Sir Stephen Hough, piano

Sir Stephen Hough, piano
Viano Quartet

Mozart String Quartet No. 17, ‘Hunt’
Hough Piano Quintet, ‘Les noces Rouges’ (Irish Premiere)
Dvořák Piano Quintet  

Widely acclaimed as one of the world’s greatest pianists, Sir Stephen Hough returns to the National Concert Hall for an unmissable evening of chamber music at its finest. 

Multi-award-winning Viano Quartet join Hough for the Irish premiere of his own bold, cinematic, and emotionally charged Piano Quintet. 

Inspired by the infamous ‘murder by wolves’ episode in Willa Cather’s novel My Ántonia, it juxtaposes folk-like lyricism and tongue-in-cheek humour with violent dissonances and dramatic string techniques to depict a story that moves from celebration to tragedy. 

Considered one of the greatest chamber works in the repertoire and jewel of late-Romantic music, Dvořák’s Piano Quintet is renowned for its warm, expressive melodies, rhythmic vigour and seamless incorporation of Czech folk music.

Setting off at a gallop with a jaunty, horn-like theme that gives it its name, Mozart’s exuberant Hunt Quartet blends good-humoured energy, stately grace and lyrical, introspective beauty. The interplay of the string voices is operatic, with an intense aria-like Adagio framed by music as exhilarating as it is effervescent. 

Named by The Economist as one of Twenty Living Polymaths, Sir Stephen Hough combines the distinguished career of a concert pianist with those of a composer and writer. He became the first classical performer to be given a MacArthur Fellowship and was awarded a Knighthood for Services to Music in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2022.

Presented by NCH