A knight-errant on the road: Sir Stephen Hough at the Barbican

With the easy grace of his aristocratic bearing Sir Stephen Hough took to the stage of the Barbican as a man with not a care in the world and, seeing a piano before him, knows that he is in the right place for his next set of adventures. He is touring a programme of undisputed heavyweights (on this occasion Schumann and Chopin) accompanied by some French perfume, and a little something of his own creation to share with us. Engaging the keyboard with the gentlest of caresses he began slowly and dreamily but, by the end of the programme he was all a-blaze with the Polish fire first seen in Paris.

The music of Cécile Chaminade has probably never fully escaped the faux pas of the composer lending her name (and a bar of music) to a brand of Bond Street soap. Three of her miniatures opened the programme: Automne, Autrefois and Les sylvains (The Fauns). As might be expected from someone of Hough’s sensibility, there was not a whiff of the scent of retail therapy in his elucidation of their charms. Nonetheless, his phrasing evoked the amiable animation and gentle sophistication of the Bond Street familiar to Clarissa Dalloway.

When the spotlight fell on Schumann’s Fantasie in C major, it showed Hough in a world away from Chaminade’s fauns. Real human passion floods the piece and Sir Stephen’s performance of it wonderfully described the ardour that Robert felt for Clara. He was also a convincing advocate for the grandeur of the form; polished restraint in the opening bars leading to the sensual declamations of the central movement and, at the close, resignation without despair. Schumann’s passion is not that as imagined by Mallarmé, as painted by Debussy and made flesh by Nijinsky, but I think that Hough came mightily close to making it so. 

After that, Sir Stephen's own sketches of rural reveries, Sonatina Nostalgica, entered another world altogether. Here was a five-minute nod to the England of Vaughan Williams, John Ireland and Gerald Finzi – and who can argue with that? Certainly not I, and I could listen to him play it over and over again.

With the briefest of pauses Hough next stormed one of Chopin’s fantastical strongholds erected to challenge all those who would true valour see: the Sonata no. 3 in B minor. By this stage in his adventures Hough was fully fired-up, but not in a reckless, daredevil fashion; he has inherited the cloak of one of the original members of Schumann’s League of David and doesn’t dishonour it. His assault on the dizzy heights of Scherzo proved to be base-camp for the shimmering panorama of the slow movement; rest, repose and the hearing of secret harmonies. At the summit I heard the sound of Sir Stephen singing bel canto, which afterwards I could not help but hum to myself.

And so to the encores. More Schumann, Warum from the Op.12 Fantasiestücke, another wistful reverie; and the tongue-twister from the Sherman Brothers’ fantasy Mary Poppins, which contrives an audacious rhyme with “atrocious”, arranged by the master himself. A knight-errant who can also be a showman.