Top pianist Stephen Hough celebrates Rachmaninov anniversary

Star pianist Stephen Hough performs Rachmaninov in a celebration of the composer’s annivesary.

British-Australian pianist Stephen Hough is performing Rachmaninov piano concertos with Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

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This is a bumper year for fans of Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninov as the music world celebrates the 150th anniversary of his birth.

His piano works – especially the four concertos and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini – are the real crowd-pleasers and one of the world’s top pianists, Sir Stephen Hough, is performing two of them with Sydney Symphony Orchestra under exciting British conductor John Wilson.

The mini-festival got under way with a bang with Hough’s luminous performance of Rachmaninov’s second, and most famous, concerto. It’s a big part of popular culture, excerpts and cover versions being used in countless advertisements and movies, including most notably the Marilyn Monroe film The Seven Year Itch.

Packed full of melodies so big that they leap out at you, so many performances of the work have been overcooked and drenched in a sugary mix of sentimentality, so it was refreshing to hear Hough and Wilson forgoing the chocolate sauce for a more sinewy and transparent approach.

Hough’s pianism was, as always, from the top rank and showed why he is considered by many to be the finest pianist of his generation. There are no flamboyant gestures. His face is a study in concentration, his clenching jaw the only indication of the physical effort he is putting into this notoriously challenging piece.

Wilson kept his players tight and focused for a work which features some wonderful interplay between soloist and orchestra, particularly in the adagio in which Joshua Batty’s flute weaves enchantingly over Hough’s arpeggiated chords. Other players deserving of their ovations were guest principal oboe Joshua Oates, clarinetist Alexander Morris, Nicolas Fleury for his horn solo and the ever-popular principal cor anglais, Alexandre Oguey.

After the exciting momentum of the final movement Hough almost threw himself off the stool with the closing crashing chords, bringing the audience to its feet.

After several curtain calls he returned to the piano for a cooling encore. “This is the best piece of music ever written by a Prime Minister,” he said in introducing Polish composer-politician Ignacy Jan Paderewski’s charming Nocturne.

British conductor John Wilson is performing Rachmaninov with Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

The concert was capped off by Wilson’s scintillating performance of Ottorino Respighi’s Pines of Rome, the best known of his trilogy of works capturing the sights and sounds of the Eternal City.

Premiered in 1924 when Mussolini, an admirer, had just come to power, this is music writ large by a composer who admired Richard Strauss and foreshadowed a generation of cinema soundtracks to follow. The four movements describe pine trees at Villa Borghese, a catacomb, the Janiculum and the Appian Way.

Respighi was an innovator – the first composer to use a field recording, in this case a trilling nightingale, which closes the hazily atmospheric Janiculum section.

With a brass cohort perched high behind the stage in the choir seats and an oboe playing offstage, there were plenty of special effects for the martial ending in which Respighi imagines Imperial Roman troops marching along the Appian Way. No wonder Il Duce admired the work, but that aside it did make for an exciting and visceral end to a performance which showed why Wilson has been recording hit after hit with his own orchestra, the Sinfonia of London.

He conducts the whole Respighi trilogy – Roman Festivals, Fountains and Pines – in an afternoon concert on Saturday, May 13, after Hough’s repeat performance of the Rachmaninov 2.

Hough will give a recital of works by Mompou, Chopin, Debussy, Liszt and Hough at 7pm at the City Recital Hall on Monday, May 15, and will perform Rachmaninov 1 with the SSO at 8pm on Sydney Opera House Concert Hall on Wednesday, May 17; Thursday, May 18, at 1.30pm; and at 8pm on Friday, May 19, and Saturday, May 20.

DETAILS

• CONCERT Stephen Hough performs Rachmaninov 2

• WHERE Sydney Opera House Concert Hall

• WHEN May 11, 2023