At the Sir Stephen Hough piano recital at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall, I noticed a man in the interval. He was elderly and well-groomed with slightly curly grey hair which had been carefully styled. And he was wearing immaculate, knee-length green wellington boots.

I’d never been to a piano recital before. Was this the dress code? I was there because, after reading interviews with Hough, watching him online and listening to him speak, I knew this was something I had to experience.

A concert pianist, composer and writer, Hough is, according to The Economist (and I am assuming they have scoured the earth to find them all), one of only 20 living polymaths. That kind of information about a person doesn’t usually translate into something I can relate to, let alone enjoy. But this evening in Manchester came in all fancy, took its shiny shoes off, shouted at the sky, danced the sun up, and went to bed with muddy feet.

For me, Hough’s talent is making notes on a page sound like a long conversation. I understand now that you can’t just learn Beethoven’s Waldstein because the fancy takes you. I understand now that the form and execution of a piano piece inspires the listener to create their own story. During this piece, I was thinking about Rowena Cade who, with a small team of volunteers, made Minack Theatre in Porthcurno in her back garden. She made an amphitheatre on her land by picking away at it. Some bits must have been hard but rewarding, some beautiful. Sometimes she must have been sick of doing it. That is what Hough made Beethoven’s Waldstein feel like to me. It goes through labour, exhilaration, accomplishment, and tedium. But by the end there’s a magnificence, and the work is done.

It also felt a bit like this endless knee injury I have, and sometimes the standing and leaning and walking. It’s great and elating and you’re so grateful, and sometimes it’s painful from the start, you’ve sat too long, it feels like it’s going to collapse, but you have to carry on and hope it is temporary and not decline. Needless to say, I don’t tend to muse on amphitheatre construction or a torn meniscus when I listen to music.

In the choir circle, watching this incredible man, I felt like a crow on a telephone wire, a bird’s eye view of a human making beautiful noises. I’ll never know how he did it, and I certainly cannot replicate it, and I don’t know why I can’t do it.

At one time, you could borrow a flute and have free lessons from Oldham Music Centre if your kid was involved in either the orchestra or the choir. My son was in the choir. When he left, I bought my own flute and carried on trying to learn it. I learned practically nothing. But still, I joined a merry band of old head musicians from Manchester who were all accomplished. They let me toot and parp with no skill whatsoever and drowned me out with their good playing.

At the end of the recital, Hough performed an arrangement of the Sherman brothers’ score from Mary Poppins. He conveyed the entire undertone of the whole story in ten minutes, sharing that the grimy, the subservient, and the underclass of London streets survive through magic.

Hough was awarded a knighthood for his services to music. I once squawked a flute with the Orchestra of Fools, for one night only. In the end, it was just a pair of wellies on a sunny day to me.

By Cathy Crabb

 

Main image by Charlotte Wellings