Stephen Hough brings exquisite playing to Mompou’s Música callada — album review

In a memorable phrase, Stephen Hough has referred to Federico Mompou as the composer of “music of evaporation”. Wistful, dreamy, his miniature piano pieces ease slowly into one’s consciousness and, almost before they have made an impression, they are gone.

Born in Barcelona, Mompou (1893-1987) was known as a shy, introverted man. Soft-spoken by nature, he wrote music that echoed his own personality in its quiet reflection on the thoughts and feelings that he kept hidden from sight.

His last major work is Música callada, a title borrowed from the Cántico espiritual by Carmelite friar St John of the Cross. Arranged in four books dating from 1959 to 1967, its 28 short pieces form a collection of around 70 minutes. None is longer than four minutes, the shortest a mere wisp of 45 seconds.

“This music has neither air nor light,” wrote Mompou. “It is a weak heartbeat. One doesn’t ask that it move far in space, but its mission is to penetrate in the great depths of our soul and in the most secret regions of our spirit.”

Having earned his credentials on an earlier disc of Mompou, Hough has returned to the composer with more exquisitely judged playing. With individual headings such as “Placide”, “Très calme” and “Tranquillo”, these miniatures might be thought to limit a pianist’s scope, but Hough’s precision and crystalline sound quality pay dividends. It is an irony of Mompou’s music that the durations of these pieces should be so tiny, yet their visionary quality seems to invoke far distances of time and space.

★★★★☆

‘Mompou: Música callada’ is released by Hyperion