Stephen Hough review, Wigmore Hall: live classical music returns to Britain with a virtuosic flourish

At last, live classical music is back – in the UK. Some might say about time, because classical music institutions beyond the UK have been offering live concerts in front of empty halls for quite a while. The Bavarian State Opera, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Budapest Festival Orchestra and several others have produced some wonderful things.

Still, it was tremendous at 1pm today to logon to the Wigmore Hall’s own website, to see and hear the first in a four-week series of lunchtime concerts jointly put on by the Hall and BBC Radio 3 (you can also hear these concerts broadcast live on Radio 3). From the camera’s vantage point at the back of the hall, one could see the back of BBC Radio 3 presenter Andrew McGregor, looking somewhat forlorn amongst a sea of empty red plush seats. But just to hear that familiar voice coming from that much-loved space made it feel like a little bit of normality was being restored to our lives.

For obvious reasons, the sixteen concerts feature only homegrown talent, and it’s certainly an enticing line-up, with five terrific singers including Lucy Crowe and Roderick Williams and some top-rank instrumentalists including Steven Isserlis and Paul Lewis. Launching the series today was pianist Stephen Hough with an impressively weighty programme, beginning with Bach’s great Chaconne from the 2nd Solo Violin Partita, in the arrangement by the virtuoso pianist Ferruccio Busoni.

This is a huge test of a pianist’s technique, but it’s also mysteriously poetic. Hough brought a vast palette of colours to the piece, and a combination of precise delicacy and grandeur. He revealed the extraordinary way Busoni makes Bach’s great piece seem vast and mysterious, as if it’s been stripped of its Baroque trappings and hurled into a distant future (Busoni was a new music visionary as well as pianist). Hough made all the detail shine out with a soft glow, as if the piece were hailing us from a great distance.

Visually, the event was quite impressive, given the restrictions of the lockdown involving using live camera operators. We got the occasional close-up of Hough’s remarkably eloquent hands, and his even more eloquent face.

The other piece on Hough’s programme, Schumann’s Fantaisie, was also hugely grand. Schumann was obsessed with paying homage to Beethoven, and he wanted to make something monumental and yet full of pathos. “Ruins” was his early idea for a title. But he was also madly in love with his wife-to-be Clara. All this gets into the Fantaisie, which is impassioned, hugely pathetic and nostalgic – and also horribly hard to play.

Hough rose magnificently to the challenges, but he was more effective in the nostalgic moments than the impassioned ones. The pianist needs to appear to be almost losing control at times, even if he isn’t, and Hough’s sound was sometimes too perfectly chiselled and precise. But the serene last movement rose to its proper magnificence, and glowed in beautiful sunset-glow colours.

See and hear this concert at wigmore-hall.org.uk and listen on BBC Sounds via the BBC Radio 3 website for 30 days