I haven’t studied theology in any systematic way. I don’t think I’d find certain subjects – canon law, for instance – terribly interesting. But I’m always picking around and finding different things. Stephen Hough Read Quote
To me, spirituality is the everyday stuff which we’re dealing with all the time. It’s not going into some ecstatic trance. It’s changing a nappy, or making a meal at the end of a very tiring day. Stephen Hough Read Quote
The piano is an instrument that can easily sound overly thick, and I love to think that I can work with textures – particularly the inner textures inside the melody or the bass line. There is an analogy there with painting; I love paintings where you see colour underneath the colour and, underneath that, more texture and shape. Stephen Hough Read Quote
I want music to move me, and I don’t think it can do that without at least a link to tonality. It’s the tug between atonal and tonal which makes music poignant. Stephen Hough Read Quote
I don’t listen to music a lot in that I rarely sit down and put on a CD because I really want to treasure the silence that is there when I’m not practising. But when I listen to a piece, I listen to it often. Stephen Hough Read Quote
I love food, but if I find a restaurant I like in a new city, I can eat every meal there, and sometimes I do… and even sometimes the same dish. Stephen Hough Read Quote
When you’re a kid, Beethoven is Beethoven, but as I’ve grown older, my astonishment at the sheer inventiveness of the man has increased, and I have an appreciation that I didn’t have when I was in my 20s. Stephen Hough Read Quote
I’ve loved Alfred Cortot’s playing from an early age, and I never tire of hearing his recordings, particularly Chopin and Schumann from the 1920s and ’30s. Stephen Hough Read Quote
I would do a sort of violence to myself if I didn’t express myself in the directly creative ways of writing, both words and music. Stephen Hough Read Quote
The hierarchy is set out for me. The first priority is piano. I have to be 101 percent prepared. I find that at other times of the day, if the creative juices are working, I might want to write or compose. Stephen Hough Read Quote
