Hough in concert!

[thierry13]

I will be going to see Stephen Hough play Saint-Saens Concerto no.2 and le tombeau de couperin next week !! It will be awesome  He comes to montreal, so he will be playing with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal.  It will be an awesome experience because it's the concerto I will be playing this year 

[jre58591]

bootleg it for us!!!! ill trade you for something i bootlegged if you do.

[opus10no2]

Interestingly, aside from his pianistic pursuits, he is the patent holder and inventor of an innovative buttock toning excercise device.
Fingers of steel aswell as buns of steel!

[thierry13]

HRM sorry I don't know what bootlegging is, I don't know that expression.

[jre58591]

it means to record the concert, like with a little handheld recorder, in secret. dont let the ushers catch you, or else youll be thrown out.

[viking]

Nice, I'm going to Hough's Brahms 2 in Minneapolis later on in the season.

[thierry13]

Nice, I'm going to Hough's Brahms 2 in Minneapolis later on in the season.

Lucky you !!

[demented cow]

Interestingly, aside from his pianistic pursuits, he is the patent holder and inventor of an innovative buttock toning excercise device.

Funny curiosity: two great pianists, Hough and Hofman, were both inventors/patent holders:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Hofman :
'Hofmann's invention of pneumatic shock absorbers for cars and planes earned him a fortune in the early twentieth century. His other inventions included medical devices, a furnace that burned crude oil, automobile windscreen wipers, a device to record dynamics in reproducing piano rolls that he perfected just as the roll companies went bust, and a house that revolved with the sun.'.

[willmillar27]

He is awesome. Very untraditional stage-wear when I saw him at the Royal Albert Hall in April. He wore a satin/Silk black top that looked like he had come on in his pyjamas.

He was playing Rachmaninov - Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

It was superb except for the bum note in one of the piano's cadenzas that stuck out like a sore thumb. It was still amazing though.

He is a great eccentric and a wonderful philosopher. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY0WgCz5xPs This is a clip from a program in the UK called 'Imagine'. Stephen Hough has some brilliant, inspiring words about what it is like to be a pianist.

Hope you enjoy the concert

All good wishes

Will

[cmg]

Thanks, Will, for the Hough YouTube link.  Terrific interview.  Speaking of musicians who held patents, I think it was George Antheil (along with American actress Hedy Lamar) who held a patent on a missile guidance system.  Can anyone tell me is this tidbit is true or not???

[willmillar27]

Thats ok. George Antheil and Hedy Lamarr did design and patent some missile guidance anti-jamming technology in 1942 but when it expired the US government took it on and Hedy and George sued - but lost!!

I love Hough's quote on how playing piano is not "an air conditioned room - it can be a furnace at times, which it should, becuase you are dealing with things which are the very heart of what it is to live a meaningful life"

Very Inciteful

All the Best

Will

[thierry13]

Thats ok. George Antheil and Hedy Lamarr did design and patent some missile guidance anti-jamming technology in 1942 but when it expired the US government took it on and Hedy and George sued - but lost!!

I love Hough's quote on how playing piano is not "an air conditioned room - it can be a furnace at times, which it should, becuase you are dealing with things which are the very heart of what it is to live a meaningful life"

Very Inciteful

All the Best

Will

Yup i love it too, and plus, he says it at the same time of one the lyrical moments of the concerto being played in background ... wich makes it quite cool to listen Loved the feel of it.

[ako]

Saw him playing Mozart No. 21 last Sat. in San Francisco sitting right up front in the second row center--for free too! He wore a Mandarin collar jacket/shirt and some dark forest green shoes...almost looked black if you're far away, I guess. Reading some of the comments about him being an inventor, an eccentric and a philosopher sheds some light on his playing...suddenly it all made sense. Very nice playing though.

[thierry13]

It was tonight  It was so amazing ! He took the third movement even faster than in the recording, and allways as clean and even as habitual ! Amazing performance. I went to see him in backstage, and I was surprised to see he wasn't talking to anyone, just standing there hehe. So i went and talked with him about 10 minutes I got him to sign my Saint-Saens concerto no.2 sheet music(wich he was playing that night). He saw in my bag my Chopin etudes musica budapest and mentionned that edition was really great ! He saw too my printed version of the Rach 3 hehe, he pointed it and said : woah, lots of notes in this one. It's very hard to keep up, if you leave it down for some time, you allways have to learn it all over again ! He talked me about Bowen's toccata too, how he got the manuscript from some archive, and worked from it ! At least, it was a very clear manuscript, and he himself made the first edition. He is an amazing person, great personnality, and great playing too !

[Waldszenen]

Out of curiosity, how do you pronounce his nurname? "Hoff" or "How"?

[thierry13]

Out of curiosity, how do you pronounce his nurname? "Hoff" or "How"?

Hoff