At the Piano by Caroline Benser

Author:Caroline Benser
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
Published: 2011-03-10T21:00:00+00:00

Stephen Hough. Photo by Grant Hiroshima

CHAPTER FIVE

Stephen Hough

Stephen Hough was born on the 22nd of November in 1961 in Heswall on the Wirral Peninsula in the north of England into a family not noted for its musical activity. When only five years old he begged for a piano and his mother saw to it that her young son had an instrument as well as a teacher. Both parents smoothed the way for his musical development. His earliest influential teacher was the 18-year-old Heather Slade-Lipkin, who was daughter of one of his mother’s friends. She has since become a widely regarded teacher of pianists. After one year of instruction with her, Hough, as the youngest competitor at about age seven, placed in the finals of the National Junior Piano Playing Competition. Gerald Moore was on that jury and noted that Hough showed a lot of potential as a pianist. The publicity that ensued was a frightening experience because many concert managers came forward to thrust him into the limelight. Luckily his parents were wise enough not to push him into that arena at his age.

Slade-Lipkin soon sent her student to her own teacher, Gordon Green in Liverpool. Hough credits Green with great wisdom in having enormous care in nurturing him as a young musician with regard to long-term success as a musician, rather than exploiting him for quick celebrity. Under his care, Hough won the piano section of the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition in 1978. On those trips to Liverpool he relished the total environment that Green offered: conversations about music, listening to recordings, and attending recitals at Philharmonic Hall. Green opened up the wider music world for Hough. After Green fell ill, Hough studied with Derrick Wyndham at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. Wyndham is also spoken of highly as Hough recalls how he taught him to practice correctly.

While Hough was obsessed with the piano until about the age of 10, his early teen years found him indulging in rock and pop music, and merely going through the motions of working at the piano. It took his composition teacher, Douglas Steele, to bring him back to serious music by playing for his student on the piano a passage of a moving chord sequence from Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius.1 It was the elder British composer’s music, depicting Gerontius’s death with the priest praying over his body, that became a profound experience for the young Hough. Hough was to become a Catholic, as was Elgar. As well, he was inspired to buy John Barbirolli’s recording of Elgar’s music. With his musical fire once again lit, he returned more seriously to his study at the piano.

At age 19 Hough entered the master’s degree program at Juilliard. After two years he began his doctorate, which he discontinued after he won the 1983 Naumburg International Piano Competition at age 21. He captured international attention with his New York debut recital in 1984 at Alice Tully Hall.

Hough has a high regard for scholarship devoted to the history of his instrument and its literature.

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