Pros: Excellent recorded sound, eloquent and astoundingly virtuosic performances.
Cons: None.
The Bottom Line: Highly recommended to all lovers of the piano and virtuoso music for the elegant performances by Stephen Hough which makes the music live and breathe like nothing else.
peacheater's Full Review: The Piano Album / Stephen Hough
British pianist Stephen Hough has made his name performing and recording music that is not usually heard in the concert hall. From his benchmark recording of Mendelssohn's complete works for piano and orchestra to his newer Liszt series for Hyperion, he has consistently shown the Midas touch. These two CD set, The Piano Album , has been something of a cult recording in the piano world since the recordings were separately released in 1988 and 1993
This album aroused my curiosity because it contained many works that I had heard of while working as a music librarian at a local library. Many of these works including Tausig's Ungarische Zigeunerweisen are long forgottten and rarely played, while others such as Paderewski's Minuet in G are the only staples that we have left from a vast world of pianist-composers that began with Mozart and continued to Rachmaninoff and his contemporary, Nikolai Medtner.
The surprising thing about these pieces, which could so easily be sentimentalized by an amateur, is that they hold up quite well to repeated listening. One of my personal favorites is the Bizet-Godowsky Adagietto . Over simply repeated bass notes, a lovely forlon melody is formed. What seems so easy to the ear is much more difficult for the fingers since Godowsky made a reputation for himself as a composer of unplayable transcriptions and compositions. Yet Hough not only makes the piece sound easy, he also interprets it in such a way that at the end we feel that we have reached some kind of unknown height where mortals fear to tread.
Aside from the Godowsky transcription of Bizet, there are also some pieces that I find enjoyable merely because they are ridiculously difficult. Carl Tausig, one of Liszt's first pupils, was also a talented composer who produced among other things his Ungarische Zigeunerweisen (Hungarian Gypsy Songs). Although it sometimes sounds like a slavish imitation of Liszt's better known Hungarian Rhapsodies, Tausig manages to give the work a sparkling individuality of its own which is brought to light by Hough.
From a sonic point of view, these are two hours worth of wonderful recordings. There does not seem to be a dull ringer in the entire set of works. Highly recommended to all lovers of the piano and virtuoso music.
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