Stephen Hough; Endellion String Quartet, Wigmore Hall, London
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Royal patronage of music has never completely lost its influence. From the surge in activity under the Tudors, through the rebirth of music at the Restoration, to commissions under the Hanoverians and the House of Windsor, composers have continued to enjoy a presence – if not in royal circles, at least on big royal occasions.
Pianist Stephen Hough swore it was a coincidence that this recital had fallen at the close of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee weekend. The last in the series he has devised at the Wigmore Hall this season, it brought together three English composers who have enjoyed close royal connections: Byrd (with Elizabeth I), Elgar (Edward VII) and Britten (the present Queen).
It was a strange, though rewarding, idea to start with some solo keyboard pieces by Byrd. These are rarely played even by period instrument specialists, let alone a virtuoso concert pianist, but if anybody is to persuade us that Byrd deserves to be heard in recital, it is surely that inspirational magpie-collector of piano rarities, Hough. In three pieces, including the celebrated “Hugh Aston’s Ground”, he brought the Tudor master to life with inimitable flair.
It was quite a leap of the imagination from Hough’s Byrd to a performance of Britten’s String Quartet No.3 by the Endellion String Quartet. This was the last major work Britten wrote before he died and its most personal, withdrawn movements venture to a world lit only by a distant glow of light through the mist (possibly Venice, where Britten completed the score). Other performances have given the music a more imaginative palette of colours, but the Endellion players were truthful to its valedictory quality.
After the interval Hough and the Quartet came together for a piece from another timeframe again, Elgar’s Piano Quintet. Although composed in 1918, this is music left over from an earlier age. It is often uncannily similar to Brahms’s Piano Quintet, as if Elgar had the Brahms open on his desk, and this performance threw itself wholeheartedly into the high romantic, central European style, with Hough the dominating personality at the piano. Almost the only constant through this oddly far-flung programme was the royal connection – true after all to the spirit of the Jubilee weekend.
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