Speaking with the pianist Stephen Hough you get the feeling that the marketing people would be squirming in their focus group approved touch points. In this era of legislated accessibility, the British/Australian composer and virtuoso is one of the few who dares to publicly state the truth about classical music.
"We try to attract more young people by saying, 'Don't be afraid, it's not as difficult as you think it is' but actually classical music is much, much more difficult than you think it is and that's what makes it so wonderful," says Hough on the eve of his fourth Musica Viva tour. "We're going to Everest," he adds. "Have you got the equipment?"
"I thought that if I became a priest I wouldn't have to say that I was gay and make an excuse for it because they wouldn't ask me why I wasn't getting married."
For those willing to tackle the mountain, Hough will perform a programme including works by Schubert, Liszt and Franck as well as the Australian premiere of his newest composition, Sonata III (Trinitas). "Classical music is not disposable," he declares. "The pieces in this recital should change your life. You should never be the same again."
Indeed, for Hough, the tradition of great art is one to be thoroughly cherished, as opposed to modernised and lobotomised. "The great thing about the big masterpieces of art, the works that come back year after year, is that they go deep into what it means to be a human being."
As a pianist, painter (and lover of tea, perfume and hats), Stephen Hough is a man willing to scale the heights and explore the depths. Case in point: Trinitas is a nod to the Catholic trinity and, by extension, Hough's own faith. "I became Catholic when I was a very enthusiastic eighteen-year-old, partly because I thought it was the greatest thing in the world, partly because it annoyed my parents so much and partly because I thought that if I became a priest I wouldn't have to say that I was gay and make an excuse for it because they wouldn't ask me why I wasn't getting married."
Drilling into this, he suggests that like great art faith is a reach for meaning. "For me part of it is that life is about more than getting up in the morning, eating, drinking, going to bed, sleeping, and then eventually dying. It's about the bigger picture. Y'know, whatever success or failure I have in my life is all very relative. But it's relative not in a 'nothing matters' way but in a way that everything matters."
Like Hough, the other composers featured in the recital all share a "relationship" with Catholicism. This, and the complex psychology of the individual pieces, is what attracted Hough to include them in the programme, with the Schubert work, the 190-year-old trio Sonatas In D (the 'sonata of sighs'), being of particular interest. "It's a very bleak piece written when he knew he was going to die of syphilis," Hough elaborates. "He was only in his 20s so his was a life cut short. There's a great sense in this piece of anger, of sadness, of bleakness."
It's a typically emotional description, illustrative of Hough's passionate approach to playing. While to outsiders classical piano may seem an overly technical pursuit, Hough sums it up thus: "It's technique at the service of emotion, at the service of human meaning." Which, for him, is the whole point.
