Katya Kabanova at Glyndebourne to Top Hat at Chichester to Good Night, Oscar at the Barbican. It was an idyllic break, but it’s back to work.
My new season began in New York, a second home since 1981 when I was a student at the Juilliard School, where I now have one student. On the day I arrived I was able to have dinner with my dear old friend Robert White, an irrepressible tenor who has sung for every American president from JFK to Bill Clinton, not to mention Pope John Paul II and the late Queen Mother. At 88 he is a little frail now, but his voice is in good enough shape to deliver a flawless ‘Boum!’ in French. Try stopping him. The next evening was dinner at the composer Lowell Liebermann’s house in New Jersey. He is a true virtuoso in many areas, including the kitchen. ‘Did you make the bread?’ ‘I made everything, dear… except the cheese.’ Presumably he had nothing to do with the Bordeaux either, except uncork it.
Early the next morning I flew from the glass skyscrapers of Manhattan to the Rocky Mountains of Montana. ‘Unique’ is a much-overused word but it feels appropriate for Tippet Rise Art Center, which incorporates a sculpture park and miniature concert hall in the middle of 12,000 acres of austerely gorgeous ranch country. Peter and Cathy Halstead have worked with nature to create a place of extraordinary beauty, and it was a treat to play on Horowitz’s concert piano, part of Peter and Cathy’s collection of a dozen gorgeous Steinways. There is no more beautiful setting in which to play.
On my return to Europe, it was a short hop to Hamburg for a pair of concerts at the Elbphilharmonie. Designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the same architects responsible for Tate Modern, and costing €860 million, this spectacular concert hall juts into the Elbe like a giant iceberg and has become a magnet for music lovers worldwide. It was here that I gave the world premiere of Beethoven’s 3rd Piano Concerto. Now I’ve got your attention! For his first concert as music director of the Hamburg Philharmonic, Omer Meir Wellber commissioned a number of composers to write movements to replace those in famous repertoire pieces – a conversation between the new and the old. I played Beethoven’s concerto with a new second movement composed by me. In reality it’s not quite as wacky as it might seem, because well into the 19th century improvisation was expected as part of a performer’s arsenal. Indeed, cadenzas were always in the style of the performer rather than the composer. It was a moment to get your fingerprints all over someone else’s piece. More than 4,000 people came over two days and I don’t think anyone walked out. Still, with apologies to Ludwig.
It struck me that the US and the Continent, as far apart as they might seem in their attitude to supporting the arts, have more in common than we might think. American programme books are thick with lists of generous private donors, many giving six- or seven-figure tax deductible gifts. Germany allots similar amounts to their arts organisations from the public purse. Politics aside, both European and American models involve a combination of civic pride and the realisation of the value of classical music in the community. Britain has never been quite sure which model it preferred, so we have ended up with neither. Too often, we are embarrassed about the ‘elitist’ art we’re meant to be celebrating.
I’m coming back to the UK for four recitals and three Rachmaninov 1sts with the Bournemouth Symphony and Mark Wigglesworth, before giving the European premiere of my piano quintet at the Queen Elizabeth Hall with the Viano Quartet. ‘Les Noces Rouges’ is its subtitle, although no reference is intended to that infamous episode of Game of Thrones. This is the grisly story of siblings Pavel and Peter, a vignette buried in the middle of Willa Cather’s novel My Antonia. When I first read it it seemed like the perfect outline for a macabre tone-poem. A Russian wedding, the drunken banquet afterwards, then the night sleigh ride across the snowy steppes, with the subsequent horrific ‘murder by wolves’ brought about by the two brothers as they tossed the honeymooning bride and groom overboard to lighten the load. An abrupt end to a different kind of holiday.
Stephen Hough and the Viano Quartet give the UK premiere of Hough’s Piano Quintet (Les noces rouges) at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London on 9 October.
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